Women Like Britney Spears Shouldn’t Have to Apologize

“I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book. If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about, I am deeply sorry.”

This is how Britney Spears kicked off her Monday morning this week, taking to Instagram to issue an apology for the bombshells she dropped in her poignant 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me. In the since-deleted post, the star went on to praise ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake’s new song, “Selfish”—“soo good,” she wrote—which many took as a sign that Spears’s mea culpa was principally addressed to Timberlake. (Her endorsement of his new track, meanwhile, comes after Spears’s fanbase caused her song “Selfish,” from 2011, to rise on the charts this week—beating Timberlake’s in the process.)

But back to Spears’s apology. It’s no secret that the star’s depiction of Timberlake in her memoir was, well, less than flattering. In the book, Spears revealed that after she became pregnant with his baby, Timberlake urged her to get an abortion. “Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” Spears wrote. “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young… I agreed not to have the baby.” Spears also recalled Timberlake often using a “Blaccent” while they dated, in a misguided attempt to “fit in” with the hip-hop scene that he admired.

Her portrayal of Timberlake may have stung—especially as he started promoting his sixth studio album, Everything I Thought It Was—but it was Britney’s story to tell. And isn’t that the point of a memoir? When the pop star took to Instagram to apologize to him this week, many fans felt disappointed that she felt the need to do so, especially when Timberlake has yet to issue any sort of statement on his end. One X user said it best, writing, “Why apologize? People [are going to] be offended, but it’s your truth—just live it.”

Women in the public eye like Britney have often been quick to issue public apologies…about virtually everything. Sometimes they are warranted, like when Drew Barrymore came under fire for crossing the picket line during the writer’s strike. At other points, their alleged misdeeds have been blown wildly out of proportion, like when Ariana Grande was caught licking a doughnut and had to hold a televised press conference about it. As if men haven’t done far worse, and said nothing!