Published
Britney Spears on her shaved head
Witnesses say they asked Britney why she shaved her head and her response was, “I’m tired of plugging things into it. I’m tired of people touching me.”
T-Pain: “That was the most beautiful thing in the world. Do you know why she was shaving her head? Because it was so important to other people. She is like, “Listen. Don’t touch my hair anymore. Stop touching my hair.” People were like, “We’ve got to make your hair before you go outside. You can’t leave.” She went … “Now I don’t have hair. What you going to do?”
Our Diva Britney Jean Spears
BODILY AUTONOMY
Edit 2 July 2021:
I was revisiting this recently in light of Britney Spears’ infuriating and terrifically sad conservatorship hearing.
The post above was originally a Tumblr reblog, from back when this site was on Tumblr. I was curious about the origins of these quotes so did a little digging.
The witness response quote source is unclear. According to some sources, something along these lines was said by Emily Wynne-Hughes who was present (As a tattoo artist? As a customer? Uncertain) when Britney got tattooed after shaving her head. All of these sources point to one another though and some are… questionable. Hence why I’m not linking to them. Go ahead and search “Emily Wynne-Hughes Britney Spears” if you’re curious.
The origins of the T-Pain quote are clearer, it’s from a 2007 Associated Press interview. He supposedly recorded three songs with her right after she shaved her head (source).
When I was looking for the quote sources, I came across the 2008 TV documentary “Britney Spears: For The Record”. This is the exchange around 16min 25sec in during an interview at The Mondrian Hotel in LA:
Interviewer When you look back at the whole shaving of the head thing, and all the rest of it. What provoked you to do that?
Britney Spears I was going through so much artificial stuff with my kids and with Kevin and all that stuff at the time, and he’d just left me. And I was devastated, you know? People thought it was me going crazy and stuff like that, but people shave their heads all the time. I was going through a lot, but it was just kind of me just feeling a form of a little bit of rebellion or feeling free, or shedding stuff that had happened.
Interviewer Why did you not tell anyone that’s what you were doing?
Britney Spears I didn’t think it was anyone’s business, really.
She’s right.