Britney Spears apologizes for speaking her truth in The Woman In Me
Spears apologized "for some of the things I wrote about in my book" and praised her ex Justin Timberlake's new single on Instagram this weekend
Aux News Britney Spears
Britney Spears continues to prove that she’s one of the least selfish famous people to ever exist, even though, after all she’s been through, a little righteous anger would be more than justified. On Sunday, the “Toxic” singer once again reiterated that the revelations in her (mostly) tell-all memoir The Woman In Me were for catharsis purposes only, and not meant to call anyone out.
“I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book. If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about I am deeply sorry,” she wrote in an Instagram caption Sunday evening before making her account private. (Anyone previously following Spears can still see her posts.) The post features a video of Spears’ ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake playing a medley of his songs on children’s instruments with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots, so the “people” or person she’s talking about is strongly implied. “I also wanted to say I am in love with Justin Timberlake’s new song ‘Selfish’… It is soo good and how come every time I see Justin and Jimmy together I laugh so hard ???” she continued. “Ps ‘Sanctified’ is wow too.”
Despite the pop star’s pleas to the contrary (she also posted a long note back in October stating that the book was meant as “closure” for her and not intended to offend), Spears’ fans have reasons to hate Timberlake. Beyond his infamously gross behavior in the press around the time of their breakup, the former *NSYNC singer didn’t exactly come off well under Britney’s pen. In the memoir, Spears reveals that Timberlake convinced her to get an abortion while they were dating, a decision she calls “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.” She also includes a number of other unflattering anecdotes about her ex, notably one in which she claims that Timberlake switched into a cringy accent when they ran into fellow artist Ginuwine on the street. (Ginuwine has since denied Spears’ account.)
So why is Spears apologizing for (but notably, not retracting) all of this now? We can’t know for sure, but it almost definitely has something to do with the fact that last week, her fan army continuously streamed a decade-old Femme Fatale bonus track called “Selfish” to knock Timberlake’s new release of the same name—the leading single from his upcoming album Everything I Thought It Was—out of the charts. While Britney clearly just wants (and deserves!) her peace after all the time, this writer can’t say she blames whoever thought of this pretty brilliant gag. Even if they don’t repeat the bit when Timberlake’s full album drops, it doesn’t seem like it will make all that much of a difference. The songs simply aren’t that good.
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“In the memoir, Spears reveals that Timberlake convinced her to get an abortion while they were dating, a decision she calls “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
So what?
Should she have had a kid at fucking 18 years old when neither of them was ready for it? What would that have improved/solved?
The fact that she was considering keeping it should be the red flag, not that a teenager decided that he wasn’t ready to be a father.
If Britney clearly just wanted her peace after all the time, maybe she’d just zip it and go away.
No I’m pretty sure she wants the attention.
just zip it and go awayThat’s advice you should take.
Follow your own advice for the love of god please fuck off out of here
Yet more proof that AV Club is veering more and more into Jezebel territory.
Now you beg for that Laurel Canyon Sound.
I mean, it really doesn’t shock me Britney never read the book she “wrote”.
She never indicated that she didn’t know what was in the book.
True, but this reads like an effort to fend off litigation by Timberlake. I suspect that Timberlake has threatened her with a defamation suit now that he’s suffering identifiable career harm as a result of Spears’ accusations. In practice, I think a suit by Timberlake would be a tough proposition, even if he can actually prove falsity. A lot of the media and fans of pop music are still stinging from the Depp verdict, and are likely to react harshly to a powerful man suing a woman for “speaking her truth,” as this article puts it. Many of the same people are very, very protective of Britney Spears (for reasons that are partially reasonable, but also seem pretty overwrought). Even prevailing in such a case might not be a real “win” as a practical matter.
I feel like it’s more that she really just doesn’t have hard feelings and she didn’t like seeing the backlash against someone she once loved and perhaps still does in a way. I don’t see how anything she said was actionable in a defamation suit. That said, I do think he’s enough of a prick to make such a threat.
The evidence that Timberlake is a jerk has always seemed pretty thin. It seems to have a lot less to do with Timberlake’s actual behavior, and more to do with the fact that we need more villains for our fantasy story about living saint Britney Spears.
