Watch out! This post contains spoilers.
It seems everyone remembers where they were when Britney Spears shaved her head in 2007. It was a cultural turning point for the star, one that spurred countless headlines in Hollywood. Some people called it a cry for help. In many ways, it was. But as Spears notes in her new memoir, “The Woman in Me,” it was also an act of defiance: to reclaim her autonomy in a time when it was taken away.
Struck with grief from not having seen her children and being continually swarmed by paparazzi, it was her way of reclaiming control over her body. “My long hair was a big part of what people liked – I knew that,” she writes, adding that men in particular thought it was “hot.” And so: “Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: f*ck you. You want me to be pretty for you? F*ck you. You want me to be your dream girl? F*ck you.”
At the time, there were no conversations around mental health like there are today. Spears was described as “crazy,” point blank, no follow-up questions asked.
Yet getting a buzz cut in the name of liberation is not an isolated incident. It has been reported that Joan of Arc lobbed her hair to free herself from sexual advances of men while serving in the military. Sinéad O’Connor maintained a shaved head throughout her career as a statement against conformity up until her death in July 2023. Countless women and nonbinary folks in the LGBTQ+ community keep a short cut to defy gender stereotypes. Demi Moore, Amber Rose, Lupita Nyong’o – all have buzzed it off at one point in time, for one reason or another, and all have been embraced as bold and defiant.
For Spears, there was a freedom in life without hair: “When I first shaved my head, it felt almost religious. I was living on a level of pure being.” This thought process is deeply rooted: ancient Hindu funeral traditions consider head shaving a symbol of shedding of the past, and it is a sign of religious devotion in Buddhist monasticism.
Instead of exploring that feeling, she was shamed for the way she looked, for no longer living up to expectations of how she should appear to the world – not only by the media (although it was, in fact, splashed across tabloids everywhere) but also by her family. “With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom. No one would talk to me anymore because I was too ugly.”
The reality is, hair is often tied to a woman’s femininity and sexuality. This is how, historically speaking, society measures value and worth. Spears couldn’t control the conversations around her body, despite it being the subject of constant chatter for two decades. She could control this, though.
Spears realized that her hair held power, and shedding it made a statement. It was a way to rebel against society’s expectations placed on her from the moment she entered the music scene – to look sexy for men, approachable for women, and everything (or nothing) in between. It doesn’t get more symbolic than that.
Related: Britney Spears’s Natural Hair Color May Surprise You
