Entertainment Weekly -- November 9, 2001

 This story is excerpted from Entertainment Weekly's Nov. 9, 2001, cover story. See the magazine to read this story in its entirety.


Somewhere between the first-class kiddie glitz of Orlando's Disney World and a lower budgeted pit-stop attraction on the outskirts of Tampa called Dinosaur World lies the town of Lakeland, Fla. If you're a teenager here, there isn't a whole lot to do other than troll the drive-thru windows of an endless archipelago of fast-food joints. Unless, of course, you're Britney Spears, in which case there's more going on in Lakeland than you could possibly want.

For starters, there's the matter of ironing out the last-minute choreography kinks for her 32-date North American tour kicking off in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 1 (the start was bumped five days when Spears got the flu, and later, one more day because of a logistical snafu). Then, less than a week after hitting the road with 17 semi trucks jam-packed with arena gear, there's the release of her funkier, more mature third album, ''Britney,'' on Nov. 6. Next, there's a live HBO concert from the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas on Nov. 18, where she'll be prancing and preening through waterfalls and bungee jumping. And when all of that madness is finally over, she'll have to kick-start Britney Inc. all over again when her feature-film debut, ''Crossroads,'' rolls into multiplexes in February. 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.''

To be honest, it's hard to tell if ''doing her thing'' includes playing coy or if she's swept up in some cultural debate even she can't begin to fathom. Her ''Crossroads'' director, Tamra Davis, thinks Spears is an active participant in the virgin-whore gambit: ''She definitely plays with that duality.'' But for her part, Spears wants you to believe that she's shocked -- shocked! -- by the barely legal brouhaha that has been swirling around her ever since she shook her moneymaker through the Lolita-in-a-plaid-skirt ''…Baby One More Time'' video. ''I guess it's because I do have a younger audience that, you know, parents worry about the role model thing…. But when I was younger, I looked up to people, but I never wanted to be them. I always had my own identity. I'm an entertainer when I'm on stage... and they need to explain that to their kids. That's not my job to do that.''

She pauses to collect herself. ''There are so many other teenagers out there that dress more provocatively than I do and no one says anything about them.'' Maybe she's right. Maye the Bubble Yum debate says more about us than it does about her. ''How can I explain this?'' She exhales and focuses her thoughts. ''I don't see myself -- hand on the Bible -- I know I'm not ugly, but I don't see myself as a sex symbol or this goddess-attractive-beautiful person at all. When I'm on stage, that's my time to do my thing and go there and be that -- and it's fun. It's exhilarating just to be something that you're not. And people tend to believe it.'' Then Spears begins to crack up. ''I guess I just pull it off very well.''


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