I don’t know that he’s a jerk, but I do get the sense that he has skated through life on charm and good looks and and leaves a lot of harm in his wake without any consequences, and I’ve though that for a long time for reasons that have nothing at all to do with Britney Spears, and she hasn’t been seen as anything close to a “living saint” (which is a huge exaggeration) until the last couple of years. Timberlake has been problematic for long before that.
If you’re going to be angry at a celebrity for getting a cushy life due to good looks, then that applies to most of Hollywood. When Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell were cast in Anyone But You, it wasn’t because they were objectively the best actors available.And again, I’m not sure what the “harm in his wake” is that we’re supposed to be angry about. “Problematic” is also one of those words that can mean anything.I don’t doubt that the guy’s not been perfect at every moment of the quarter century he’s been in the public eye, particularly because he was most famous when he was very young. But people seem to cite the moments when Spears’ life was messy as evidence that she’s a victim of being forced to grow up too fast, while citing the messy moments from Timberlake’s youth as evidence that he’s a jerk.
My comment did not say that I was angry at Justin Timberlake, and it also didn’t say that I think he’s problematic because of his cushy life and good looks. Feel free to re-read as you have time.And I’m not sure what you’re arguing about here. I think he’s a problematic person. You don’t. I’m not interested in convincing you to agree with me and I don’t know why you care if I agree with you. Justin Timberlake is going to be fine, but I’m sure if you send him some screenshots of your defense here he’ll call you and you can be best buddies.“But people seem to cite the moments when Spears’ life was messy”I can’t answer for “people.” If you show me where I’ve ever done that then maybe we can have something to talk about.
It’s a discussion thread. You made a statement on the thread that I didn’t think made sense, and I pressed you a bit on it. If you’re not interested in engaging with me, that’s fine. None of this matters.
Except you “pressed me on it” with things that had nothing to do with me. “It seems to have a lot less to do with Timberlake’s actual behavior…” Oh really? Because I didn’t say anything about anything that wasn’t his actual behavior. Oh, but “people are saying xyz.” Well I’m not people. Instead of “pressing” somebody on something and trying to score points, just ask them why they feel that way and that way you learn about another person’s perspective without wasting everyone’s time challenging them with things they don’t believe and didn’t say.
Look, you suggested you weren’t interesting in trying to convince me you were right, so I posted to say I was fine not having the discussion anymore. Now you’re reengaging.I’ve had to infer why you think Timberlake is a jerk, or problematic, or whatever, because you haven’t provided any reason. If you have reasons for disliking Timberlake other than the ones I’ve discussed, feel free to tell me so. I’m truly interested. And for what it’s worth, you say I should have asked you why you felt that way. But one of my very first comments to you was, “The evidence that Timberlake is a jerk has always seemed pretty thin.” That was an invitation for you to provide the reasons you felt that way, and what you offered what that he seemed like he “skated through life on charm and good looks.” I responded to that point.
I didn’t suggest I wasn’t interested. I told you outright, and then you continued arguing that you were just “pressing me a bit.” “I’ve had to infer why you think Timberlake is a jerk, or problematic, or whatever, because you haven’t provided any reason.”You never fuckin asked, dude. You just described what you *thought* was my evidence for thinking so.“That was an invitation for you to provide the reasons you felt that way”Was it? Because it sounded like a statement of things you assumed were in my head. It sounded like you were describing complaints you had heard other people say that had nothing to do with me. You’ll be surprised to learn that I don’t feel equipped to defend what other people who are not me have said about Justin Timberlake. I’m sorry the evidence they presented was thin! I literally cannot help that.“what you offered what that he seemed like he ‘skated through life on charm and good looks.’”That was not the whole sentence and that was not all that I “offered.”We’re done now. You can have the last word, and a a good day.
For someone who wants a conversation to stop, you sure have a funny way of showing it.
She didn’t even bother to record the audio version herself
She didn’t “speak her truth.” Her ghostwriter adapted a story told to him by a mentally ill woman with an unreliable recollection of an event that occured a quarter century ago.She absolutely owed Justin an apology for telling the world a very private story that was only half hers, and directing the collective rage of the internet at a man who did nothing to deserve it.
