It’s Britney, bitch.

I have never been a fan of Britney Spears, which isn’t to say that I have actively disliked her or anything like that, just that I have not been interested in her music or really paid that much attention to her. Back when she shaved her head and beat up a car door with an umbrella, I remember thinking, okay, that’s crazy. I am a year younger than Britney Spears, back then I did not understand my own mental health issues let alone the issues of a pop star having a very public breakdown. But I am older and wiser now, and I can look back critically at Britney’s breakdown and see how terribly she has been portrayed by the media and how the media has manipulated the public into believing that Britney is a nutjob who needed to be in a conservatorship. Britney Spears should never have been put into a conservatorship. As someone who works in the legal profession, I know that conservatorships are for mentally incapacitated people who cannot take care of themselves. Mental health issues do not necessarily equal mental incapacity. Men use women’s mental health to control their wives and daughters. A conservatorship is the modern equivalent of a man locking his wife or daughter away in a mental institution in order to control her body and her money. This is exactly what Britney’s father did to her for thirteen years.

I decided to read Britney’s memoir, The Woman in Me, because I was curious about her take on the conservatorship. Britney’s memoir has completely changed my perspective of her. My old perspective was built on the lies spoon fed to the public first by Justin Timberlake, who accused Britney of cheating on him and made a career off playing her broken-hearted victim, and by the media who took off with his slut-shaming narrative. I find it extremely frustrating how most of the press about The Woman in Me has been about Britney’s revelations about her relationship with Justin. It feels like everyone is missing the point. Justin Timberlake has controlled Britney’s narrative for so long, but there is more to Britney Spears than the men she used to date or be married to.

My biggest take away from The Woman in Me is how kind and empathetic Britney Spears is. She speaks so kindly about her scummy exes and does not use her memoir as a means of slandering them. She is clearly angry at her family for the way they have mistreated and failed her, but she still expresses her love for them, except for her father. She has a lot of anger for her father, and rightly so, but she includes the story of her grandfather in her memoir, how her grandfather put two of his wives in a mental institution and how he abused her father as a child, in order to explain why her own father would put her into a conservatorship. It is very generous of her, and way more than he deserves.

Whether or not you like Britney Spears, I think The Woman in Me is worth reading and that people who read this book will come away with a better understanding of who Britney was before the conservatorship and who she is now after being infantilized by her family and managers for thirteen years. Then maybe they will stop judging her Instagram posts.