Young girls who dress like 40-year-old strippers are scary. They get fake tans, inject silicone into their breasts and then dance around poles with enormous boa constrictors dangling around their necks. They can't resist taking off their clothes anytime they are within 100 feet of a camera, and when they open their mouths, they say things that are so incredibly dumb, you wonder if they didn't miss their true calling as models for condom ads.

But Britney Spears, 21, is different. She may swap spit with Madonna live on national television, take off her shirt for the cover of Rolling Stone and tell impressionable young kids watching MTV that smoking is cool, but there is more to her than the outward blow-up-doll personality. For one thing, there is her new album, "In the Zone."

Pink might be the critics' favorite because she talks about her messed-up childhood and how her dad was maybe in the military once and she kisses other girls because she actually likes it. But is she really doing anything that Melissa Etheridge didn't do 10 years ago, except that Etheridge's girlfriend made babies with David Crosby? No. Journalists need to realize that, apart from OutKast and Belle & Sebastian, Britney Spears is the only one out there who's trying to make pop fun again.

Take "Me Against the Music," her latest single and the opening track on the new album. Guess what? There is no chorus. There are no real instruments on it. And that's probably not even Britney singing. For all intents and purposes, it sounds like a robot -- a very sexy robot who sounds a little out of breath from making out with Madonna on the recording console.

Despite its obvious flaws, however, anytime someone plays the song in a bar, everybody jumps up on the tables, drops trousers and sings all the words as if it's the best thing since 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny." The girl has more unwieldy power than the president.

Many people want to know if, with "In the Zone," Britney can survive the transition from being an innocent teen princess to a fully sexual being. Survive the intense marketing push? The search for tangible talent behind the hype? The answer to all these questions is obvious: Bwaaah-ha-ahhaaa-haaaa-haa! !! It's Britney Spears. Britney. Spears. B.R.I.T.N. ...

When the New York Times recently sat her down for a boring interview about the new record, she couldn't even name half the producers who worked with her on it. When ABC's Diane Sawyer asked her about cheating on ex- boyfriend Justin Timberlake, her response was, "Well, I technically did something, but I technically didn't do anything wrong." Then on her big "ABC in Concert" special earlier this week, all she did was lip-synch through her songs and rip off layer after layer of clothing. This is not someone who needs that kind of intense scrutiny. You don't question genius.

"In the Zone" is totally bananas. For a teen pop singer whose previous album sold only 4 million copies after the first two sold 22 million combined, it's probably not the best idea to hook up with R. Kelly, who's been dogged by allegations of child pornography, on a song called "Outrageous" where he makes her sing about her insatiable sex drive. Her collaboration with rappers the Ying Yang Twins on the thumping "(I Got That) Boom Boom" is even better. It sounds like a porno movie set to a hip-hop beat. With lots of threesome scenes.

It gets better. When Madonna chimes in on "Me Against the Music," it doesn't sound like the ultimate diva showdown but a malfunctioning computer with smoke coming out of the back. It's so awesome and futuristic that the members of Radiohead are probably going to lie in their beds and cry for a full two weeks after hearing it.

Another unexpected person who lends Britney a hand on the new album is techno nutter Moby, who obviously signed up for the job under the mistaken impression that he could make her sound more human. Oh, and probably because he didn't make enough money selling all his songs to Pampers and Taco Bell. His song "Early Mornin' " is the worst thing ever. If somebody wanted to hear a Kraftwerk record with high-pitched bird noises on it, then they would just buy the last thing Brian Eno put out.

Still, it's great to hear Britney tossing aside all that "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" nonsense and just getting on with her sexuality. Maybe if Paul McCartney did that during the heyday of the Beatles they wouldn't have put out terrible drug records like "Sgt. Pepper's" and made something more intense, like "Touch of My Hand," Britney's totally intense tribute to masturbation, where she goes, "I love myself/ It's not a sin/ I can't control what's happenin' ... I'm going to teach myself to fly!" There won't be a pair of dry Levi's in the house when that video comes out.

In an era when it is frowned upon any time pop stars do anything good, like overdosing or marrying a goat, it's beyond refreshing to have a punk like Britney Spears messing with expectations, coloring outside the lines, making even the most overused cliches relevant again. She is staring critics and venereal warts in the eye and laughing all the way to the bank.

"In the Zone" just made everything a whole lot better.