Britney Spears Says She Was 'Acting Up' When She Shaved Her Hair In 2007

Britney Spears reflects on the highs and lows in her life in her memoir "The Woman In Me" which hits shelves on October 24. This includes a difficult period in her life in 2007, when amid her divorce from Kevin Federline, she shaved off her hair and the tabloids pounced.

During this time, the singer was already a paparazzi magnet. She was constantly being followed around so it was no surprise that the entire episode was captured on video. The incident seemed to support the narrative that she had become erratic.

That moment, along with other reported bizarre behaviour: attacking paparazzi with an umbrella and locking herself with her child in a room, was a turning point in her life. It led to the start of her 13-year conservatorship.

But what was she herself thinking at that moment? Spears shed light into the shaving incident in her memoir. She wrote in an excerpt obtained by People that she "had been eyeballed so much growing up" and "had been looked up and down" with people telling her what they thought of her body since she was a teenager.

"Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back," she shared.

Then came the court-ordered conservatorship in February 2008 which granted her father Jamie Spears and a lawyer control over her financial and personal affairs. Under the conservatorship, she "was made to understand that those days were now over" so she had to grow her hair back.

She also had to go to bed early and drink whatever medication they told her to take. The mum-of-two shared that she also had to "get back into shape" as her own father kept criticising her about her weight.

Spears continued: "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."

"I would do little bits of creative stuff here and there, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. As far as my passion for singing and dancing, it was almost a joke at that point. 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 added.

Spears' conservatorship ended on November 2021. She told the magazine that after 15 years of having people talk about her she is "finally free" to tell her story "without consequences from the people in charge" of her life.