FEATURE:
These Women in Us
IN THIS PHOTO: Britney Spears/PHOTO CREDIT: Michelangelo Di Battista/Sony/RCA via Getty Images
Britney Spears’s Extraordinary Memoir, and Why There Is Sexism When It Comes to Expectation and Levels of Revelation
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I hope that debate is sparked…
when we consider the celebrity memoir. Britney Spears’s The Woman In Me is out tomorrow (24th October). It is one of the most anticipated memoirs in many years. Maybe it affects some male public figures too. Prince Harry’s SPARE was met with some criticism. Like he was cashing in or bad-mouthing The Royal Family. I think any backlash was to do with his status and the somewhat awkward and divisive subject of saying anything bad – or honest it seems – against such an esteemed and loved institution. It seems different for women. Jada Pinkett Smith has released Worthy. At a time when we hear that her and her husband Will Smith have been living separately for years, some see this memoir as salacious, opportunistic or capitalising on that news – coupled with continued controversy Will Smith caused when he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars last year. Even though it doesn’t mine any trauma for cheap celebrity and money, there is, instead, something deeper there. The memoir poses big questions – and sets the record straight regarding her marriage to Smith. It has received some kind words and attention, though others have viewed (the memoir) as too gushy and lacking any gritty and juice.
IN THIS PHOTO: Jada Pinkett Smith/PHOTO CREDIT: Erik Carter for The New York Times
Something I am especially interested in is how the world reacts to Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me. Extracts have been released already. I think many expected the memoir to be Britney trying to regain fame and credibility. Maybe a way of reviving her career and getting some attention. Many have framed The Woman in Me as something that is going to dish the dirt and be controversial. Exerts relating to Spears getting an abortion when her then-boyfriend Justin Timberlake didn’t want children; her shaving her head as an act of defiance and clarity, rather than it being this tabloid juice and scandal…it is her being very honest and open about some traumatic events. Ones that the press have skewed and misrepresented. I think that many women in the public eye, when they write a memoir, are expected to be explicit, revealing and give the paying public something tawdry. In the case of Spears, The Woman in Me is the first time she has been able to write honestly and without pressure from her family or a level. As TIME noted in their review: Britney Spears is suspended between childhood and adulthood. Someone who was deprived of a childhood and any normal structure and space. Los Angeles Times commend the self-resurrection of the memoir. The New York Times discussed the glimmer of optimism that Spears reveals amid the darkness and harrowing details:
“Throughout the book, Spears repeatedly portrays her relationship to creativity as a kind of pure soul connection, a private communion with godliness independent of outside forces and opinion. Details on the actual salient process of music-making, though, are scant: a little nugget early on about listening to Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” the night before recording “…Baby One More Time”; high praise for the kindness of collaborators like Elton John and the Swedish producer Max Martin.
The mostly linear narrative in “The Woman In Me” tends to treat these moments and many other well-documented highlights of her career as passing or ancillary, a distant cacophony muffled by the much louder noise of her personal struggles. Still, the facts of it are presented so cleanly and candidly that “Woman” seems designed to be read in one sitting. It’s nearly impossible to come out of it without empathy for and real outrage on behalf of Spears, whose admitted bitterness over the dire circumstances of the last decade-plus of her life — she no longer speaks to her family, and says she has no immediate plans to return to recording — is tempered by an enduring, insistent optimism”.
Edward Helmore, writing for The Observer noted how juicy revelations are required when it comes to celebrity memories: “To produce a bestseller, stars must hold back on confessional social media posts and save explosive details for the page”. This is something I think applies more to women. They are held to a different standard. It got under my skin because, you can see from the reviews, Britney Spears is not using her memoir as a way of being revealing and scandalous! She is active on Instagram and connects with her fans in a very open way. She is always pretty frank with her followers. Although there is a limit as to what she can reveal and what she can say as an artist and someone in the public eye, it is not the case that she was holding all these controversial bits back for a memoir and is now reaping the rewards. Instead, she has this platform when she can tell her true story for the first time. There are section of that article from The Observer that caught my eye:
“Britney Spears drank daiquiris with her mother in Biloxi, Mississippi, aged 14. They called the cocktails “toddies”. Jada Pinkett Smith sold crack on the streets of Baltimore and her marriage to Will Smith was over long before he got to know about it. Barbra Streisand did her own makeup for the screen test for Funny Girl. Julia Fox says dating Kanye West was “unsustainable” because it felt like having “two babies”.
All these things and more are contained in memoirs hitting the shelves this month and into next. The publishing industry is hoping they will fly off the shelves – the equivalent of summer box-office hits – or at least recoup their advances. But will they?
Sales of non-fiction books since the pandemic peak have been soft, so publishers want more authentic and newsy memoirs. The market is crowded, and stars are able to speak directly – and with ever greater personal transparency – to fans via social media. The celebrity memoir is in a tough spot, say authors’ agents, and celebrities are being pushed by publishers to go further, in part because of pressure from social media.
