Britney Spears reflects on being treated like a “child robot” under the conservatorship.
When promoting her upcoming book “The Woman in Me,” Spears told People magazine exclusively that she finally felt ready to share her tale. For “the past 15 years” or “even at the beginning of my career,” she told the newspaper, “I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me.” I was able to relate my tale without fear of repercussions from my conservators when I was released from their care. After being under conservatorship for 13 years, Spears regained full authority over her own life in November 2021.
She may have decided against writing the book. She said it was challenging to think back on times when she felt hopeless, such as “not getting a moment of peace, the judgments from strangers who don’t even know me, having my freedom stripped away by my family and the government, [and] losing my passion for the things I love.”
A few people read aloud from “The Woman in Me.”
Now 41 years old, Spears says that she was not treated like an adult while under conservatorship.
I converted it to mechanical form. But not just any robot; rather, a hybrid between a robot and a kid, as the book extract puts it. To paraphrase, “I had been so infantilized that I was losing bits and pieces of what made me feel like myself.”
The conservatorship turned me into a kid and robbed me of my femininity. Onstage, I ceased to be myself and became more of a thing. They took away the music that had always been a part of my being.
Spears also describes the “soul-crushing” years of not having any freedom, describing how she felt “like a shadow of myself.”
Spears says, “This is what’s hard to explain—how quickly I could vacillate between being a little girl, a teenager, and a woman because of the way they had robbed me of my freedom.” “There was no way to behave like an adult because they wouldn’t treat me like an adult, so I’d 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.”
The release date of “The Woman in Me” is October 24.
