Britney Spears said she was used. Kevin Federline says she needs help

Britney Spears stared at herself in the mirror and smiled as she held up an electric clipper.

Pieces of her signature long locks fell onto the floor of the Southern California salon. Paparazzi cameras outside documented every second of that now-famous night in 2007, and later followed up with her new story of getting a tattoo.

The star said she did so because she felt trapped and humiliated by the paparazzi, who chased her from the home of her estranged husband, Kevin Federline.

In the midst of a highly publicized and acrimonious custody battle over custody of their two children, the pop princess said she acted defiant and wanted to give the press “some material.” She called it a reckless decision — one that, for her, was a public rebuke of a world she felt held untenable standards on her.

For her, this was “a desperate move by a desperate person.”

But for her estranged husband, it was a wake-up call to “how out of control things have gotten.”

Decades later, those and other moments that defined the pop star’s identity and public exposure are back in the spotlight — but exactly what happened and why depends on who’s doing the retelling.

After Spears shared her outlook in her 2023 memoir, The Woman In Me, Federline is now speaking out and sharing his take on their years together in a book released this week called You Thought You Knew.

Like Spears, Federline’s book details their intimate and messy relationship, the mental anguish they both endured, and offers an inside glimpse into the conservatorship battle that dictated much of Spears’ life and career. He offers a side-by-side look, a dissection of their lives as he told them.

The Grammy winner, 43, has already denounced her ex-husband’s memoir, writing on social media that Federline’s revelations were “extremely painful and stressful.”

But the dancer-turned-reality TV star says he’s releasing “You Thought You Knew” after years of hesitation because he doesn’t want his children to grow up “feeling like they have to explain who their father is.”

Federline responds to the stories and accusations Spears recounts in her 2023 volume, in which she describes being financially and emotionally controlled by those close to her. He sometimes contradicts her story and makes new accusations.

Although both memoirs offer vastly different narratives at times, they both have a similar goal of reframing the public narrative that has been imposed on them by illuminating the episodes that led up to Spears’s battle to keep the conservatorship, as well as the national movement that freed the pop star in 2021.

In her book, Spears condemned the court-ordered conservatorship, also known as a conservatorship, that she was under from 2008 to 2021. During that period, her father, Jamie Spears, controlled her finances, career and many aspects of her personal life.

She says that if she had been left to live her own life, she would have succeeded.

“Thirteen years have passed and I feel like a shadow of myself. Now I think about my father and his cronies who controlled my body and money for so long and it makes me feel sick,” she wrote.

But she added that she was determined to go through with the lengthy arrangement “for the sake of my children,” even though “staying in it was very difficult.”

After the conservatorship ended, her father, Jamie Spears, said it was “essential” to protect her, but it was time to take back control.

In his novel, Federline has a different point of view. Even when the marriage failed, he wrote, it was not easy for him to “watch its spiral.”

Federline supported the arrangement, arguing that it provided “some semblance of a normal life” for their two sons together. After she was placed in psychiatric detention, Federline says he immediately filed for sole custody, but it created a slew of issues that worsened Spears’ relationship with their children.

He writes that his ex-wife “saw the events of her life through a prism that portrayed her as the victim, the misunderstood one, the person wronged by everyone around her.

“But from where I stand, she needed help. Whether it was rehabilitation or therapy, I can’t say for sure,” he writes, noting that she was in no condition to manage her own affairs and needed some form of oversight or “layer of protection.”

He adds that he discovered there was a lot he didn’t know about custody, and he didn’t ask for answers because part of him “didn’t want to know.”

Spears credited Britney’s widespread free movement with helping her find the courage to challenge and eventually escape her conservatorship.

“The fact that my friends and fans felt what was happening and did it all for me is a debt I can never repay,” she wrote, thanking them for standing up for her when she wasn’t able to stand up for herself.

But Federline says the movement “got it wrong” and that those who are part of it now need to put the same effort into the Save Britney movement. He shares ominous concerns about how the pop star is currently “racing toward something irreversible” and “approaching the eleventh hour.”

