If these anecdotes expose the gendered double standards at the heart of the noughties pop machine, worse was to come, and much of the book details the 13 years that Spears spent under her father’s conservatorship, since overturned. Meanwhile, in 2021 Timberlake issued a public apology encompassing both his treatment of Spears and Janet Jackson, who was cancelled in 2004 after he exposed her breast during a duet at the Super Bowl halftime performance. “I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism,” he wrote.
These days, Britney has turned away from performing, largely choosing to process her trauma away from the spotlight. Still, her occasional forays into public life have been met with acclaim; her 2022 duet with Elton John went to number one in 40 countries, and her memoir has already broken the Guinness World Record for fastest selling non-fiction book of all time, usurping Prince Harry. “For so long, I didn’t have the power to make the world look the way I wanted it to,” she writes, “but I do now.” It isn’t exactly a fairytale ending. But close enough.
