Britney Spears reveals abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father who called her “fat” and turned her into a “childlike robot.”
BRITNEY Spears has told for the first time in her own words how her alcoholic father and long-time conservator have terrified her since she was a child.
The Sun can reveal the 41-year-old pop icon is using the opening pages of her upcoming autobiography The Woman In Me to lambast Jamie Spears – accusing him of being “mean, apathetic and cold” during her childhood .
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She goes on to say that Jamie belittled her well into her 30s, often branding her “fat” and ordering her to work against her will during her thirteen-year conservatorship.
The Toxic hitmaker says Jamie, 71, would regularly “drink until he couldn’t think anymore.”Growing up in Kentwood, Louisiana, she was so afraid to get in the car with him during her pre-fame days.
In an excerpt from the book, published on October 24 and seen by The Sun, Britney writes: “Dad drank until he couldn’t think anymore. He disappeared from home for several days. And when he was drunk, he got really mean.”
The superstar says her father’s relationship with alcohol caused his businesses to fail and money to dry up – which only exacerbated problems at home.
She writes: “On top of the stress of having no money was the chaos caused by my father’s extreme mood swings.”
“The main thing I was afraid of was getting into the car with him because he was always talking to himself while driving. I didn’t even understand what he was saying. He seemed to be in his own world.”
Britney goes on to say that she now believes her father’s alcoholism was triggered by the abuse he suffered at the hands of his own father, June Spears.
She adds heartbreakingly, “But back then I had no idea why he was so hard on us and why nothing we ever did seemed good enough in his eyes.”
“The saddest thing for me was that all I ever wanted was a father who loved me just as I was – someone who would say, ‘I love you, period. You can do anything. I would love you forever and unconditionally.’”
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Having previously appeared on Disney Channel’s “Mickey Mouse Club” alongside Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, Britney said that she and her mother Lynne Spears dated when she was in “eighth grade” – around 12 to 13 years old old – would enjoy alcoholic cocktails – but never to the extent that her father would reach for the bottle.
To combat her difficult childhood in America’s Deep South, Britney would run into the woods to sing or simply hide in closets for hours.
She locked herself in closets so often that it became a “running joke” in her household.
In excerpts seen by The Sun, Britney writes: “When I sing, I am myself. For me, singing is a magical place where the noise no longer has meaning and where anything is possible.”
“All I wanted was to leave the everyday world and enter this other realm where I could express myself without having to think.
“When I was alone with my thoughts, my mind was full of worries and fears. But music put an end to all worries and gave me self-esteem.”
“As long as I was singing, I was half outside the ordinary world.
“Singing was like a bridge between reality and fantasy, between the world I lived in and the world I desperately wanted to live in.”
Britney says the “soul-destroying” feeling of never quite hitting the mark in her father’s eyes has never left her.
In an excerpt published via People Magazine in America, Britney says that after two decades of abuse, she was little more than a soulless robot performing on stage while trapped in a seemingly never-ending conservatorship.
After her infamous breakdown in 2007 and 2008, during which she shaved her head in front of the world’s media, Britney spent thirteen years in a detention center typically reserved for the elderly or seriously mentally ill.
During this time, her father had full legal control over her life – including her money and her body.
She previously claimed he had her implanted with an IUD to prevent her from becoming pregnant with her then-boyfriend and now ex-husband Sam Asghari, 29.
Britney was finally released from the conservatorship in November 2021.
The Grammy winner writes, “Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-destroying condition for a child.”
“He had instilled that message in me as a girl, and even after I had achieved so much, he continued to do that to me.”
“I became a robot. But not just a robot – a kind of children’s robot. I had become so infantilized that I lost parts of what made me feel like myself.”
Despite being in her mid-30s, Britney was prevented from making any decisions about her life.
In a theme from her childhood, Britney says her father “kept telling me that I looked fat and that I needed to do something about it.”
During her time at the conservatory, Britney released four albums, three world tours and completed a record-breaking Piece of Me residency at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, which grossed £112 million over four years.
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She was also a judge on The X Factor USA alongside Simon Cowell and Demi Lovato.
At a conservatorship hearing in June 2021, as she struggled to regain control of her life, Britney told the judge that her father loved the power and control he had over her.
Referring to him sending her to a mental health facility against her will in 2019, Britney said: “I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it.”
“The control he had over someone as powerful as me. He loved the control of hurting his own daughter 100,000 percent.”
In a second excerpt published for PEOPLE magazine, Britney says the abuse she suffered robbed her of both her femininity and her love of music.
Britney writes: “The conservatory stripped me of my femininity and turned me into a child. I became more of a unit on stage than a person.”
“I had always felt music in my bones and blood; they stole that from me. Thirteen years passed in which I felt like a shadow of myself.”
“Now when I think about how my father and his employees had control over my body and my money for so long, I feel sick. “Think about how many male artists have gambled away all their money, how many have had substance abuse or mental health problems.” .
“No one tried to take away his control of his body and his money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”
“The thing was: I accomplished a lot during the time when I was supposedly unable to care for myself.
“Sometimes I found it almost funny how I won these awards for the album I made while I was supposedly so incapacitated that I needed to be controlled by my family.
“But the truth was that when I thought about it for a long time, it wasn’t funny at all.
“That’s what’s hard to explain, how quickly I could vacillate between being a little girl, a teenager, and a woman because they took away my freedom.”
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“There was no way I could act like an adult because they didn’t treat me like an adult, so I regressed and behaved like a little girl; but then my adult self stepped in again – only my world wouldn’t allow me to grow up.
Britney Spears: The Woman In Me is released worldwide on October 24th via Gallery UK.
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