KEY POINTS:
LOS ANGELES - A tearful Britney Spears defiantly shaved her head at a Los Angeles hair salon after the owner refused to take part in the embattled pop star's latest extreme makeover, news reports said yesterday.
Los Angeles television station KABC showed video of Spears entering the parlor
with a small tattoo visible on the back of her neck and her head completely bare. People magazine carried a picture of her shearing her locks herself, with an electric clipper at a hair salon.
Photo blog X17 carried video of Britney shaving her head and then covering it with a hood when leaving the salon.
The weekend visit to Esther's Haircutting Studio in the Tarzana district of Los Angeles was followed by a trip to a tattoo parlor where the 25-year-old mother of two young sons added two designs to her body.
The transformation came on the same day People magazine and other entertainment media reported that Spears recently entered a rehabilitation center in the Caribbean island of Antigua and checked out a day later. The reports were denied by Spears' representatives.
Spears' busy night began in the salon of Esther Tognozzi, who told the syndicated television gossip show Extra that she was afraid to shave Spears' head in case she was sued for ruining the singer's image.
After Tognozzi protested that Spears was maybe being "hormonal" and would feel differently the next day, Spears coolly "grabbed the buzzer and started buzzing her own hair off. ... I just cleaned it up when she was done with it," she said.
Tognozzi said Spears seemed to be "just there in body and not really emotionally there," but did get "a little bit teary- eyed" when she realized her mother might get upset.
The whereabouts of the hair was a mystery, although an enterprising person in Pennsylvania was selling 10 lots of the purported locks on eBay at $50 per lot.
After Spears' bodyguard paid Tognozzi a tip, the party headed to the Body and Soul parlor in the suburb of Sherman Oaks, where she spent $80 for a black-white-and-pink cross on her lower hip and red-and-pink lips on her wrist.
Tattoo artist Max Gott told the station Spears got a "dainty" new tattoo. "She got some cute little lips on her wrist - red lips, a little pink," he said.
An artist at the parlor, Emily Wynne Hughes, said Spears appeared "distraught and disturbed," and was difficult to work with.
"She was screaming and flipping out from the pain and wiggling her body all around," Hughes told reporters.
Outside, police controlled a large crowd of onlookers and cleared the way for her to leave.
Spears reached pop stardom with hits such as Oops!... I Did it Again, and developed a reputation for a reckless spontaneity, including her two-day marriage to a childhood friend.
A mother of two young sons, Spears has acknowledged her image had taken a beating in recent months. She has become a regular fixture on the circuit of big-city US nightclubs since her split in November from husband and former backup dancer Kevin Federline.
Spears was repeatedly photographed in December climbing out of automobiles without wearing underpants while in the company of celebrity Paris Hilton.
Spears and Hilton recently made the cover of Newsweek magazine with a story headlined "The Girls Gone Wild Effect" and a poll of readers who said celebrities like them were having too much influence on young girls.
In January, Spears posted a message on her website acknowledging the negative publicity while writing, "I look forward to coming back this year bigger and better than ever and to reaching out to my fans on a more personal level."
Her website, www.britneyspears.com, was down on Friday, apparently being revamped.
- REUTERS