Spears fears

The bowl of receipts on her desk had a special significance for Britney Spears. In the wild world of pop stardom, where people got in fights and threw TVs out of windows, it was a way of keeping control. "Not only didn't I steal anything or hurt anyone or do hard drugs," she writes in her new book. "I was keeping charge of my tax deductionsBusiness expenses that can lower the amount of tax you need to pay. ."

But one day in 2008 her father Jamie walked into her office and knocked the bowl to the floor. He had just been granted a legal conservatorshipUnder US law, a conservatorship occurs when a judge appoints a guardian to look after someone else's affairs, either due to their age or illness. , meaning that she could do nothing without his agreement. "I'm Britney Spears now," he told her.

This is just one of the book's chilling revelations. Reviewing it in The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick calls it "the most sickening tale in modern pop," relating how Spears was "taken advantage of by narcissisticInterested only in themselves. self-serving boyfriends, hounded by paparazziPhotographers who take photos of celebrities as they go about their normal lives to sell to newspapers and magazines. and (she alleges) ruthlessly exploited by her father."

The Woman in Me describes a terrible childhood in which her parents fought constantly. As her career took off, they came to see her mainly as a source of money.

The book also relates how her break-up with Justin TimberlakeAn American singer and songwriter. left her devastated: "I could barely speak for months. Whenever anyone asked me about him, all I could do was cry."

Later, when she had two children by Kevin Federline, she suffered from postnatal depressionA type of depression that some people experience after having a baby. . It was in this state that she cut off all her hair, leading some people to believe she was mad. 

During the conservatorship she could not even take a bath in private. She was put on a strict diet - "almost nothing but chicken and canned vegetables" for two years - and forced to take medication against her will. She had to ask permission to see her two young sons.

Saddest of all, writes Adam White in The Independent, is how it affected her creativity: "My music was my life," she says, "and the conservatorship was deadly for that; it crushed my soul."

On the positive side, she remembers when a nurse showed her videos of her fans campaigning for her under the #FreeBritney slogan: "That was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen in my life." It gave her the courage to hire a new lawyer and report herself as a victim of conservatorship abuse.

Is celebrity culture toxic?

Yes: It makes it impossible for people like Spears to lead a normal life and leaves them open to exploitation. It feeds into people's worst instincts for gossip and gloating over others' misfortunes.

No: Spears's case is an extreme example of things going wrong. Most stars do very well out of celebrity culture, while it provides harmless entertainment which brightens the lives of fans.   

Or... It is all right as long as those involved are strong enough to stand up for themselves, but devastating for those with more challenges. Britney mentions MadonnaOne of the tiles for Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Christianity. Also the name of an American singer known as the "Queen of Pop".  as an example of a star who refuses to be pushed around.