Britney Spears describes ‘flailing’ with ‘grief’ during umbrella attack, head shave
Britney Spears was “flailing” with “grief” when she decided to infamously shave her head in 2007 and attack a paparazzo with an umbrella just days later.
The Princess of Pop explains in her new memoir, “The Woman in Me,” that the death of her beloved aunt, Sandra Bridges Covington, from ovarian cancer and the custody battle over her kids with ex-husband Kevin Federline became overwhelming.
“With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom,” Spears writes in her tome (via People).
“Flailing those weeks without my children, I lost it, over and over again. I didn’t even really know how to take care of myself.”
The accumulation of traumatic experiences in a short period of time caused her to behave like a “child.”
“I am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I’d begin to think in some ways like a child,” she explains.
The “Overprotected” singer, 41, entered a court-ordered conservatorship in 2008 that took away all of her agency. She writes in her memoir that she was forced to focus on her fitness, grow out her hair and take medication.
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“The conservatorship stripped me of my womanhood, made me into a child,” she writes.
“I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me.”
In June 2021, the Grammy winner pleaded with a judge to have the “abusive” conservatorship terminated, claiming her father, Jamie, was abusing the legal situation financially as well as mentally.
“I’ve lied and told the whole world I’m OK and I’m happy,” she told the judge via phone. “I’ve been in denial. I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized…
“I’m not happy. I can’t sleep. I’m so angry. It’s insane. And I’m depressed. I cry every day.”
Speaking passionately as she read from a prepared statement, the “Crossroads” star said she wanted the conservatorship to end “without having to be evaluated.”
“I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive,” she said. “It’s my wish and my dream for all of this to end.”
She was freed from her conservatorship in November 2021.