IN THIS PHOTO: Julia Fox/PHOTO CREDIT: Amir Hamja
Before the release of Spears’s The Woman in Me next week, several excerpts have been released. We’ve learned that she and Justin Timberlake agreed not to have the baby after she became pregnant. “It was a surprise, but for me it wasn’t a tragedy,” she writes. The singer of Baby One More Time and Oops! … I Did It Again also shared glimpses of what’s to come. “There’s a lot that people don’t know that I want them to know,” she said in a video posted on X.
“That’s the perfect set-up,” says Robert Thompson, media professor at Syracuse University. For a tell-all memoir to be relevant it has to offer something that hasn’t already been given away for free. “Social media is a promiscuous medium, so celebrities are on a minute-to-minute basis trying to maximise their audience. So they have to do something they’ve held back and that’s a tough thing to do,” says Thompson.
Publishers were given a wake-up call by memoirs that hardly made it out of the gate. They include comedian Amy Schumer’s 2016 The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, which perched on the US bestseller list for two weeks, but not long enough to warrant a $9m advance.
The book’s Amazon page was targeted by trolls delivering one-star reviews, the New York Post reported, angering Schumer so much that she cancelled promotional events. Publisher Simon & Schuster denied that, saying the cancellations were because of illness, and said the book was ultimately profitable.
Earlier this month, Hidden Gems star and former dominatrix Julia Fox released Down the Drain, a memoir previewed in the inside cover with the words: “Sometimes you have to say f*ck it and throw your life down the drain just to see where you’ll come out on the other side.” Fox is currently selling $100 tickets for her book launch/show at a Times Square theatre next week.
Many celebrity autobiographies also have the helping hand of a ghostwriter, although they are equally able to advance or destroy the exercise. Pamela Anderson’s autobiography manuscript is said to have been much better before a ghostwriter intervened.
Either way, says one New York publisher, the next few weeks will tell who is successful – and who less so – in the constructed authenticity of the memoir. They’re celebrities, they want attention, and they’re doing what they can to get it, but the field is more crowded, and the bar is higher, because of social media, they say”.
I know that Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me will sell a huge amount. Her fans supporting her. People, rather than seeking juice and gossip, actually have followed Spears and know how trapped she has been. Having lived under a guardianship agreement for thirteen years, it was a harrowing time where she was living under extreme pressure and control. As an artist, she could not speak about her trauma and secrets. I don’t like any perspective or expectation that frames a memoir as money and fame-chasing. There has been some of that around Britney Spears. Again, it seems to impact and apply to women more. That perception of them as attention-seeking or victims. I am glad that reviewers have seen The Woman in Me for what it is: this brave and important memoir that sees Britney Spears sets the record straight. Maybe it is more the publishers and this need to get something headline-grabbing to make them money. Women like Britney Spears, Julia Fox, Jada Pinkett Smith or, as The Observer also mention, Barbra Streisand (My Name Is Barbra is out on 7th November), seem to get a different ride and deal compared to men. There is this sexist culture where women need to reveal their psychic, physical and spiritual pain. The fact of the matter that a new breed of memoirs are brilliantly-written. Some previous celebrity memoirs were quickly written or used ghostwriters. The first-person voice is demanded now. Something that reads well and is personal - as opposed something that is spun as a tell-all or cash-grab. There is one more section from that Observer article that seems relevant to finish on:
“There’s definitely a big appetite for celebrity memoirs, but I think there’s been a correction in recent years after some publishers paid huge advances based on a name that haven’t earned out as anticipated,” says Eve MacSweeney, a principal agent with Calligraph. “It’s clear that the quality – and level of disclosure – needs to be strong, and you’re seeing that in this new round of memoirs in which addressing the difficult stuff is a big selling point.”
“Three hundred pages is a long time to spend being addressed individually in the celebrity’s first-person voice,” says media studies professor Hannah Yelin, who notes the demands on women for personal revelation are appreciably higher than for men.
“Audience appetite, genre convention and economic formula all conspire to demand juicy revelations, and this is especially so in our sexist contemporary media culture which demands women’s exposure whether psychic or physical,” she says”.
Really positive reviews are coming in for Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me. It is out tomorrow. It will fly off of the shelves! I think a lot of people going in assumed there might be a lot of anger. This being Spears rallying and railing against her past. Quite the opposite! The exerts we saw gave a false impression. They were among the most revealing and ‘tantalising’. More to do with shock and something quite tabloid. If you read the book, you learn that there is so much more than that. It is Spears displaying such bravery and focus. Balancing the lows and horrible moments with some optimism and hope for the future. This new strength that she has acquired from being free of a conservatorship and the shackles of the past. Whether there will be new music coming I am not sure – though the two most-recent images on her Instagram seem like they might be tied to a song or new album. With incredible and inspiring women like Britney Spears, Jada Pinkett Smith, Julia Fox, Barbara Streisand being very thorough and open with their memoirs/autobiographies, I hope the narrative changes. That women in the public forum are not there for headlines and scandal. That their voices and experiences should be treated with respect and support. Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me is a memoir that is personal, yet it also speaks for so many other women who have had to live under a shadow or had their voices taken away. Living in darkness for so many years, the world is glad and grateful that Britney Spears has told her story…
IN her own words.