He claims pressure from Britney’s Free Movement prompted the judge in the conservatorship case to “ignore professional reports and defer to public opinion.”

“But none of that really mattered in the end,” he adds. “If Britney believed she was being held against her will, and everything else she’s shared since, then that trauma is real to her. And you can’t ignore that.”

Spears has continued to make headlines with bizarre and sometimes disturbing posts on Instagram. Their children are grown, but, according to Federline, they don’t see their mother much, and don’t really want to. Federline has four additional children, besides the two with Spears.

Federline says he’s lost faith that things will ever change for his ex-wife.

“I’m still hopeful that Britney can find peace. Whatever her future holds, I hope this is a future where she can finally take control of her own life, on her own terms. This entire saga, twenty years in the making, is built on denial. Britney has never gotten to the first step to recovery: admitting there’s a problem.”

Spears blamed several people who were once close to her, including two of her exes, Federline and former NSYNC singer Justin Timberlake.

She accuses both of ruining her ability to “trust people again.”

Federline says in his memoir that he was making a career for himself as a professional dancer who had worked with Michael Jackson and NSYNC when he met Spears.

The couple had met before, when Federline was dancing on tour for Spears’ opening act.

Federline, for his part, is self-aware, writing that he knows people view the Fresno, Calif., native as “this guy jumped out of his trailer into Britney’s mansion.”

But even the day before their wedding, there was a shadow hanging over the relationship, he says.

Federline asserts in his book that when he and Spears met in their early 20s, she had never moved on from her ex-boyfriend Timberlake, explaining that they had a lot of “unfinished business” and that she “remained like a ghost in the background of our relationship.”

In her memoir, Spears recounted the risks of her relationship with Timberlake, including him asking her to get an abortion and the public embarrassment after he accused her of cheating — which heightened when he made a Spears-like look in his music video for “Cry Me a River.”

Their relationship, which lasted from 1999 to 2002, has also been dissected over the years and came with a public apology from Timberlake, after several documentaries about Spears recast her as a victim in her conservatorship.

“There was always something with Justin that she couldn’t let go of,” Federline says. He says Spears called Timberlake the night before their wedding to get closure.

“Now, looking back…I realize it was deeper than that. She never got over it,” he writes.

Federline’s memoir has drawn the ire of Spears and her vocal army of online supporters.

James Miller, activist and supporter of Free Britney, says the book will not help the singer.

He told the BBC: “Britney has mental health issues, that’s quite clear.” “Taking advantage of her now is really not the best time. I don’t think there’s any alarm to sound.”

From breaking out in The Mickey Mouse Club as a child star to dancing with a snake around her shoulders at the MTV Music Video Awards, Spears has lived her entire adult life in the spotlight.

Federline’s book is unlikely to change people’s opinions of her, says S. Mark Young, a professor at the University of Southern California and author of “The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Seduces America.”

“I think after next week, the book will die,” he says. “And most people who follow Britney won’t be affected.”

Some have questioned why Federline, 47, chose to speak publicly now.

“No one is healed when a book like this is written,” Mr. Young says.

Miller, and several people online, noted that now that their two sons have turned 18, Federline will no longer receive the $40,000 a month from the singer to support them.

Federline denies that he has an ulterior motive beyond his desire to finally share his side of the infamous saga.

Federline says in his memoir that the book was his best opportunity to share his side of the story.

For decades, the media, Spears, and her family have mostly told Federline’s story, leaning largely on his “bad boy” persona and making him the butt of many late-night jokes.

“This is about finally telling my story,” he wrote in his book. “My narrative. In my words. Because everyone did it for me. The media, the blogs, the ex-husbands, the strangers, the jokes, the headlines. They all had something to say about me. And I stayed quiet.”

He denies that he was “wasting her money” and insists that he was always “working to build a solid foundation for myself and my children.”

This opportunity was a way for him to finally share his side after decades of stories, gossip, rumors and accusations — which he says he avoided responding to in hopes of giving his family and children “some kind of normalcy.”

“But silence did not bring peace,” he writes. “You left me choking on words I never said.”