When Britney Spears shaved her head in 2007, she instantly became the butt of jokes and casual cruelty. Late-night talk show hosts excoriated her. People on then-nascent social media platforms laughed at her. Even respected journalists used her as a punchline.
Spears never provided a real explanation for her choice (not that she owed one to anyone). But with her much-anticipated memoir The Woman in Me, which comes out Tuesday, Spears finally seizes back her own narrative—and also takes control of a troubling narrative about mental health that has plagued women like Spears who rose to fame early and were punished by the media when they stepped outside predetermined boundaries.
A Chance To Speak On Her Terms
Woman contains many revelations about Spears’ personal life, including the biggest headline so far, that she got an abortion while she was dating Justin Timberlake, who told her he didn’t want to be a father.
But one of the most interesting passages deals with the shaved head. At the time, Spears was in the middle of a divorce. Paparazzi hounded her constantly, and she was a staple in the weekly celebrity gossip magazines, which reached their circulation zenith on the backs of popular young female performers like Spears and Lindsay Lohan.
These magazines suggested Spears, Lohan and the like should behave and be thankful for their popularity. They didn’t treat them like people but more like playthings for the public.
In her memoir, Spears reveals that shaving her head represented a bid to regain control over her own body, which had been controlled by others (and ogled by many) since she began performing on a national stage as a teenager. Other girls had the chance to try out different looks and personas as they navigated adolescence; Spears, already in the spotlight on The Mickey Mouse Club at the age of 11 and quickly shooting to further fame with the release of … Baby One More Time, did not enjoy such an opportunity.
In fact, just a year after shaving her head, she was forced into a strict conservatorship by her father, Jamie, who used her decision about her hair as one of the reasons to take over everything from her finances to her diet to how often she could see her children.
Yes, Spears made public appearances since the head shaving. But under her father’s thumb, she didn’t have the chance to speak out as she would like. And talk show hosts and journalists never really gave her a fair chance, infantilizing her with their questions or dismissing her answers as if to say, “just stay in the role of pretty little thing, and it’ll be better for everyone.”
No one took Spears seriously in the early to mid 2000s, and the memoir makes it clear that wasn’t her fault. Instead, blame a culture that can’t reckon a child star’s early adorableness with a grown woman capable of making her own decisions.
Taking Back Her Mental Health
Offering women like Spears and Lohan, whom the media unfairly gave just as hard a time during her formative years, a platform to address these media ills is important. Spears’ book is impressive in its messiness—she does not claim to have all the answers or to have solved mental health issues that undoubtedly stem partly from the way she’s been treated.
By confronting those issues on her terms, Spears wins a victory nearly as important as the one she achieved two years ago, when a judge ended her father’s smothering conservatorship following years-long demands from her fans to “Free Britney.”
She gains control of her story, which is necessary to move forward. No one could come away from this memoir thinking Spears has fully healed. She gamely admits she still has work to do, a refreshing change from the celebrity bios that present the protagonist as a fairy princess whose growth is all done, thank you.
With her book, Spears reminds us we have never fully reckoned, as a society, with the damage that can be done through child stardom and how it impacts mental health. The evidence keeps smacking us in the face, but the media continually turns a blind eye. This memoir demands better.
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