Doja Cat Calls Britney Spears Shaved Head Comparisons ‘Incredibly Disrespectful’

It didn’t take long for the Britney Spears jokes to start rolling in after Doja Cat shaved her head in August last year. It also didn’t take long for the 27-year-old rapper to clap back at people trolling her new look at the time, and in a new interview with Variety — published on Wednesday (Feb. 1) — she’s explaining why she found the Spears comparisons harmful in particular.

“It’s so incredibly disrespectful for people to be minimizing what Britney went through and make a joke out of something that was very serious and a big deal in her life,” she told the publication. “Every time I see a comment like that, I can’t compute what’s happening, other than it’s just an awful thing.”

It was 2007 when Spears shocked the world by shaving her own head while out in public, an incident that’s since gone down in pop culture history as the moment the “Toxic” singer supposedly had a mental breakdown. The next year, she was placed under a restrictive conservatorship controlled by her father, which she wouldn’t succeed in getting legally terminated until 2021.

Doja similarly shocked her fans when she debuted her buzzcut in a surprise Instagram Live last summer, and shocked them further when she proceeded to shave off her eyebrows on that same livestream. Many were quick to jump to baseless conclusions that the “Woman” musician was mentally ill simply because of her dramatic new style, which she angrily shut down at the time.

“I needed to change something,” she explained to Variety. “I wasn’t working out and wasn’t really taking care of myself in the way that I wanted to. I was like, ‘I need to do something,’ so I just chopped it all off. And I could see the shape of my head. I could see my whole face… it’s the best choice I’ve ever made, and I’ve never felt more beautiful.”

The Grammy winner also hinted at what’s to come for her in the music department, confirming that she’ll release another album by the end of 2023. “I want to explore punk,” she revealed. “But not pop-punk. I feel like we have enough pop-punk artists right now. And if there needs to be more, then let there be more, but I don’t think I’m the one to do it.”

“I want to explore more of a raw, unfiltered, hardcore punk sort of thing,” she continued, also noting she wants to focus more on R&B and rap as opposed to pop and dance music. “It’s just something that I’m doing for my own personal fun — getting some drummers and guitarists together. And I don’t even know if that’s gonna make it out there.”