“Her truth” is also a particularly obnoxious phrase. Either Spears’ statements about Timberlake are the truth, or they’re not. She does bot have a truth that belongs just to her. And whenever authors use phrases like “her truth,” they seem to be deliberately trying to brush past the possibility that something someone said was not factually true, and effectively arguing that what matters is what felt true, in a much more amorphous way.The problem with this is that what feels true depends a lot on our existing preconceptions. If you’ve decided that Timberlake is a jerk and Spears is a victim, then a story about Timberlake being a jerk to Spears is always going to feel true.
A few years ago it was revealed that, after years of people blasting Justin for not doing more to defend Janet Jackson, that Janet had told him to stay silent, Sam Barsanti was all “he didn’t have to stay silent just because that’s what she wanted.”
Right. And even before that, we knew Timberlake hadn’t done anything Jackson wasn’t expecting at the performance itself, and Timberlake wasn’t the one criticizing Jackson. He was only ever very tangentially connected to any blame for what happened.
Shut the fuck up
If you believe the gossip, Ms. Spears was made aware of how much Mr. T would LOVE to talk about her drug history and what he tried to do to stop it if she wants to keep going on.
Why would Mr. T talk about it? Was she a fool that he pitied?
I’m so fucking sick of the abortion thing. He was 18. She was 17. No, they WEREN’T ready to have a child. More to the point, her entire career was based on, “I’m a virgin, boys, but maybe YOU will be the one I give it up for.” Having that kid would have destroyed her career and she fucking knows it. If Timberlake hadn’t asked her to, every single person connected to her career would have. By the way, if women have so little agency in their own bodies that they can be “convinced” away from control by a guy saying, “Yeah, I’m not ready for fatherhood” than maybe women ARE too delicate and silly to be given the choice over their own bodies.
“Britney Spears continues to prove that she’s one of the least selfish famous people to ever exist, even though, after all she’s been through, a little righteous anger would be more than justified.”This is a wild sentence. Like, she’s been through a lot, and I don’t think she’s a bad person, but “ONE OF THE LEAST SELFISH FAMOUS PEOPLE TO EVER EXIST” comes across as a tad hyperbolic, no?
You’re wrong. If anything, it’s not positive ENOUGH about Spears. The fact that Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists worship deities other than Spears is a travesty. We are but worms, unfit to gaze upon her. The movie Crossroads should have won all the awards, not just in the year it came out, but in every year since then. You heard me, Lily Gladstone!
She’s been through a lot, she might not be a bad person, but there’s plenty of evidence that she’s not that bright, probably didn’t even glance over the book—let alone write it—before its release, and that she’s now trying to do damage control for what was included in it. There’s zero to celebrate here, but they sure are trying. They’re praising her for both what she “wrote” but also for her now walking back the most interesting stuff. The phrase “having your cake and eating it, too” comes to mind.
Concluding that Spears should not have been in a conservatorship for 20 years was perfectly reasonable, and a good reason to feel sympathy for Spears. I’m not sure why so many people have jumped from that to aggressively asserting that Spears is an amazing hero, who never engaged in any behavior that was worrisome or weird, and that anyone who ever caused her anything less than absolute joy in her life is a monster.
RE: JT’s fake accent.Right after college, my first desk job was working for an internet startup that specialized in MP3’s and webcasts. Part of my job was to make sure the webcasts were working at any time of day. One of the shows was an NSYNC concert, so I watched it upwards of 20 times. About halfway through, Timberlake does this super cringy beatbox bit, in which he heavily indulges in that voice. Anyone who saw that show (and likely the whole tour, since you could tell is was likely part of the nightly routine) would have heard it. It was 2000 and I was naive about a lot of things, and even then I could tell how gross it was that he was talking like that.
Reading between the lines, Spears’ lawyer got a letter from Timberlake’s lawyer over the weekend.
I’m still not sure why we’re supposed to hate Justin Timberlake.
This is what 40 something years of trauma (especially family trauma) does to a woman (or a guy). I doubt she’ll ever get over the betrayal. The fear never really goes away. After all of the gaslighting you begin to gaslight yourself and it becomes very difficult to make decisions.
Time to stop beating this dead horse at this point. The media wants so desperately for there to be animosity between these two, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that a lot of these stories are embellishments or outright fabrications coming from the ghostwriter, rather than Britney herself. Kind of the opposite of “speaking her truth”, but go off I guess!