Britney v. Justin...Again?
Is it 2023 or 2002?
I had almost 600 words written for this post before I decided to scrap it all and take a different approach. I feel like I need to be transparent about this, because I have been waiting for a week to write this newsletter. There has been so much thrown out there, and it’s been a lot to process and pick through. But in doing that, there were a few things I realized. Ultimately, people are going to draw their own conclusions, take sides and process through their own experiences. You can take everything I write here with a grain of salt or vehemently disagree with me, but I felt like I had to put it out here on the record.
I think in the last 10/15 years, we have created these really intense parasocial relationships with celebrities that make it easy to forget that they are real people who we don’t know. I think in the last 10 years we have created a culture of public shaming and a need for accountability that I don’t always agree with. If a celebrity I like has hurt someone they know, they don’t need to apologize to the public and make it right with us, they need to make it right with the person they wronged. And that doesn’t need to be publicly advertised either, because it’s none of our fucking business.
Anyways, after that preface, I move on to the main event: Britney Spears vs. Justin Timberlake.
Okay y’all, real talk: I’ve been waiting to write something like this since I was 15 years old. I didn’t know that the fall of 2023 was going to mirror the spring of 2002, but I can’t even be mad about it. This is the shit that made me the person (and writer) I am today. I cut my teeth on pop culture criticism based around my favorite popstars back when the only person who listened was my mom. She still does, which really means a lot to me if I’m being quite honest.
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake was the first celebrity relationship that I ever felt invested in, and if I’m being quite honest, I haven’t had this many feelings about any other celebrity relationship since. They were pop music royalty; and as a devotee of the genre, I was forced to care, but I had even more skin in the game because of my intense love for Justin. As anyone who has read my Substack before knows, that love hasn’t really waned. That doesn’t mean I won’t look at him critically if the situation warrants it, but it does mean that I’m going to examine it with the nuance most people don’t afford him, and I won’t hold a 42-year-old man accountable for the things he did 20+ years ago.
Now that Britney’s memoir The Woman in Me has been released, it’s clear that their relationship was even more complicated than we thought it was back then. Britney has thrown a lot at us about the relationship in the book, and while I think that she totally should be able to tell her side of the story, I truly cannot understand why she would spend so much time outlining every detail of their relationship. There are big things that needed to be addressed, but the rest of it feels petty. I know some people will say she’s earned that, but I’m sorry, that’s for therapy and the group chat, not a book. Especially when you know that it will be turned into tabloid fodder for clicks. (I don’t buy her whole Instagram post about not meaning to cause harm. She’s been in the business for 25 years, she fucking knows how this stuff works. But more on this later.)
The biggest bombshell of her memoir is that she got pregnant with Justin’s baby at 18 and he asked her to have an abortion because he felt he wasn’t ready to be a dad. First of all, how can we be mad at this? A 19-year-old had the understanding of self to know that a child was not part of his current life plans. It would have been irresponsible to have gone through with a pregnancy when one of the parents had no interest in being a parent. Justin didn’t have kids until he was in his 30s, which is probably because he wanted to devote all of his energy to cultivating his career, which is valid! When I was 19, I had aspirations and goals, and being a parent certainly would NOT have aligned with those plans in the slightest. It doesn’t matter if they had the means to care for a child; if someone doesn’t want to be a parent because they feel like they aren’t mature enough to handle it, how can we be upset at that?
Secondly, there is no fucking way that Britney was going to have a child in the year 2000. She claims that her family never found out about the pregnancy, but if they had, they would have absolutely made her get an abortion. The gravy train would have STOPPED — there was no way she would have had a career after getting pregnant. Moms around the country were losing their shit about her in a crop top, there is no way they would be okay with their kids’ idol having a baby at 19 out of wedlock. Even if her parents didn’t believe in abortion as she claims, no one would have let their cash cow have a baby.
My mom also made an excellent point: Justin wasn’t a solo artist when he and Britney dated. Even if he did want to be a dad, his money train would have stopped too, not just for him, but for the other four members of *NSYNC. They weren’t making a ton of money back then, but to have it abruptly stop would have been pretty devastating. People say it was selfish of him to take away her autonomy, but it was also selfish of her to try and ruin the careers of four innocent people because she wanted to play house with her teenage boyfriend (who she was never going to be with forever anyway, let’s be real.)
Truthfully, I think (and this was not in the book as far as I know) that Britney saw having a baby as a means to an end. She probably wanted all of the career stuff to end, and knew that a baby would absolutely make that happen. It would have given her a tangible reason to quit. But again, she can’t force her choice on someone who doesn’t want that life for themself. Look, I have friends who had kids at that age, and while they love their kids, if they could do it over, they wouldn’t have. 19 is really fucking young to be a parent; your brain isn’t even fully developed yet!
You can’t talk about the abortion without the whole virginity conversation. Listen, I fucking KNEW that Britney and Justin had sex, and I was only 15 when they broke up. They were both hot and young, there’s no way in hell they weren’t boning as often as they could. Britney also admitted that she lost her virginity at 14, so this conversation is now nullified. But I will say this: the patriarchy affects men too, and let’s not forget that. Justin admitting that he and Britney had sex isn’t some egregious thing. He was admitting his truth, and confirming what we all fucking knew anyway. People say he bragged, but have we ever considered the kind of pressure he could have felt in the moment to make it sound like a brag? He was 21, going out on his own as a solo artist and trying to get the entire industry to take him seriously. He didn’t have the kind of power I think a lot of people assume he had. You still have to play the game, and we have no idea what he was being told.
