Britney Spears Reveals Why She Shaved Off Her Hair in 2007 (Exclusive)

When Britney Spears shaved her head during a difficult period in her life in 2007, the tabloids pounced.

The pop star, who was going through a painful divorce at the time, was already a constant paparazzi target and gossip fixture, and the head-shaving incident seemed to support a narrative that she had become erratic.

But what was Spears herself thinking at the time?

“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 writes in her much-anticipated memoir, The Woman in Me, out Oct. 24 and excerpted exclusively in this week’s PEOPLE cover story. 

“Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back,” Spears adds in the book.

After Spears, 41, was put in a court-ordered conservatorship in 2008, granting her father and a lawyer control over her financial and personal affairs, she says she was forbidden from keeping the new look.

“Under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over,” she writes. “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.”

While Spears recorded and released four successful albums and headlined her Piece of Me Las Vegas residency during what would be a nearly 14-year conservatorship, she was desperately unhappy. 

“I would do little bits of creative stuff here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. As far as my passion for singing and dancing, it was almost a joke at that point,” she writes. “Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself.”

Spears continues, “I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick… Think of how many male artists gambled all their money away; how many had substance abuse or mental health issues. No one tried to take away their control over their bodies and money. I didn’t deserve what my family did to me.”

In September 2021, after Spears pleaded with the judge in open court to end the legal arrangement, her father Jamie was suspended as her conservator. Two months later, the conservatorship was terminated.

It was then Spears set out to share her journey, on her own terms. 

“Over the past 15 years or even at the start of my career, I sat back while people spoke about me and told my story for me,” she tells PEOPLE in a new interview done via email. “After getting out of my conservatorship, I was finally free to tell my story without consequences from the people in charge of my life.”

With her new memoir, The Woman in Me, she shares often-brutal truths, and details her incredible journey from teen superstar to one of the best-selling female artists of all time.

“It is finally time for me to raise my voice and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me,” she says. “No more conspiracy, no more lies—just me owning my past, present and future.”

The Woman in Me is available for pre-order ahead of its release on Oct. 24.

For more of the exclusive excerpt and interview with Britney Spears, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.