Britney's Twisted Childhood
Britney Spears made a name for herself as a happy, wholesome all-American girl who was saving herself for marriage.But sources tell Us Weekly in its new cover story that the innocent image Spears portrayed was nothing more than a "PR blitz" and that she had even lied about losing her virginity to Justin Timberlake.
Something Spears also kept secret: Her family's tragic history.
Us has learned that Spears' paternal grandmother, Emma Jean Spears, in June 1966 committed suicide at age 31. Britney's grandmother, who suffered from depression, shot herself in the chest with a shotgun at the grave of her infant son who had died eight years earlier, just three days after being born.
A local newspaper reported at the time: "The shotgun had been pressed against the woman’s chest and she apparently pulled the trigger with a toe of the right foot from which a shoe had been removed."
Us has also uncovered the real story about Spears' early romantic life. While a 21-year-old Spears told W magazine in 2003 that she had only had sex with one person - longtime boyfriend Timberlake - and that it was two years into their relationship, her friends and acquaintances know better. Not only was Spears "having sex with Justin from the moment they got together," an associate tells Us, but she had lost her virginity at age 14!
A mutual friend of her high school sweetheart, Reg Jones, explains, "She had to live a lie so long, and so did Reg. He was 17 when [they had sex]. She was like, 14."
Jones was forced to watch from the sidelines as Spears was cultivating her good-girl image. "People around us pushed us apart," Jones tells Us. "The agents and everyone would say I was just a friend of Britney's. And that's when I had been dating her for three and a half years and they'd only known her six months."
It wasn't just Spears' handlers who were crafting her naughty-but-nice image. David LaChapelle, the photographer who shot Spears' racy Rolling Stone cover when she was just 17, says, "She had everything to do with [the shoot] and knew what she was doing. It was her idea."
US