Britney Spears defied all expectations on February 16, 2007. At the climax of a public breakdown Spears shaved off her coveted mane in a hair salon in California.
The 25-year-old pop singer/ dancer/entertainer had been stringing together a chain of meltdowns and tabloid stealing events for months, but none had stolen the media’s attention quite like this. After leaving a drug rehab center after one day of treatment, Spears headed into Esther’s Hair Salon. Spears asked the stylist to shave her brunette locks, and upon the stylists refusal took the clippers into her own hands.
The troop of paparazzi following Spears eagerly documented the event. When asked by a photographer why she had shaved her hair she answered “because of you.” Fleeing the hair salon, Britney Spears ran to a nearby tattoo parlor. The next day she was seen wearing a blonde Marilyn Monroe wig.
The hair salon housed an online auction of her discarded locks, the clippers and a few items she left behind. The bidding price reached over a million before it was shut down. The best selling female artist of the first decade of the twenty first century, known more for her image than musical creations shearing her hair went viral within hours.
Rolling Stone ranks Britney’s self-balding at #10 in the boldest career moves in rock history. Even now it is hard to think of Britney Spears without picturing her sporting that buzz.
photo by x17online
