Britney Spears Reveals Why She Shaved Her Head in 2007: ‘My Ways of Pushing Back’

Britney Spears opened up about why she infamously shaved her head in 2007 before her conservatorship began.

“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up. I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager,” Britney, 41, wrote in an excerpt of her upcoming novel, The Woman in Me, which was published by People on Tuesday, October 17. “Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back.”

Britney made headlines 16 years ago when she visited Esther’s Haircutting Studio in Tarzana, California, and asked if they could shave her head. After the salon’s owner, Esther Tognozzi, refused, Britney fought back by grabbing a clipper and giving herself a buzzcut. Just days later, she acted out again when she attacked a photographer’s car with an umbrella.

The “Stronger” singer added in the excerpt that she lost control of her personal, medical and financial affairs in 2008 when her father, Jamie Spears, became her conservator. Jamie, 71, went to court and made himself Britney’s legal guardian after she was hospitalized twice on involuntary psychiatric holds.

“I was made to understand that those days were now over,” she wrote. “I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”

Britney went on to state that her “conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood” and “made me into a child.”

“I became more of an entity than a person onstage,” she continued in the book, which will be available for purchase on Tuesday, October 24. “I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”

The “Toxic” singer continued to reflect on the conservatorship by stating she “didn’t deserve” what her family did to her. “The woman in me was pushed down for a long time,” she added. “They wanted me to be wild onstage … and to be a robot the rest of the time.”

In June 2021, Britney took Jamie to court in an attempt to have him removed as her conservator. A Los Angeles judge suspended Jamie from the role in September of that year, while the arrangement was terminated altogether that November.

Britney took to Instagram shortly after her conservatorship ended to celebrate her victory. “Good God I love my fans so much it’s crazy!!! I think I’m gonna cry the rest of the day!!!!,” she wrote in the now-deleted post. “Best day ever … praise the Lord … can I get an Amen????”

Ahead of the memoir’s release, an insider told Life & Style that Britney was forced to remove stories about her exes Colin Farrell and Justin Timberlake from the final version.

“Britney’s furious; she poured her heart out telling everything about how she was treated by her exes. Now she’s being forced to remove certain things,” the source shared in August. “But Colin and Justin are ready to fight back even more, if they have to.”