In between each step of this frantic will-to-pop-power campaign, Britney will occasionally have to suffer through the only thing she doesn't positively love about being Britney...
"Y'all fixin' to do an interview?"
Yes, Britney Spears dreads interviews.
As her chipper assistant Felicia floats this down-home question, she escorts me into Spears' dressing room. We're backstage at the Lakeland Center--a small-time hockey rink routinely used for tour prep because of its proximity to Orlando, teen pop's epicenter--where Spears is running through the minutiae of her upcoming road show. Despite the room's cold cinder-block walls and claustrophobic dropped ceiling, Spears' lair has been transformed into her very own Barbie Dream House. Scarves in every color of the rainbow have been draped overhead to cozy things up. The place reeks with the sickly sweet teenage aroma of vanilla-scented candles. And in the far corner, sitting atop her television set like a sort of puppy-love shrine, is a framed photograph of boyfriend Justin Timberlake, in fur coat and cowboy hat, throwing a signature 'N Sync pose.
Spears plops down onto a black leatherette sofa and pretzels her legs lotus-style. It takes a minute or two to make sense of the visual disconnect between the video vixen who shimmies on MTV in rip-away nudie suits and the giggly girly-girl before you.
First of all, she's tiny. Five four if you're feeling charitable. Her Luh-weeez-ee-ana accent is as bouncy as a trampoline. And for someone not exactly known for modesty, she appears to be dressed for a nunnery, albeit a fairly sporty one: Her hair is pulled up in a Pebbles Flintstone topknot; she's emphatically Abercrombie & Fitch in a pair of blue sweatpants and white sweatshirt zipped up to the throat; and she sips a fruit smoothie through a long red straw while working a piece of gum as if she were angry with it.
In short, the polite and unjaded Spears looks nothing like the come-hither, going-on-20 Britney pouting on the cover of her new album--an album whose sultry, deep-groove single "I'm a Slave 4 U" contains the following defiant declaration:
I know I may be young/But I've got feelings too/And I need to do what I feel like doin'/So let me go...
But then you notice Spears' hands. Her nails are lacquered with an expensive-looking French manicure. Very adult. And yet, on one of her fingers sits a plastic gumball-machine trinket--a pink heart-shaped ring that flips open to reveal a tiny cache of lip gloss.
Like a boxer who's actually a soft-spoken pussycat outside of the ring, Spears is a complex contradiction: Is she a girl or a woman? The fact that her particular contradiction traffics in sex has helped make her both a times-22 platinum superstar and a lightning rod for parental concern. It's a fine line to dance on--with or without a snake. Just ask Madonna. And Spears doesn't exactly help clear things up. "I find it so funny that people find me so interesting," she says, laughing. "And I hate when they're, like, 'Define your image.'" In fact, the thought of answering this question one more time makes Spears shriek like a schoolgirl getting her pigtails yanked. "I don't know what my freakin' image is! I just do my thing."
You Might Also Like
- Music Review In the Zone | David Browne
- Book News Britney Spears' autobiography | Clarissa Cruz
- Monitor Monitor | Kate Ward
- Music News Britney Spears' new music video | Margeaux Watson
- Music News Concert cancellation excuses | Leah Greenblatt
