Britney Spears opens up about head-shaving episode

Britney Spears is opening up about the public meltdown she had in 2007.

In her upcoming memoir The Woman in Me, the pop icon reflects on the infamous incident when she shaved her head and smashed a photographer’s car with an umbrella. She reveals that she was dealing with grief and a custody battle at the time.

The ‘Oops!..I Did It Again’ singer writes in the book that she was “out of my mind with grief” after losing her aunt, Sandra Bridges Covington, to ovarian cancer in January 2007. That same year, she also faced a legal dispute with her ex-husband Kevin Federline over the custody of their two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James, who are now 18 and 17 years old.

“With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom,” writes Spears in The Woman in Me.

“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.” These painful experiences led to her erratic behavior, such as shaving her head and attacking a paparazzo’s car.

“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,” adds Spears in the memoir.

The Grammy winner was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship in 2008, which gave her father Jamie Spears and a lawyer control over her finances and personal life. She writes in the book that those who controlled her life forced her to grow her hair back and told her to focus on fitness, “go to bed early” and take various medications.

The Music icon asked a judge to end the legal arrangement in September 2021, and Jamie was removed as her conservator. Two months later, the conservatorship was dissolved.

Since then, she has been trying to take charge of her own destiny.

“Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,” Spears quoted to PEOPLE.

“After getting out of my conservatorship, I was finally free to tell my story without consequences from the people in charge of my life.”

‘The Woman in Me’ is available for pre-order before its release on Oct. 24.