Britney Spears Reflects On ‘Grief’ During 2007 Hair Shaving Incident

Pop star Britney Spears is reflecting on the grief that she felt when she shaved her head in 2007.

The event, which was followed up by her attacking a photographer's car with an umbrella later that week, preceded her controversial 13-year conservatorship, which started in February 2008 and was not struck down by a judge until November 2021.

In her new memoir, “The Woman In Me” Britney reveals that she felt “out of my mind with grief” after her aunt, Sandra Bridges Covington, died of ovarian cancer in January 2007. The same year, she was also involved in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline. The two share two sons: Sean Preston, 18, and Jayden James, 17.

“With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom,” Britney wrote in an excerpt published by People magazine ahead of the book’s release. “Flailing those weeks without my children, I lost it, over and over again. I didn’t even really know how to take care of myself.”

“I am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I’d begin to think in some ways like a child,” she added.

In her memoir, Britney recalls how she shaved her head as a way of “pushing back” against the constant criticism over her appearance.  “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,” she wrote in another People magazine excerpt from her tell-all book.

Unfortunately, once her father Jamie Spears, 71, was named her conservator, she was no longer in control of what she wanted to look like. “Under the conservatorship, 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.”

In 2007, Britney entered Esther’s Haircutting Studio in Tarzana, California, and asked owner Esther Tognozzi to cut off her hair. When the salon owner refused, Britney grabbed a razor and started shaving over her own hair while paparazzi snapped photos through the windows of the salon. Tognozzi later reflected on the incident in the 2019 documentary “Britney Spears: Breaking Point,” which aired on U.K.’s Channel 5.

“She had two bodyguards, supposedly keeping an eye out to make sure the paparazzi were not getting any pictures and one of them kept opening the blinds,” he claimed in the film, as per Us Weekly.

Tattoo artist Emily Wynne-Hughes also ran into the “Toxic” singer later that night after she had already left the hair salon. “[There was] an insane roaring sound outside,” Wynne-Hughes said at the time. “I wasn’t sure what was happening, if there was a riot outside, and then the flashes came. The door opened slowly and a hooded figure walked in the door.”

“I noticed [Britney’s] hair was gone. I remember asking her, ‘Why did you shave your head?’ And her answer was a bit weird. It was, you know, ‘I just don’t want anybody touching my head,” she recalled. “I don’t want anyone touching my hair. I’m sick of people touching my hair.’”

Britney Spears' memoir "The Woman In Me" is scheduled for release on Tuesday, October 24, 2023.