Britney Spears - Pray for her

Britney Spears‘ hair seems to be the most talked about subject on web these last couple of days. So why not make a website dedicated to it! Esther Tognozzi, the owner of the salon where Spears’ chopped her locks off, has created a site where she is auctioning off Spears’ hair. Oddly enough there appears to be two websites claiming to have the real hair.

First reported was a website claiming to have the hair up for sale earlier this afternoon called buybritneyshair.com, but now the BodogBeat has discovered that it may not be authentic.

The official website for Esther’s Haircutting Studio (www.estherssalon.com) appears to be selling the hair as well, claiming buybritneyshair.com to be a hoax. “There is another site buybritneyshair.com that claim they have the real hair up for sale and say that you can come and pick the hair up at my salon but I assure you that this is false. They wish you to send the money before pick up and what if you wish to buy the hair and live outside of the country,” says the website.

Does any of this matter to you and I?

We should say a prayer for her.

There’s more buzz about pop star Britney Spears, and this time it’s about a buzz of her own making — a buzz cut, that is.
Britney’s gone bald.

At a Los Angeles salon this past weekend, the singer apparently decided to shave off her locks, causing many observers to debate the state of her mental health.

Some have called the spontaneous shearing a cry for help. Others say the move might indicate the onset of a nervous breakdown. Then there are those who say the sudden baldness might be positive for Spears — a step toward redefining herself and taking control of her seemingly unstable life.

She recently split from husband Kevin Federline on the heels of back-to-back births of baby boys. She’s been criticized about her parenting, stalked by a scornful media, and hasn’t recorded a CD in years.

And now this.

Whether self-empowerment or self-mutilation, experts agree: Spears’ haircut says something.

“For women, hair is so significant,” says Nancy O’Reilly, a clinical psychologist and founder of WomenSpeak.com, who says Spears’ lack of hair was a hot topic at a luncheon for therapists yesterday.

“This is something we discussed, and actually the consensus around the table [was] we didn’t see it necessarily as a cry for help at all. It’s really almost a coming out for her. Let’s face it, when you cut the pretty blond hair off, you say, ‘Love me, not my hair. Love me, not my beauty. Love me, not my fame.’”

Maxwell Manning, a clinical instructor at the School of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, agrees, saying Spears appears to be going through a transition period or a growth period, and shaving her hair is just an outward symbol.

“When people go through experiences like this, they are often trying to get a better handle on themselves and who they are and how they want to express themselves,” Manning says. “They try different things to see how that feels.”

Charlon Bobo, 42, knows exactly what Manning is talking about.

The Simi Valley, Calif., self-empowerment facilitator decided more than four years ago to go bald and says she has never felt so good.

“It was an impulse that came to me one day, and it had to do with claiming my personal power,” says Bobo, who now teaches other women how to do just that. “I see this multibillion-dollar beauty industry, and it wants women to feel badly about themselves. It wants to keep us consuming. It wants us to think there’s this magic something, and if we just buy it then we’ll be fulfilled and whole. [My decision] wasn’t militant, but it was like, ‘You know what? I’m good with me. I’m not here to please you visually.’”

Bobo says she gets varied reactions from people about her close cut, many negative, which is why she refuses to judge Spears.

“I know that this was the right thing for her, whatever her foundation was. Maybe she is in a crisis, I don’t know. But I can have compassion for her as a fellow woman,” Bobo says. “At that moment, for her, that was her moment of clarity.”

Other observers say only one thing is clear about Spears’ new look: The one-time golden girl of pop needs help.

“Her statement is glaring: She’s obviously miserable about her entire life,” says Dr. Gilda Carle, a psychotherapist who has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Carle, who goes by Dr. Gilda, takes note of the many issues in Spears’ life that might have contributed to the pop star’s reaching a new low, including her pending divorce, stagnant music career and constant lampooning in the media.

Poor Britney.

It was dubbed “the buzz cut heard ’round the world.”

An allegedly drug-addled Britney Spears’s decision to remove all her hair in full
view of a horde of paparazzi on the weekend is just the latest example of
disturbing behavior from young Hollywood women seemingly bent on destroying
themselves with drugs and alcohol.

According to a recent poll from Newsweek magazine, seventy-seven per cent of respondents said
hard-partying celebrities like Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have too
much influence over young girls.

But in the wake of Spears’s latest escapades, some Canadian teens said yesterday
that the complete reverse is true.

“When they do stuff like that they just look really lame, and like they’re
just doing anything for attention,” Danielle McNally, 17, said as she ate
lunch with her friends near Jarvis Collegiate Institute.

