Britney Spears‘ new memoir The Woman In Me isn’t even out yet and it’s already stunning fans. This week, People released excerpts from the pop star’s debut book, which hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24th. One of the biggest bombshells to come out so far has to do with her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake.
In an excerpt shared by People on Tuesday, October 17th, Spears revealed that she became pregnant with Timberlake’s child but ultimately had an abortion because he wasn’t ready. She writes:
“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated. But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young… If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father… To this day, it’s one of the most agonising things I have ever experienced in my life.”
In another excerpt, Spears explains what was going on in her mind when she infamously shaved her head in 2007:
“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up. I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back. But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”
Spears also gave some insight into her iconic performance at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards which featured her holding a massive snake. She recalls:
“All I knew was to look down, because I felt if I looked up and caught its eye, it would kill me. In my head I was saying, Just perform, just use your legs and perform. But what nobody knows is that as I was singing, the snake brought its head right around to my face, right up to me, and started hissing. I was thinking, Are you f—ing serious right now? The f—ing goddamn snake’s tongue is flicking out at me. Right. Now. Finally, I got to the part where I handed it back, thank God.”
As previously promised, Spears will go into detail about her 13-year conservatorship and the abuse she experienced from her family. Despite having one of the most iconic careers in pop music, she revealed she lost her passion for performing. Spears writes:
“Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child. 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… 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… If they’d let me live my life, I know I would’ve followed my heart and come out of this the right way and worked it out… Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself. I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick.”
The Woman In Me arrives on October 24th.
This story first appeared on iHeart.com and was reproduced with permission.