The fact that Britney’s team tried to maintain her virginity was a disservice and a disgrace. We all knew it was a lie! I think she had the power to say that she wasn’t going to continue to lie, but maybe she really didn’t. All I know is that one person was telling the truth and we all knew it.
The other major issue is cheating. I’ll say this outright: I 100% do not condone cheating. It is abhorrent. But it is still a thing that happens in like, 98% of relationships. Especially heterosexual relationships, and especially with young people. People with that kind of celebrity cheat. Why? Because they can. There is an excess of access and situations that make it easy, and again, when you’re a teenager, your brain is maybe halfway developed. So to me, cheating isn’t fucking news, it’s practically expected. I would have been more surprised if it never happened. Eventually that shit will get old, or someone will go too far, and that will be the end of the relationship, which is what happened.
Britney confirmed that her innocent dalliance with choreographer Wade Robson was the final straw in her and Justin’s relationship, which we’ve all known for literal years now. This is particularly messy because Wade had integrated himself as the behind the scenes third wheel to this relationship. He started dancing with Britney at the beginning of her career — you can see him in her 1999 VMA performance. He continued to dance and choreograph for her before also getting in with the *NSYNC guys. Not only that, but he was one of Justin’s songwriting partners! They wrote a bunch of songs together, including “Pop”, “Celebrity”, and Gone from *NSYNC’s Celebrity album, and “What It’s Like to be Me” on Britney’s Britney album, both of which were released in 2001. That means Wade knew Britney and Justin’s relationship intimately and still sought out a relationship with her. She claims that it was just a kiss or whatever, but the woman who co-wrote “Everytime” claims that Britney wrote Wade a breakup letter that was pages long. Justin allegedly found the letter and ended the relationship.
Breakups have been songwriting fodder since songs were created. They are some of the best songs in an artist’s repertoire, and for good reason. There’s a rawness and relatability to a breakup song. I mean, I have like two different playlists full of them. Musicians process their pain through their music, it’s just a fact. And sometimes that music is about someone equally famous. Fleetwood Mac has a whole fucking album full of breakup songs they wrote about each other and those are some of their best and most popular songs. It’s fucking art! Justin wrote “Cry Me a River” to process his breakup and be able to move on. The video was probably not his idea, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his team and the label were like, “this is what it’s going to be, and you don’t have a say.” If the shoe was on the other foot, we’d be giving Britney snaps and saying “you go girl” til we were blue in the face.
The entertainment industry, more specifically the music industry, is a fucked up place, especially back in the early 00s. Artists didn’t have the levels of autonomy they have now; they were OWNED by their labels. So you had to play certain games if you wanted to continue to have a career, even if you were as popular as Britney or Justin were. Yeah, he was a young white man which means he had inherent power, but he was also in his early 20s and was made to jump through hoops to prove himself. No one took boy bands seriously, even when they were making their teams money hand over fist. They had no autonomy or ability to really assert themselves. *NSYNC had to fight Lou Perlman in court for their NAME. Justin had MANY hoops to jump through, and it took YEARS for him to get the kind of power people think he had at the start of his solo career. Honestly, during their relationship, Britney was probably the more powerful one.
At the end of the day, I fully believe in Britney’s right to tell her story. But I do also think that telling this story has repercussions that she is pretending she didn’t know about. You can’t get on Instagram saying you didn’t have any ill intent when you knew exactly what you wrote in the book. I don’t know if she wanted to knock Justin down a peg from whatever platform she believes he has, but it doesn’t feel like telling a story, it sounds like someone who wants to get revenge 20 years later against someone who has moved on. If that’s what it is, call it that, don’t act like you’re fucking surprised by what’s happening. Because I’m sorry, but I ain’t buying that lie.
Due to Britney’s very real trauma, we have created a space where no one wants to criticize her even when that criticism is necessary and warranted. I don’t think we’re doing her a service by excusing her questionable behavior because of her trauma. We’re only further victimizing her (and infantilizing her) by not forcing her to be held accountable for the harm her actions cause. People are leaving all sorts of truly horrific comments on Justin’s social media, as well as his wife’s. Jessica and Justin didn’t even know each other when he dated Britney, and now she’s being called all sorts of baby killer on Instagram because Britney’s fans have a rabid sort of protection of her.
Britney has also taken away Justin’s autonomy by outing the abortion and alleged cheating. I’m sure Jessica knows about his past, but his sons are 8 and 3. One day, they’re likely going to find these stories, maybe before they’re really ready to engage with them. My parents have pasts, but they’ve been able to tell me about them when they felt it was time for me to know. One day they may see people’s comments on Instagram claiming they didn’t deserve to exist because Justin asked Britney to have an abortion 20 years before they were born. She may be able to tell her story, but what about them? What about her own sons? I couldn’t imagine finding out about my mom’s past this way, and we have a relatively good relationship! Britney and her boys do not for a variety of reasons, and I can’t imagine any of this is going to fix that.
Celebrity memoirs are tricky, and I’m glad Britney’s feeling empowered. But why does she get to decide the cost for others?