“It doesn’t make you want to go out and party. It makes you realize how drugs
and drinking can make you look really stupid and make you do really crazy and
stupid things.”

Until the one-time pop star shaved her head bald on Friday, Spears was most
notorious for flashing her vagina to the paparazzi while out with Hilton late
last year.

The mother of two boys, one of them just 5 months old, has been in hard-core
party mode in the aftermath of her separation from Kevin Federline.

She reportedly went to a rehab centre in Antigua last week at the urging of
her family, spent one day there before checking out, flew back to Los Angeles,
shaved her head bald at a low-rent salon in the San Fernando Valley while the
paparazzi snapped away – and was out partying the next night wearing a blond
wig.

Kate Bowers, 15, a Grade 10 student in Calgary, says she can’t believe how
young Hollywood celebrities like Spears, Lohan, Hilton and Nicole Richie are
wasting their lives.

“It’s just so stupid that they’re spending all their money on partying all the
time and that they want to get photographed doing it,” Bowers said. “And it
doesn’t seem very fun to be out and falling all over the place really drunk
and out of it. Now it’s just like: `Why would I ever want to do that?”‘

While Spears has certainly outshone her cohorts in the bad behaviour
sweepstakes recently, Lohan is sure to give her a run for her money.

After spending a month at a walk-in rehab centre for her own drug and alcohol
problems and high-profile public meltdowns, Lohan checked herself out of rehab
late last week and has been spotted and photographed at clubs every night
since.

Richie is going to trial for driving under the influence of marijuana and the
powerful painkiller Vicodin, and could face a jail term since it’s her second
offence. Hilton recently pleaded no contest to a reckless driving charge amid
stories of her own hard partying.

“It totally turns me off,” says Lindsay Saye, 18, a Grade 12 student in
east-end Toronto.

“I look at the way they behave and some of the stupid things they do, and then
seeing Britney shave her head – I just find it really ridiculous. For me,
anyway, it doesn’t make partying seem very appealing.”

Saye acknowledges, however, that there may be some misguided girls who idolize
Hollywood celebrities and want to emulate their outrageous behaviour.

“I guess for the girls who want to copy them and be like them and look up to
them, they might be tempted to try some of that stuff. For me, though, it’s
just a big turn-off.”

Less than 24 hours after cutting off ALL her hair, pop star Britney Spears sported a platinum wig at partied by the pool at a chic West Hollywood hotel on Saturday (17Feb07). Spears stunned the world by going into a hair salon in Tarzana, California, on Friday night (16Feb07) and removing her entire head of hair with shaving clippers. The 25-year-old appeared at the Mondrian hotel on the Sunset Strip sporting a green cap over a blond wig. The mother of two spent the afternoon at the star-studded hotel chain-smoking, drinking pricey cocktails and partying with good acquaintances. The Toxic singer wore the same multi-coloured bikini shirt she had been allowed to borrow from a dancer earlier in the week at a New York City nightclub, along with a mismatched pink bikini bottom. According to E! Online columnist Mark Malkin, Spears avoided the paparazzi by driving her car through the hotel’s carefully hidden indoor garage. He explains, “She was definitely having fun with her good acquaintances. The Mondrian is the kind of place you wouldn’t go if you didn’t want to be seen, especially during Oscar week.

“She wasn’t exactly hiding. It was a beautiful day in Los Angeles. Lots of people were around.”

Troubled pop princess Britney Spears’ shocking decision to shave off all her hair might have been an act of rebellion against her mother, according to a US report. As celebrity watchers struggled to make sense of the singer’s dramatic move, it was also revealed that she had been deeply upset by the recent death of a much-loved aunt from cancer. Spears, already distressed by her split from husband Kevin Federline and the custody battle over their two sons, was said to have been very close to Sandra Bridges Covington, who died late last month. Another report suggested the 25-year-old may have opted for the drastic cut after hairdressers discovered her hair was so badly damaged by repeated dye-jobs that bald patches were already appearing. She and her mother had been feuding over Lynne Spears’ demand that her daughter end her wild behaviour, a source from the X17 photo agency told the New York Post. The pair had been arguing since Spears returned from a stay at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Centre rehab in Antigua last week that lasted just 24 hours, the report claimed, and the late-night buzz-cut was a rebellious gesture. But if the starlet had intended to defy her mother, she was apparently hit by an instant wave of remorse. Salon owner Esther Tognozzi told Us Weekly magazine that after Spears had finished with the razor, she gazed into the mirror with tears in her eyes and said: “Oh, my God, I shaved it all off. My mom is going to be so upset with me.” Her cousin, Ernest Spears, told the Post that Lynne had flown to LA last week to be with her daughter and her young children, 18-month-old Sean Preston and five-month-old Jayden James. In her home town of Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears’ aunt Wanda Bridges told the New York Daily News the Baby One More Time singer had been greatly saddened by the death of her mother’s sister.

