THE BOOZING, FAT-SHAMING FATHER
Jamie was a mean drunk who’d often bully Britney about her weight, according to his eldest daughter.
“Dad drank until he couldn’t think,” Britney says. “He disappeared from home for several days at a time. And when he was drunk, he got really mean.”
He fat-shamed her constantly, she adds. “If I thought getting criticised about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father. He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.”
She never felt good enough for him despite a career that saw her winning countless awards and amassing a $60-million (R1,1 billion) fortune.
“Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child. He’d drummed that message into me as a girl, and even after I’d accomplished so much, he was continuing to do that to me.”
She’d often take comfort by singing to herself.
“The saddest thing was that I had always just wanted a father who loved me just the way I was, someone who said, ‘I love you, period. You can do anything. I would love you forever unconditionally’.”
In July 2021 Britney spoke out against her father during a court hearing to free her from the conservatorship, saying she wanted to press charges against Jamie for “conservatorship abuse”.
“I want an investigation into my dad,” she said. “What he did was f ***** g cruelty.”
He limited her personal choices so severely she wasn’t even allowed to drink coffee. “If this isn’t abuse, I don’t know what is. I was extremely scared of him. This conservatorship allowed my father to ruin my life.”
Jamie maintains everything he did came from a place of love.
“I love my daughter with all my heart,” he said in an interview in December last year. “Where would Britney be right now without that conservatorship? I don’t know if she’d be alive.”
‘I HAD ALWAYS JUST WANTED A FATHER WHO LOVED ME JUST THE WAY I WAS’