A while back, The Mary Sue ran an article titled “Britney Spears’s Depiction of Justin Timberlake Gives Off Massive Ken Vibes in All the Worst Ways,” and I just can’t stop thinking about it.
In that piece, writer Kate Hudson extensively detailed the off-the-charts levels of Kenergy (not the in-touch with your feminine side type either, but the Mojo Dojo Casa House type) of Spears’s ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake when the singer became pregnant with their baby during their relationship.
In her autobiography The Woman in Me, Spears expressed her distress over her “excruciating” at-home abortion when she was 19. “We also decided on something that, in retrospect, wound up being, in my view, wrong, and that was that I should not go to a doctor or to a hospital to have the abortion,” she writes. “It was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion, which meant doing everything at home.”
So, the pair decided—or at least that’s how Timberlake will likely describe it if he gets the sit-down with Oprah Winfrey he’s reportedly angling for—that Spears would take an unspecified abortion pill. However, things didn’t go smoothly. In her autobiography, Spears wrote that after taking the pill, she was in so much pain that she “went into the bathroom and stayed there for hours, lying on the floor, sobbing and screaming.”
Instead of taking Spears to the ER like a concerned partner would do if he saw his girlfriend in that much pain, Spears says Timberlake comforted her by joining her in the bathroom, lying down next to her, and singing. Spears said, “He thought maybe music would help, so he got his guitar, and he lay there with me, strumming it.”
In her memoir, Spears also wrote extensively about the media’s response to the release of Timberlake’s single “Cry Me A River” on his 2002 debut solo album Justified. As Spears recalled it, the point of the song was to publicly blame her for their breakup, alleging infidelity. (Spears did admit in her memoir that she cheated on Timberlake, once, after many alleged infidelities on his part. But guess who the media chose to vilify.)
Recently, Spears issued (and later deleted) a broad, vague apology for “some of the things I wrote about in my book,” which most took to be directed at Timberlake, since she went on to praise Timberlake’s new song, “Selfish.”
Justin Timberlake wants an Oprah tell-all
According to a source who spoke to The Sun (via The Daily Mail), Timberlake was upset with how fans have reacted to Spears’s tell-all about their relationship. “Justin is really not happy how things have gone down,” the source said. “He wanted the music to speak for itself, but that’s clearly not happening.”
This person continued, “His comments on stage have only added fuel to the fire. The idea of a sit-down chat with someone like Oprah Winfrey was floated months ago and is now back on the cards. He really doesn’t want to do it, but the louder the backlash gets, the more he feels he may have to.”
Those “comments on stage,” by the way, refer to Justin Timberlake recently telling an audience, “I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to absolutely f***ing nobody,” before immediately performing “Cry Me a River.” So yeah, some backlash seems warranted.
Still, maybe Timberlake is making a mountain of a molehill. His single “Selfish” debuted at No. 19 on the February 10-dated Billboard Hot 100 chart, his highest Hot 100 debut in six years. Then again, maybe he’s not, as the Britney Army has come out in full force to support their idol. When Timberlake’s single was announced, Spears fans revived a 13-year-old bonus track with the same name off her 2011 album, Femme Fatale.
Spears’ “Selfish” had almost no commercial success at its release. Over the weekend, though, the bonus track reached the top of the U.S. iTunes Chart, beating out the ridiculous Tom McDonald-Ben Shapiro collab and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss,” as well as Timberlake’s “Selfish.”
According to Luminate (via Billboard), from January 29-31, “Spears’ ‘Selfish’ garnered over 397,000 official on-demand streams, marking an unbelievable 14,978% increase from just over 2,600 streams during the period of January 22-24,” and sold “just under 10,000 digital copies during January 29-31, a vast improvement from the negligible number of copies the song sold during January 22-24.”
Regarding the Oprah interview, NO ONE NEEDS IT. Well, except for maybe the emotional vampire himself, who has a vested interest in boosting his image. He has a right to tell his side of a story but he’s not inherently entitled to do so via Oprah. And none of us need to listen to him or care. I’ve heard enough cis men give their opinions on uteruses.
Spears shouldn’t have felt pressured to have an unsupervised abortion, and whether Timberlake thinks it or not, the memoir paints a picture of a man who had far more power in the relationship. That power came, in large part, from the media’s role in their lives—the same media Timberlake is now trying to weaponize once again.
(featured image: Denise Truscello/WireImage)
