Troubled pop starlet Britney Spears took reinvention to an extreme this weekend, shaving her head to the scalp days after reportedly checking in and out of rehab, sparking media speculation that she is nearing a breakdown.
Spears took the shears to her own head in full view of the paparazzi Friday after a beautician reportedly refused to do it.
A Los Angeles TV station then showed footage of a newly shorn Spears at a local tattoo parlor getting two new pieces of body art and pictures from both stops were quickly beamed around the Internet.
One of the owners of the salon where Spears lost her locks told E! Online they had been saved and may soon be auctioned for charity.
"She didn't want her hair. We have it here at the salon and we will probably auction it off for charity," said JT Tognozzi, who co-owns the low-price with his wife, Esther.
It was Esther Tognozzi who refused to shear Spears on Friday, although she did clean up the job Spears did herself.
Esther Tognozzi told Us Weekly that after Spears lopped off her brunette hair extensions, she "just looked in the mirror and said with tears in her eyes, 'Oh, my God, I shaved it all off. My mom is going to be so upset with me.'"
Tognozzi told the magazine she waived her normal 20-dollar fee for Spears.
"We have no idea how she found us," another salon worker told the magazine. "She just walked in and said she wanted to shave her head. Esther has been in the business for 30 years and said, 'I'm not doing that.' But Britney was set on having her head shaved so she started doing it herself."
Footage of the incident showed Spears crying in her chauffered car for some 10 minutes before asking to enter the salon after it had closed.
Spears, 25, picked up the shears only days after US media reported, and a spokesman for her label, Jive Records, confirmed to Access Hollywood that she went to a rehab clinic in Antigua and abruptly checked herself out.
After losing her locks Friday, a Los Angeles television station showed Spears getting tattooed.
Derrik Snell, who works at the tattoo parlor, told Access Hollywood that Spears stayed for about 90 minutes as about 60 fans, photographers and gawkers gathered outside. "She seemed fine," Snell said.
But another shop employee Emily Wynne-Hughes told Us Magazine that Spears "wasn't making sense at all and you could tell she's not in a good place at all, and that she is totally freaking out."
"After she left the shop we all just looked around and said to each other, 'We just saw a huge celebrity on the verge of a nervous breakdown,'" Wynne-Hughes said.
Spears skyrocketed to fame as a teen in 1999 with her hit "Baby One More Time," merging an overtly sexy image with vows to remain a virgin until marriage. She has since sold more than 70 million albums, put her music career on hold for two years after getting married, twice, and having two children in less than a year.
Only recently did she return to the recording studio.
She has appeared regularly in the tabloid press over the past few months since filing for divorce in November from her husband, dancer Kevin Federline, who is the father of her two young sons. She married a childhood friend in early 2005 but ended that union after two days.
