Britney Spears broke her silence on her infamous head-shaving moment in 2007, telling fans it wasn’t the erratic episode the press made it out to be.
Spears addressed the incident head-on in her upcoming memoir “The Woman in Me,” and clarified the misconceptions surrounding the highly publicized incident. “Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back,” she wrote in the pages of her book, according to People.
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The pop star made pop culture history when she left a rehabilitation clinic in 2007 and drove to her ex-husband’s home, demanding to see her two sons. When he refused to allow her access to her children, Spears stopped off at a nearby salon and asked a hairdresser to have her head completely bald.
The headlines popped when she debuted her new look, with many critics and members of the press describing the incident as the moment she began to exhibit psychological issues.
Now, a full 16 years later, Spears is speaking out about the decision to shave her head, on her own terms.
“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 said, according to People.
Spears described that the decision to shave her head was to regain her own sense of control in whatever way she could.
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“But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. 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,” she revealed in her book.
Shaving her head didn’t prove to be the answer for Spears, who went on to state that her father had ultimate control over her body during the 13 years of her conservatorship.(RELATED: REPORT: Britney Spears’ Father Hospitalized With ‘Bad Infection’)
“If I thought getting criticized about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father,” she said in her book, according to People.
“He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.”
Spears’ memoir is slated for release Oct. 24.