Britney Spears has opened up about why she shaved her head in 2007

As excerpts from Britney Spears' memoir, The Woman in Me, begin to hit the press—ahead of its 24 October release—slices of the story she's finally telling on her terms are already making headlines. One incident that will always have peak public interest is when she shaved her head back in 2007—and Spears is now sharing her own narrative around what happened and the aftermath.

Already hounded relentlessly by the press at the time, it was used to cement the 'erratic and unstable' narrative that built up to the star's conservatorship the following year. But in the memoir, Spears has spoken about how to her it was an act of rebellion, against the constant commentary and control of her appearance since childhood. From the school-girl plaits of her teen debut to the girl-next-door highlights of her pop princess era, Britney's iconic aesthetic was the result of tightly adhered to beauty standards.

"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 the memoir, excerpted in People Magazine. "Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back."

She goes on to reveal it wasn't her choice to grow it back, but that after the court-ordered conservatorship in 2008 (that gave her father and a lawyer control over her affairs), she wasn't allowed to keep it short.

"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."

It's one of the (undoubtedly many) emotional insights into her life that will come from the book. The question of whether the tabloid press and public have learnt from its past treatment of Spears and her peers remains. But despite it all, the opportunity to take control of her narrative and exert power over her outward image is powerful.