By Laura Sessions Stepp
So pop-tart Britney Spears says she's abandoning her teen fan base for older listeners.

This will come as a great relief to the grown-ups who, not to put too fine a point on it, hate Britney, who just released her fourth CD, "In the Zone."

Google on "Britney hater" and you get 9,000 hits. Go to the CNN Web site and learn, from a Quick Vote poll earlier this month, that one out of three visitors enjoys Britney while the rest say she's either "living off her past glory" or is "about ready for the 'Where Are You Now' file."

Karen Kreutzberg, a Navy commander with an 11-year-old daughter, Kara, tries to be polite by calling Spears "lightweight," then adds, "Don't get me started."

Britney rage isn't confined to custodians of the cradle, but there were a lot of parents silently cheering when they heard that Maryland's first lady, Kendel Ehrlich, pumped up a crowd last month by saying, "If I had an opportunity to shoot Britney Spears, I think I would."

Maybe moms are jealous that at 21 Britney looks better in boy briefs than they do or ever did.

But it's more than that. You don't hear the same comments about hotties like J. Lo or Xtina (otherwise known as Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera. At least Britney has kept a full name -- so far). Over the five years of her pop career, Britney has come to epitomize the widespread belief that there's something rotten in girl culture, something that tells girls that their bodies, not their brains, are the means to power and success, especially if they're wrapped in skintight pants that stop just above the pubic bone.

Britney popularized the slut strut in music videos assembled by a former porn director and single-handedly wiped out the Spice Girls. Short skirts became known as "Britney skirts." Young girls grabbed Teen People off the newsstands when Britney was on the cover, packed Britney look-alike contests and Britney concerts.

Girls, especially pre-pubescent girls, want desperately to grow up. Britney gave them a way to do that. At the tender ages of 8, 9 and 10 they became thong feminists singing that they would do whatever it takes to snag a man. This drove older, pantsuit feminists crazy.

Did we work our way into America's boardrooms for this, the pantsuits asked.

Every quote that came out of Britney's mouth confirmed their impression that she was a lightweight.

"I like lighthearted, girl-flick, love-story movies," she told the Associated Press. "It's easy to watch, not that deep."

Newsweek quotes Britney saying she's "been into a lot of Indian spiritual religions." Is Hinduism one of them? She replies: "What's that? Is it like kabbalah?"

She told the German magazine Cinema that Heaven is a place where "everyone is at peace and happy, and they all hop around from cloud to cloud."

She told the London Mirror, "I don't like my fingernails, I don't like my feet, I don't like my nose . . . I do like my lips."

Why?

Because her then-boyfriend -- singer Justin Timberlake -- "says he likes my lips."

Some Britney haters feel betrayed because they took the pop icon at face value. They watched her grow up, starting out as a Mouseketeer at age 12. She sang in the choir at First Baptist Church in her home town of Kentwood, La., and at 16 she launched her first CD, "Baby One More Time," wearing a Catholic school uniform on the accompanying video. Her blond-haired girl-next-door looks won her acclaim as the country's prom queen in national magazines.

When she started revving up the sexpot image it was all right, at first, because she claimed to be a virgin. "I'm a not girl, not yet a woman," she sang.

Then it came to light that she had given up her virginity while pretending she hadn't, and Britney haters really came out of the closet. She was losing her voice, they said. That's why she lip-synced all her concerts. Her voice was digitally processed, they said, her dancing not as fluid as it was when she was younger.

"The old Britney was really fun," remembers Kreutzberg, who lives in Bethesda. "Innocence was a part of it. Her choreography was new and fresh, she was kind of an original. But in the ensuing years, she's gotten cheap. If you're promoting yourself only from the sexual angle, you're missing a whole life."

Meredith Small, an anthropologist at Cornell University, says, "We get upset when our actresses turn out to be awful people."

Britney rage is not just about Britney, says Nancy Gruver, publisher of a magazine for girls and a newsletter for their parents. The anger is also aimed at an increasingly savage marketing industry that sells fashion and beauty to girls with the notion that sexiness equals independence.

In 1959 Mattel started pitching its Barbie doll directly to girls instead of their parents, and almost a half-century later we have Mattel's Miranda doll, which closely resembles Britney. There's also Britney on sunglasses, handbags, bellybutton rings, video games and, of course, singing Pepsi's "Joy of Cola." Last year, according to news reports, the Britney empire made more than $100 million, more than the Tiger Woods machine. Is this what America means by girl power?

Parents don't get off the hook here, not entirely. A not-so-secret secret is that Britney's mother has stage-managed much of her daughter's career. And who takes all those young girls to Britney's concerts? Who doles out $18 for a Britney baby-doll shirt or $33 for a corset?

Perhaps parents are overheated because they haven't told their daughters that trash is trash no matter how glamorous it may seem. Or they've told them, and it didn't amount to a hill of beans against the Britney package.

Kay Hymowitz, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute who writes about children, thinks parents should give their Britney anxiety a rest. At least some teens, are losing interest in Britney, she says. "Britney's a little too shelly," says Kara Kreutzberg, Karen's sixth-grader.

As in skanky? "Yes. Like the clothes she wears, the underwear. I liked her when she was younger but her style has kind of changed. She has to keep her publicity up."

Older girls consider her melodies lousy and her lyrics meaningless, says Eva Klinman, a sophomore at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac. Klinman has been a Britney hater from way back. "Four years ago, my younger sister brought home one of her CDs," she says. "I ripped it up."