All Eyes On Britney

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It's theoretically possible that this wide-eyed cluelessness is sincere. O.K., maybe not — some of that eye-batting innocence has to be an act. But even so, she's no Madonna, the virtuosa media manipulator whose current reinvention of herself seems to be as Spears' mentor, video co-star, and Cabala buddy. "Oh, she's totally sincere," insists her 26-year-old brother, Bryan, who runs the financial end of Spears' licensing empire (now moving from dolls to more grown-up goods like cosmetics). "She really doesn't understand the power she has. But then none of us in the family really understands it. I mean, to me, she's just my little sister — why would anyone put her on a magazine cover? It's only when I step back and think about what she's done over the last four years that I go 'Oh, my God!'"

Spears has been experiencing some oh-my-God moments of her own lately — the sort of awkward self-examination of personal sexuality that many 21-year-old girls go through as they cross the threshold into womanhood. Except in Spears' case, of course, she's crossing it while the press snaps thousands of increasingly explicit pictures. "I'm really kind of over these magazine shoots," she says. "Not that I regret anything I've done, but I'm tired of the reaction they get." That Esquire shoot, it turns out, was a nightmare. (She claims the magazine gave her photo approval and then ran pictures without her blessing — something Esquire denies.) Even worse were those "retarded" wardrobe suggestions ABC made for the promo spots for Britney Spears: In the Zone, her Nov. 17 U.S. network special, which she'll be taping just hours from now. "It was really obnoxious," she says with a snort. "They wanted me to take my clothes off. It was all about my body, you know?" Can't imagine what ABC was thinking.

These parents, they think I'm a role model. It's the parents who should be teaching their kids how to behave. That's not my responsibility. I'm not responsible for your kid.

That TV special, by the way, is one place where she might have picked up the flu. "I spotted a lot of people sneezing and coughing during the rehearsals," reports its director, Nick Whitham. "Something was definitely going around." Watching the taping from the wings, though, one hardly notices. Spears sure looks hearty enough, prancing up and down the stage at Manhattan's Gotham Hall, lip-synching songs from In the Zone while peeling off layer after layer of ever-tighter clothing. Her eight leather-clad backup dancers seem pretty robust too, particularly in a routine for a tune called Toxic, during which they blindfold Spears, roll her around the studio on an ottoman and run their hands — among other things — over her half-naked body. (Come to think of it, that guy who licked Spears' face does look a tad peaked.) "More mature and more sensual" is how Jive Records president Barry Weiss describes Spears' new sound. Her act has indeed come a long way since the days when her best move was skipping around in a skimpy schoolgirl outfit. Her music has evolved (thanks, in part, to techno and hip-hop infusions from Moby, RedZone, Ying Yang Twins and R. Kelly, who collaborated with Spears on some of the songs), and her lyrics are clearly crafted for older ears ("Would you undo my zipper, please").

"I think all my albums have been a little sexy," Spears says, "but with this one I'm dealing with stuff that I haven't really dealt with before. Not in a graphic way. On the contrary. The song called Breathe on Me isn't about any actual physical connection with anybody — it's breathe on me. Touch of My Hand is probably the one song that's a little graphic. It's about indulging in yourself, taking off your clothes and feeling kind of good. But there's nothing about it I would personally find distasteful."

England welcomes spears to its shores as if she were the little American sister the Spice Girls should have had. Certainly the Fleet Street boys give her the royal treatment, sticking by her side from the moment she arrives on Oct. 24. And Spears, for her part, does her best to keep the local press hopping. She throws a party for herself at the Rex Cinema + Bar in Soho, records a session for a TV show called CD:UK, checks out the exclusive Players Club in East Ham, and — if the tabs can be trusted — gets so zonked at the Boujis club in South Kensington she has to be carried out, half-conscious, by her bodyguard and plopped into a waiting car. All in all, not bad for her first 48 hours in town.

"A combination of jet lag, exhaustion and the odd cocktail," is how Spears' people explained the Boujis wooziness in the pages of the Evening Standard — although her reps now claim they were misquoted and that the whole thing never happened. In any case, Spears was well enough by Oct. 27 to guest-star on the V Graham Norton show, a bawdy late-night chat program hosted by a flamboyantly gay Irishman. Not exactly the sort of telly aimed at Spears' more established fan base of 10- to 14-year-old girls. "We're hoping to pick up a gay audience with this album," says Larry Rudolph, the New York City-based manager who's been guiding Spears since she was 15. "You know, in the same way Madonna and Cher appeal to a gay audience? So we're doing appearances at gay clubs and things like that."