“Last time I saw her was the funeral,” she said.

“She seemed fine, but we were all very upset.” Meanwhile, Las Vegas gossip website Vegas Popular said the singer had visited celebrity hairdresser Michael Boychuck’s salon at the Palms hotel less than three weeks ago seeking help for her locks.

“Her hair was so badly damaged from repeated bleachings that it had broken off and thinned to the point where bald spots had begun to appear,” the site said. Spears’ surprising new hairdo, which has led to speculation she may be on the edge of some kind of breakdown, did not stop her socialising. On Saturday she was spotted at West Hollywood’s chic Mondrian hotel sporting a short blonde wig and a mismatched bikini and smoking “cigarette after cigarette” as she lounged by the pool. Last night she covered up with the wig again to go to at the Roxy nightclub. When a photographer asked what had happened to her promise to keep her hair brown, Spears replied: “I lied.” When the singer turned up at Esther’s Hair Salon in Tarzana, California, Ms Tognozzi tried to talk her out of getting rid of all her hair. But an insistent Spears grabbed the clippers and did the job herself, as amazed fans watched through a window. She then went on to a tattoo parlour in the city, getting pairs of lips on her neck and wrist. Unconfirmed reports claimed she later turned up at the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre in Beverly Hills wearing a dark wig and spoke to staff privately.

Sunday afternoon, Britney was spotted without her kids at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles. Wearing a bikini and a platinum blonde wig, the pop star was seen partying with her friends, smoking with friends, and making ‘many trips to the bathroom.’

She was also later seen partying at the Roxy on Sunset.

Some psychiatrists have speculated that Britney Spears is suffering from post-partum depression, which can offer in the 6 months after childbirth. However, friends close to Britney feel that she is not over her marriage yet to Kevin Federline.

Although Britney has said things like, ” I am sick of everyone touching me”, or “Why won’t they leave me alone, it’s hard not to focus on the train-wreck that she has become. In what appears to be a mental scream for help, Spears has been seen puking on herself in New York clubs this month, stripping down to her underwear and dancing with strippers, and the most shocking of all - the head buzz.

It is unfortunate.

Britney Spears is “on the verge of a nervous breakdown” a tattooist who witnessed her shocking Friday makeover maintains. The singer and mother of two stunned fans and paparazzi photographers when she walked into a hairdressing salon in Los Angeles and asked a stylist to cut all her hair off. When the hairdresser refused, Spears grabbed some clippers, and can be seen in snaps shearing herself bald.

The 25-year-old was then followed as she drove to a tattoo parlor and had two images etched; a pair of bright red lips on her wrist and a black, white and pink cross on her lower hip. Tattooist Emily Wynne-Hughes, who was in the shop, now fears the drastic new look is a stark warning of Spears’ emotional instability.

She says, “After (Britney) left, we said to each other, ‘We just saw a huge celebrity on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’ She seemed really distraught and disturbed. She was very scatterbrained. It was crazy, very surreal. She’s definitely crying out.”

Unconfirmed press reports claim the singer was later spotted wearing a dark wig at the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, where she briefly spoke to staff in a private room.

From http://www.pr-inside.com/reports-claim-britney-spears-wigged-out-r53889.htm:

The star had a green cap over the wig and was wearing a multicolored bikini top and a mismatched bikini bottom, reports E! gossip columnist Marc Malkin.

Though rumors persisted that Spears had “lost it,” witnesses at the pool said she seemed to be in good spirits, chatting with her friends and chain-smoking. Her kids were not with her.

From http://music3w.com/news_item.asp?id=3566:
The shop, Esther’s Haircutting Studio in Tarzana, Los Angeles, has been besieged by the press ever since the incident. JT Tognozzi, husband of the salon owner said: “We still don’t know why Britney chose our shop. We’ll probably never know.” The Tognozzis claim to have the genuine hair and will be selling it for as much as $1M of which some will go to charity.

Meanwhile the unfortunate Britney has been rumoured to have visited a local hospital since the incident but again left shortly after. The singer is rumoured to be suffering from post-natal depression but maybe the former teen pop princess is now just rebelling having missed her childhood whilst concentrating on a career in music.