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.Maybe because those people are pretty and appealing, and they work their asses off, and they believe in themselves.CK: Do you honestly believe that?Britney: Well, some people might say it’s just to make money off of them and to sell magazines.But another reason—a better reason, and the one I choose—is that they do it to inspire people.Britney is like the little kid who freaks out Keanu Reeves in The Matrix: You say you want to bend a spoon? Well, the first thing you need to realize is that there is no spoon.I’m not supposed to ask Britney about Justin Timberlake.This rule is made very clear to me the moment I arrive at the photo shoot.Granted, everyone knows that Spears and the former ’N Sync member used to live together, and everyone knows about their breakup, and everyone knows they (evidently) had sex when Spears was eighteen.But her handlers still request that I don’t ask any questions about their relationship.When I eventually ask Spears about this anyway, her response is extraordinarily innocuous.“The bottom line—and I hate talking about this, but whatever—is that we were both too young to be that serious with each other.” However, she does say that the alleged postbreakup “dance-off” at the L.A.club Lounge never happened, and she admits that she and Justin don’t speak anymore, even though she considers him a “creative genius.”Viewed retrospectively, there’s no doubt the Justin-Britney romance helped Timberlake’s career more than hers—especially since Spears always insisted she was a virgin, even when they were living together.Optimistic thirteen-year-old girls could imagine Justin as the ultimate gentleman, perfectly content to keep his paws to himself while the foxiest girl on the planet sat around the house in her underwear, sucking on Popsicles and telling him to wait until she was ready.They were, in a sense, Virgin Royalty: super-rich, über-clean pop stars who epitomized just how wonderful teenage Americans could still be.This is why it was so jarring to hear Fred Durst on The Howard Stern Show in February, graphically discussing his alleged sexual dalliances with Spears.Her encounter with the Limp Bizkit vocalist—regardless of its truth—publicly cemented Spears’s fall from grace; Durst is universally perceived as rock’s sleaziest baboon.Yet the moment Britney “explains” what happened, the gravity of the situation deflates.Here again, Spears’s persona becomes weirdly Clintonesque: deny, deny, deny … and then classify everything as old news.“That was my fault for hanging out with people like that,” she says of Durst.“Fred was a very great guy.He was a nice guy.And at the time he was trying to come on to me, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to have a relationship with anybody.So maybe I did hurt his ego, and [going on the radio] was his way of dealing with that.But I learned my lesson.And at the time, I was kind of confused, because my tour had just ended.Me and my girlfriends went out one night, and I was feeling like a free bird.But I really don’t want to talk about this.”I have no idea what those last two statements are supposed to mean; either she obviously slept with him, or she obviously didn’t.The odds are 50–50.And this is a balance Britney either (a) consciously strives for, or (b) sustains without even trying.Cliché as it may sound, she is truly all things to all people: a twelve-year-old girl thinks she’s a hero; that girl’s older brother thinks she’s a stripper; that older brother’s girlfriend thinks she’s an example of why women hate themselves; that girlfriend’s father secretly wishes his own twelve-year-old daughter would invite Britney over for a slumber party.As long as she never dictates her character—as long as Spears never overtly says “This is who I am”—everyone gets to inject their own meaning.Subconsciously, we all get to rebrand Britney Spears.“The public knows when someone is being honest,” she says.“The people know what’s real.This might be a weird analogy, but it’s like watching Friends on the TV.You just get what those people are talking about.It’s funny to you, and you’re drawn into them.”Here again, we see the brilliance of Britney: on the surface, this statement is insane.Anyone who watches Friends would never argue it’s successful because of its authenticity, nor would it seem like those characters have conversations that reflect any kind of tangible normalcy.2 But every single week, twenty million people watch Friends.They see something in Chandler Bing and Phoebe Buffay that makes them happy.And what those twenty million people see is something that Britney sees—and perhaps Britney understands—in a way that most of us do not.“Had I not went into music,” she tells me, “I probably would have gone to college and became a schoolteacher.That was my dream, because I love kids.Either that, or an entertainment lawyer.” For a moment, I think this is a joke.But it’s not a joke.But it’s brilliant.Schoolteacher, entertainment lawyer, pop star, African warlord—what’s the fucking difference? “I’m famous,” she concedes, “but I’m not famous like freaking Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston.But in my weird little head, I just think we’re all here to inspire each other.We’re all equal.We just bounce off of each other and show the world what we can do.”Logic would suggest that Spears’s upcoming fourth album will be a reinvention, and that she will try to attract a more mature audience (much like Christina Aguilera did with her album Stripped and a freshly conceived “Gothic Hooker” image).Britney says nay.“Actually, the record label wanted me to do certain kinds of songs, and I was like, ‘Look, if you want me to be some kind of sex thing, that’s not me.’ I will never do that.I’m still doing what I love to do.”So that settles it.Don’t be fooled by the photos that accompany this story, true believers: Britney Spears is not going to become “some kind of sex thing.” She is still the person you want to imagine.She always will be.And she is making that decision; you are not.“I was just talking about sexuality with my makeup artist,” she tells me a mere ten minutes into our conversation, “and I was explaining to her that—when I was thirteen years old—I used to walk around my house completely naked.And my dad would say, ‘Britney, put some clothes on, we have people over.’ My family just always walked around the house naked.We were earthy people.I’ve never been ashamed of my body.We were very free people.”True.And I’m sure this has no freaking significance whatsoever.1.Because I write about popular culture in the present tense, it’s not uncommon for things I write to become inaccurate over time.This sentence, however, is a particularly insane example of that phenomenon.At this point, I would be pretty surprised if anyone reading this book has not seen Britney Spears’s vagina.Modernity!2.In retrospect, I might be wrong on this point
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