So I’m sitting in my hair salon, getting my grays covered, and I asked my flamboyant colorist Gilberto, “Did you see the Oscars?”
“What do you want to know?” he asks, cutting to the chase. “Gwyneth,” I said sheepishly. (I wanted Gilberto’s professional opinion.) “Was she…you know, wearing hair extensions?”
“Oh, sweetie!” he cried. “Everybody was wearing them!”
A discussion of starlet styles ensued, and then I asked him the biggee. “If Britney (you know, Spears) walked into your salon and asked you to shave her head, would you have done it?” 
Gilberto shook his own closely-cropped head. “There’s something wrong with that girl.”
I myself found it highly ironic that in the same time period that Gwyneth Paltrow was striving to heighten her star image by lengthening her locks, Britney was going to great lengths to completely do away with hers.
If she’d shaved her head for a music video, none of us would 
have blinked an eye. But we all knew she’s been in the middle of a messy divorce and checking herself in and out of rehab. Clearly, the shaving of her head was not for fun. So what was it really?
(a) a cry for help? I can’t handle the attention-getting life of a blond bombshell pop star anymore. I want it to end
(b) a gesture of anger? F all of U for obsessing over how I look! Obsess over this!(c) a desperate reaction to her estranged husband’s threat that he could prove she was taking drugs by DNA testing a piece of her hair?
(d) all of the above
It’s bewildering to see someone as young and beautiful and vibrant as Britney cracking up in public. At 26, the girl’s already a worldwide Grammy-winning singer-songwriter-actress, who’s sold 76 million records internationally. Seeing someone like that mentally meltdown is like watching a bad car wreck. You’re horrified, yet you can’t turn away, and you need to know details, at the very least to process and comprehend what you’re seeing. All that fame, fortune, beauty - and it’s still not enough to make you happy?…Which brings me to one of my favorite songs…(not Britney’s), a song that every celeb-obsessed teen should probably be forced to memorize…
"Love don’t hang out in a grand hotel…Got no satin sheets, got no servants bell…Ain’t in Bel Air on some big old yacht…Ain’t in a beach house on Monserrat…I know where love lives…I know where love lives…It’s sittin’ on the back porch in the evening air…With sea green eyes and chestnut hair…You keep your mansions of gold, buddy, I don’t care…Cause I know where love lives…"
("I Know Where Love Lives," written and sung by Hal Ketchum, 1991). It’s the ANTI-bling song, and it’s been my reality check for years. The cracked back porch step, the peeling paint, the leaky faucet, the crabgrass…it’s a mansion if there’s love inside…if someone’s there who loves you…really loves you for who you are…that’s the real pot of gold in life.
Everyone around me at the hair salon knew this. They had all sorts of opinions on Brit’s crack up…some felt sorry for her; some were angry at her – acting like a brat instead of being a mother to her two very young boys (they need you, Britney, so get it together!). Everyone wanted to see her get her butt into rehab and see it through, and most expressed fear that she’d end up like Anna Nicole Smith unless she did.
In the end, none of us were asking for hair extensions that day in the salon. And none of us wanted our heads shaved, either. Yeah, sure, we were covering grays, and getting highlights, but Britney’s crack up made us all realize that we’re happy living in the real world, appreciating what we have, and what we don’t (paparazzi dogging our heels, tabloids writing up every misstep and mistake, a man who marries our “image”). In the end, knowing who I am, and feeling certainty in who I love and who loves me – that’s the definition of sanity in my life. And I thank God every day for that life.What do you think about Britney? Has it made you rethink the value of fame and fortune, and even glam beauty? Do you think Brit will make it through rehab and come out the other side? Or will she end up a lost soul like Anna Nicole? Or is all this fuss over any celeb just a silly waste of brain cells?
Luv, Cleo Coyle…author of The Coffeehouse Mysteries, where coffee and crime are always brewing…
and coming July 2007 Coffeehouse Mystery #5: Decaffeinated Corpse…
For some folks it’s a little bit of schadenfreude, I think, and they find a horrible glee in her problems, but it just makes me so sad for her. She was pushed too hard too early, and had too much too young. When you have every material thing you could need or want, when a million people are telling you you’re perfect, when everyone in the world is telling you they want and neeeed you, and yet you know you’re just an average person, how do you deal with the weirdness of all of that?
I think she has ‘dealt’ by very publicly cracking, and I just hope for the sake of her two kids that she comes out the other side stronger. It could happen, but it will come from inside of her, not outside. She’s going to have to find the will to strip herself down to the core and find dignity and worth in who she is on the inside.
I wouldn’t trade places for a billion bucks.
Comment by Donna — March 7, 2007 @ 9:04 am
I’ve always loved Britney. Mostly because she seems like such a nice girl living an extraordinary life. And watching what she is going through is so heart wrenching because you can feel how lost she is. I really hope she makes it through
Comment by Maria Duncan — March 7, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
Donna - Well put. If she’s going to make it, she really is going to have to heal from the inside out.
Maria - I agree. I hope she makes it through. And I hope she finds a really good man, too, one who shows her the potential she has to use her fame and success to do good in the world (as opposed to the guy who took a rather embarrassing private video of her and released it. If I’m wrong about K-fed, I’m sorry. I don’t know much about him, but from what I do know, the guy strikes me as a wannabe bad ass low life.) Brit deserved better.
Luv,
Cleo
Comment by Cleo — March 7, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
Britney makes me value family and friends - the people I surround myself with - even more. If the poor woman had any guidance and support, perhaps she wouldn’t be in such sad shape. I’ve thought it for years. All that money, beauty and talent, and yet she’s so sad and makes such sad choices. My opinion, FWIW.
Comment by Carly Phillips — March 7, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
I have very little sympathy for her–I know so many people, myself included, who’ve been through hell in their lives and managed to make successes out of abuse, out of disability, out of pain that doesn’t quit. I do think, however, the tabloid presses do a real disservice to journalism, and it’s the public’s consumption for celebrity gossip that drives them to the lengths they go to get those stories. That is the one place I feel sorry for her–the inability to keep private what should be a private part of her life (the divorce) .
LOL, and yeah, I’m not a fan of hers–I think that Madonna has more talent in her little finger than Britney in her entire life…however, the woman makes people happy with her work. I hope she gets it together and goes on with her life, and is able to do what she loves without having another meltdown.
Yasmine
Comment by Yasmine — March 7, 2007 @ 10:31 pm