All Eyes On Britney

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Breet-a-nee, she iz not 'ere. Ze show, eet aas been can-sealed." This late-breaking news is delivered by a French cabbie idling in his taxi at the entrance of a Paris club called Espace Cardin. Inside, on this drizzly October evening, the world's most obsessed-about pop star is supposed to be taping a French TV special in front of a crowd of adoring, gyrating Parisian partygoers. But outside, the scene now is much more grim, with workmen lugging huge amplifiers and other stage equipment onto waiting trucks while clusters of fans linger under umbrellas looking très misérables. The cabbie didn't have to say a word: it's all too obvious Britney Spears isn't here.

Instead, she's just up the street, ensconced in a suite at the superluxe Plaza Athénée. Spears hasn't left the hotel since she checked in two days ago and began canceling her every public appearance, press conference and interview, leaving some 350 frustrated journalists cursing in a dozen languages. About the only outsiders allowed near her have been the stream of French doctors making the house calls of a million teenage boys' (and dirty old men's) dreams. Britney Spears has the flu. And her sneezes are sending shock waves across France — and beyond.

They're feeling them at Jive Records in New York City, that's for sure. Executives at Spears' label must be watching in horror as their grand plans for the singer's whirlwind two-week European publicity tour — to promote the Nov. 17 release of her fourth album, a pulsating dance disc called In the Zone, on which she moans and groans to a more grown-up and blatantly sexual beat — shiver and cough to a halt. Spears has made only one stop on the tour before Paris, five days and at least one allegedly shaky night in London. Now the rest of her jam-packed itinerary — showcases in Germany and Spain, a much-anticipated appearance in Scotland for the MTV Europe Music Awards — is about to go up like a puff of nasal spray. The singer will spend only one more day in Paris before abandoning the tour entirely and returning to the U.S. to convalesce at her mother's house in Kentwood, Louisiana, the sleepy backwater where Britney was born in 1981.

Of course, from time to time everyone gets the flu. But in this particular case, it's impossible not to wonder if something less viral and potentially more serious (at least to her career) is what's bugging Spears in Paris — something that might be more accurately diagnosed as growing pains. After all, ever since her breakup last year with first love Justin Timberlake, and that much- publicized but never-materialized yearlong hiatus she promised to take, there have been plenty of visible symptoms. Like her tear earlier this year through virtually half the nightclubs in New York City (where she couldn't even light up a cigarette without tabloids making a huge fuss). Those rumors of a fling with the balding 32-year-old Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst were pretty shocking too. (Durst went on Howard Stern and gallantly described Spears' pubic region to millions of listeners.) Add to all that the legitimate anxiety over her musical staying power (will anyone still buy Britney records now that she's outgrown the plaid skirts and kneesocks?). And throw in all the other stresses and strains of being the world's most scrutinized 21-year-old pop star — the grueling video shoots, the countless interviews, the endless grind of disrobing for magazine covers, not to mention the hurtful backlash from conservative Britney-haters like Kendel Ehrlich, the Governor of Maryland's wife, who announced her desire to "shoot" Spears (while speaking at a domestic- violence conference, of all places) — and it's easy to see why the poor girl got the flu. The only surprise is that she didn't think of it sooner.

She probably needs to get laid," Spears says, rolling her eyes, when asked about that trigger-happy Governor's wife. "These parents, they think I'm a role model for their kids, that their kids look at me as some sort of idol. But it's the parents' job to make sure their kids don't turn out that shallow. 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."

This provocative sound bite is served up during our first chat, in a hotel in Manhattan on Oct. 21, a few days before Spears begins her publicity swing through Europe — an interview that marks the start of our two-week, worldwide dash to keep up with her. At this point there is no sign of impending illness, but it's clear something isn't quite right. Fidgeting in her chair, doing her best to force a smile, she seems irritable, almost frosty, her normally cottony-soft drawl showing sharper edges. "I don't want to talk about my private life at all," she coolly commands, evidently reversing her long-held policy of discussing absolutely anything with the press, no matter how intimate (like chatting in W magazine last August about losing her virginity to Timberlake or, last week, sobbing about their breakup on U.S. TV). "I used to be a lot more open," she explains, warming slightly. "But I didn't realize that people were going to judge and ridicule every little thing I said. So now I'm trying to keep more things to myself. It's something I'm working on."

Took her long enough. She's been performing in front of cameras since she was 11, as the youngest member of the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club (in which she rubbed big ears with future pop rival Christina Aguilera and future ex-boyfriend Timberlake). She's been a top pop force since she was 18, when her debut album, 1999's … Baby One More Time, sold 10 million copies (followed a year later with her 9 million-selling Oops! ... I Did It Again). Despite all that early exposure, she seems at times to have acquired not a shred of media savvy. That lip-lock with Madonna on MTV, for instance? She claims she was shocked — shocked! — by the attention it stirred up. Likewise the clamor over all those racy magazine covers (posing topless for Rolling Stone and bottomless for Esquire). "People make such a big deal out of it," she says, sounding genuinely puzzled. "I honestly don't get it. It's weird. To me, the human body is beautiful."