The year is 2007. Shrek the Third has just come out, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is published, Prince plays the half-time show at the Super Bowl, and, of course, Britney Spears shaves her head. Britney shaving her head was a pop-culture pinch point in my childhood. I feel like if someone cut my brain open and mushed around inside they’d find a Britney-shaped scar from 2007 where the memory lives. I vividly remember one photo being shown again and again where Britney is smiling into a mirror, leaning in as she takes a razor to her left side. The top of her head is almost completely bald except for a few wisps here and there, the back of her head still covered in long dyed-brown hair. Looking at it now the image feels so intimate. Her eyes are turned inward looking away from the camera as she’s caught mid-process. Her half-shaved head rather than finished, even stubble adds to the narrative around her at the time that she was ‘going insane’. If you go onto Google and type in ‘Britney Spears shaved head’ it will be one of the first images to appear. When I look at it now the magnetism of the image makes me feel uncomfortable, why am I so intrigued by it?

I remember seeing it for the first time as an eight-year-old and feeling hypnotised. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding my feet and watching TV in my childminder’s living room. My childminder was watching on the sofa behind me and I heard her voice wash over saying things like ‘Oh no, she had such pretty hair’, ‘Why’s she gone and done that?’, and ‘She’s really going off the rocks’. I didn’t say anything. I just sat staring up at the TV while paparazzi images flashed of her walking crop-topped and bald-headed from her car as the newsperson droned on unempathetically about Britney’s recent divorce. The next day at school, everyone was talking about it on the playground. Huddles of seven and eight-year-old girls stood together, leopard-printing the gravel talking about how Britney Spears had shaved her head.

‘Did you see the photos?’

‘Yeah, it looks so bad’

‘She had such pretty hair’

‘Why’s she gone and done that?’

‘She’s really going off the rocks’

We were too young to know any better than to parrot the comments of our judgemental parents. But we talked and talked about it for days, the shock horror of it all. Because to us it was horror that Britney Spears, someone who was the image of beauty, would destroy herself like that. That someone who had the long, smooth Barbie doll legs and the swishing blonde hair we all desperately wanted would hack away everything she meant to us. It was as if in one smooth upward gesture of her razor Britney showed us that what she had wasn’t worth reaching for. What do young girls in 2007 have left to reach for then, if not to look sexy like Britney?

No one mentioned any of her records. I don’t think any of us knew many Britney Spears songs beyond Toxic. Her music remained pristine because who she was to us was not her music, it was her face, her body, her beauty; we couldn’t believe she had thrown that away. 

In her recent memoir, The Woman in Me, Britney writes:

“My long hair was a big part of what people liked — I knew that,” she writes. “I knew a lot of guys thought long hair was hot. Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: F— you. You want me to be pretty for you? F— you. You want me to be good for you? F— you. You want me to be your dream girl? F— you.”

Now that I’m older it feels obvious. That when people only value your hotness the most empowering thing you can do is remove that from them. It’s like if someone tells me ‘bread makes you fat’ I’ll sit in front of them and scoff down focaccia, a garlic bread baton, a slice of sourdough, and anything bread I can find. I’ll chew while staring blankly into their face without breaking eye contact, willing them to comment. It doesn’t matter if I feel nauseous, I’ll do it to show that their belief system is not mine and doesn’t apply to me.

I’ve thought about shaving my head a few times but have never had the courage to do it. Mostly because I’m worried I’ll look like a lollipop and that people will say I’m losing my mind. Nobody’s looking at me or cares what I do. Britney was so brave to shave her head; everybody was looking at her. From cynical parents to paparazzi, to young girls all around the world, people cared what she did. In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf writes extensively about how women are valued on how well they physically conform. When Britney shaved her head I imagine it was personally liberating to say ‘fuck you’ on a global scale. The only thing is, after that, you’re left living in a world where you’ve lost your value and people will treat you differently for that. Wolfe writes ‘Beauty’ is a currency system like the gold standard’. And if beauty is a currency system then each strand of long flowing hair is a couple of dollars that with every cut sinks your income down into the negative where you’re now considered ‘ugly’. After that, you’ll find yourself in a kind of beauty debt where the world expects you to somehow do more with other aspects of your personality to make up for being so revolting. Because really you should have to make up for the suffering other people go through to put up with your existence and look at your ugly mug; it’s only polite darling. 

I wish to be as brave as Britney. Not saying that I will shave my head as I’m not sure that’s what I actually want. But I would like to say ‘fuck you’ more often. I just wish saying ‘fuck you’ to beauty standards didn’t result in a change in the way people treat you. I’ve only read snippets of her memoir but I really want to read it. Britney was the pop culture backdrop to my girlhood and I’d love to understand more about her and what she went through; from what I’ve read online it seems her experiences were uniquely difficult. If anyone has read it, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts (and borrow your copy…?)

 

This week I had this delicious pistachio pastry stick from Cafe Columbia when I went to the flower market. Delicious and nutty. I love pistachios but they are so expensive. If anyone has any good pistachio recipes maybe I’ll make for a celebration.

Goodbye for now.