TOshe walked around in flip-flops and wore a low-waisted skirt that reached below her knees. A top (un)covered her suddenly abundant breasts, she looked like any teenager without make-up: she was only 17 years old, but she already knew the miraculous way of squinting her eyes and opening her little red mouth in a smile so powerful that it created a shower of sparkle & shine all around. This is the effect that Britney Spears had on me the first time I met her in Padua in 1999 in the glorious and pioneering times of …Baby One More Time. And none of us would have ever imagined the extent to which success would turn his life upside down. In every sense.
But after 24 years, 9 albums with over 100 million copies and the live de profundis that she helped create herself by uploading Instagram I read a video of himself in his underwear The Woman In mehis memoir published by Longanesiand I understood why Simon & Schuster, the American publishing houseIt has paid $15 million, the same amount he gave Bill Clinton for his autobiography.
Britney Spears, “The Woman In Me”
«When I was little, my parents always fought. My father was an alcoholic and I was always afraid at home». Britney’s short sad story starts from Kentwood, Louisiana. The second name, Jean, he inherits from nonna, the first “crazy” girl in the family who, after losing a 3-day-old newborn, never stopped crying. So they admitted her to a psychiatric hospital and subjected her to lithium therapy. Eight years later, he shoots himself with a rifle on the grave of his dead sonor. It was 1966 and Britney’s father was 13 years old. She started drinking. He was a welder in an oil refinery, his wife was a teacher and he went around with his two daughters in matching clothes and with freshly permed hair (his little sister Jamie Lynn was 3 years old).
At 9, Britney was cleaning shellfish and waiting tables at her great-grandmother Lexie’s restaurantThe Granny’s seafood and deliAnd at 13 she drank with her mother and smoked with her friends: «For fun, in eighth grade, my mother and I started going to Biloxi, Mississippi, to drink daiquiris. We called our cocktails “punch”. I was happy that mom let me drink alcohol with her from time to time. She obviously had nothing to do with dad’s excesses. He, when he raised his elbow, it was as if he shut down. We, on the other hand, became happier, livelier and ready for adventure. While she drove I drank a bite-size White Russian. It was like eating ice cream. My little corner of paradise».
“The Woman in Me” (Longanesi) has just been released in bookstores.
Serial cheating and abortion
A year later, at 14, Britney lost her virginity to her brother Bryan’s best friend and at 15 he signed a contract with Jive Records. There had already been, in the middle, the Mickey Mouse Club of Disney, the children’s program where he had met Christina Aguilera, Ryan Gosling and Justin Timberlake. And it was a coincidence that her record company then sent her on tour with NSYNC, Justin’s boy band with whom she will then fall in love “with a love so strong as to be pathetic”.
And here we have the first revelationAnd. Cheated on in a serial manner first with a singer from All Saints, then with all of them, at a certain point she gives in to the dancer Wade Robson. But they overcome this too, until, at a certain point, she gets pregnant. They are 19 years old: «I agreed not to keep the baby. If it had been up to me I would never have done it, but for Justin becoming a father was absolutely out of the question.” The fact is that they didn’t go to a doctor or a hospital and handled everything at home: «On the appointed day, with only Felicia (his assistant, ed) and Justin by my side, I took the pills. Shortly thereafter I was struck by excruciating cramps.” «I went to the bathroom and stayed there for hours, lying on the floor screaming and sobbing. They should have given me something to sedate me, I thought. I needed some anesthesia. I needed a doctor. Instead I lay there in terror, wondering if I was going to die. And they didn’t take me to hospital anyway. Justin came into the bathroom and sat next to me on the floor. He started strumming on the guitar.”
A few months later Justin decides to end the relationship with a text message, then publishes it Cry Me A River the song in which he talked about being betrayed. Yes, she was basically in a coma in Louisiana and everyone felt very sorry for him. Still hating her. But the worst was yet to come, even if she was convinced that she deserved every kind of suffering. After all, Kevin Federline was a chorus girl with an irresistible face: «The first night he hugged me in a pool for hours». He already had a young son and his ex was 8 months pregnant, but she married him instantly. «I was completely naive. I was young and made a lot of mistakes. But I wasn’t a manipulator, I was just stupid » she states casually in the book.
On September 14, 2005, Sean Preston was born and, three months later, they conceived Jayden James. At that point, Kevin stops talking to her and devotes himself to his supposed career as a hip hop singer. Practically, he disappears under the eyes of the paparazzi who photograph her in full post-partum depression while driving with Sean on her lap or hits the door of her husband’s apartment which prevents her from seeing the children because, according to him, she “couldn’t” deal with it. They get divorced.
Legal protection
«I went into a hairdresser, took a razor and cut my hair short. Nobody spoke to me anymore: I was too ugly. Shaving me was a way of telling the world: everyone, fuck off». And then we are in January 2008: Britney drinks, she takes amphetamines, acts crazy around.
“After they took Jayden James away they tied me to a stretcher and took me to the hospital». Shameless in front of the cameras. Humiliated in front of photographers. We all wondered if he would ever celebrate her twenty-seventh birthday: talents far more brilliant than her (from Jim Morrison to Janis Joplin to Kurt Cobain) died at 27 and became legendary. But Jamie, the father-master, requests “conservatorship”, due to mental infirmity, obtaining legal protection of both “the person” and the “patrimony”. «Now Britney Spears is me!» he throws them there.
How is it possible that they appointed a bankrupt, alcoholic man as guardian? Mother Lynne doesn’t bat an eyelid. Neither do the brothers. What happened? Thirteen nightmare years begin in which a pop star who has broken every sales record is banned from alcohol, coffee, even aspirin. Britney can no longer drive and go to the spa, she only eats canned chicken and vegetables, no chocolate. She and she is forced to keep the spiral so that she can no longer reproduce. She’s just a little worker bee whose father tells her that she’s fat and needs to get her act together.
Meanwhile, he loses custody of his children until he agrees to pass 35 thousand dollars a month to Kevin for their support. She, however, has an “allowance” of 2000 dollars a week, microphones in the house that also monitor the bathroom and anyone who wants to go out with her is forced to take a blood test. “They might try to kill me. If I play along they will see that I am good and they will give me my freedom back” muses Britney.
While she is infantilized by her family, with the CircusTour she grosses 130 million dollars and in Las Vegas she stages 248 shows for over 900 thousand tickets sold. He would like to take the children and enjoy a holiday, but the father expects another tour. Just that Britney is now 40 years old and has a feminist awakening: says no. He locks her up in a clinic in Beverly Hills where they force her to undergo lithium therapy, as had happened to her grandmother Jean.
«Was I perhaps a cannibal? A bank robber? A ferocious animal? Why were they treating me like I wanted to burn that place down?” he asks. A nurse shows her a site that talks about her and her fans who organized the #freebritney movement. When she goes out she is no longer afraid of anything. Sam Ashgari, another handsome boyfriend and aspiring actor/personal trainer, welcomes her to her villa in Los Angeles.
Britney is now a woman. On June 22, 2021, call 911 and reports his father for abuse of conservatorship. On September 29th, thanks to his lawyer Mathew Rosengart, the court released the father from the role of guardian and on November 12th Judge Brenda J. Penny declared the legal guardianship terminated. «Remember: the tongue is a sword» she puts it in black and white.
Britney is safe and, while she’s at it, she gets married, has a miscarriage, goes through another divorce. But now he dedicates himself to horse riding, does pet therapy and responds on social media: “I’ll buy a horse.”
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