Britney Spears reveals the real reason she shaved her head in her new memoir

In her much-anticipated new memoir, “The Woman In Me,” Britney Spears is opening up about everything in her life—the highs, the lows, her personal life, and her infamous conservatorship. For the first time, we’re hearing all about her life directly from her, including what prompted her to shave her head back in 2007. That defining moment, captured by invasive paparazzi cameras and published for the world to see, seemed to be a catalyst for many troubling years for Spears.

In 2007, she was going through a painful divorce with the father of her two sons, Kevin Federline. She was already being constantly followed by paparazzi and splashed across tabloids daily. After she was shown shaving her hair off, the narrative surrounding Britney Spears centered on her being “erratic” and “mentally ill.”

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“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up,” she writes in her book, excerpted exclusively by PEOPLE. “I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back.”

Not long after, she was placed in a court-ordered conservatorship which granted her father and his lawyers legal control over her finances and personal life.

“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.”

Despite the fact that she recorded and released several successful albums during this time and even completed a Las Vegas residency, Spears says the conservatorship prevented her from being fully present in her career or enjoying it.

“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.”

She also opens up about her father and his legal team having control over every aspect of her life—even her reproductive choices—and is still grappling with the abuse she says she suffered because of it.

“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.”

“The Woman In Me” will be available everywhere books are sold on Oct. 24.