Britney Spears Says She Was “Infantilized” During Conservatorship, Became “Child-Robot”
Britney Spears is set to open up about her conservatorship for the first time in her upcoming memoir, The Woman in Me. Ahead of its release on October 24th, People has published an excerpt in which the pop star describes how she felt “infantilized” during that time period and became a “child-robot.”
“Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child,” Spears wrote of her father, Jamie. “He’d drummed that message into me as a girl, and even after I’d accomplished so much, he was continuing to do that to me. I became a robot. But not just a robot — a sort of child-robot. I had been so infantilized that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself.”
She continued, “The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child. I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
Spears went on to explain that the situation forced her to “vacillate between being a little girl and being a teenager and being a woman, because of the way they had robbed me of my freedom. There was no way to behave like an adult, since they wouldn’t treat me like an adult, so I would regress and act like a little girl; but then my adult self would step back in — only my world didn’t allow me to be an adult.”
In November 2021, Spears terminated her conservatorship after 13 years in which every aspect of her life and career was controlled by her father. The Woman in Me was announced this past July and is described as “a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.” The memoir promises to reveal “for the first time her incredible journey — and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history” while also illuminating “the enduring power of music and love — and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms.”
Last week, Spears revealed that actor Michelle Williams will be reading the audiobook version of The Woman in Me. Pre-orders are ongoing.
