Bringing Up Britney

Britney Spears rips open a bag of extra-cheesy Doritos, dips one into a bowl of tuna salad, crunches loudly then wipes off the excess orange dust on the thighs of her hip-hugging jeans. "Sorry, I'm just stuffin' my face here," she says in a perky Louisiana accent, then jams another chip into her mouth. It's one of the few breaks the performer gets today between rehearsing numbers for "Saturday Night Live," posing for a magazine photo shoot and taping an upcoming Britney special for ABC. She takes a swig off her Pepsi (not Diet), then looks at her cracked, unpainted, stubby toenails. "I do need a pedicure, don't I," she says. But who cares--when the scantily clad, hip-gyrating, crotch-grabbing Spears hits the stage, no one in America but Britney's choreographer will be concentrating on her feet.

Sex appeal is to Britney Spears what special effects are to "The Matrix." Just last week Madame Tussaud's unveiled a wax figure of the star--it doesn't sing, but it straddles a pole and has inflatable breasts that heave to the music. Since she debuted as a pigtailed 16-year-old in 1998, the former Mouseketeer has morphed from a schoolgirl heartthrob to ... // 85% Remaining