Women in Rock: Britney Spears

Do you mind if I put on my pajamas?" Britney Spears asks, heading toward the bedroom of her suite at Manhattan's Trump Plaza. It's four o'clock in the afternoon, and her plans for the remainder of the day are limited to an evening workout and, if she's not too pooped, a trip to the movies with her personal assistant, Felicia. These days, Britney is a woman of leisure. This summer, after her world tour ended with an aborted show in Mexico City, she revealed that she would take the next several months off. "I need Britney time," she says, unaware of how impossibly cute she sounds. Britney is obviously a girl's girl — warm, goofy, sentimental and yearning to be liked. Although the twenty-year-old hopes to land another movie role before the year is through, she'll spend most of her vacation catching up with her girlfriends ("We all recently broke up with our boyfriends") and hanging out at her new apartment in New York's East Village, "just farting around."

What effect do you think being a woman has had on your music?
At first it was kind of hard because I think people don't take you as seriously. And for people to take you seriously, they make you think that you have to be ballsy. But I think there's a way to balance the two — being who you are and saying how you feel but not going over the top with it. I'm trying to be a little bit more assertive.

You don't seem like the kind of person who is very brazen about saying what you think.
I observe people's actions before I state my opinions. I'm not a loudmouth at heart. It's retarded, but I'm a people pleaser.

You don't lose that feeling a little when you get really famous?
I'll always care what people think about me. It's not to the point where you're just "F this and F that." I don't want to be that kind of person, because that's just not me. I hate to bring this up, but I'm gonna. I heard that Pink said some really negative things about me.

Have you met her?
I met her, and she was really nice. She sent me flowers at my hotel room. And the next week she said something like, "I don't think it's cool the way that she's like a puppet and she's really smiley and happy all the time." She's probably doing that to protect her whole gimmick thing. I respect that, but don't be a hypocrite and put me down when you're, like, performing with your belly showing, too. And the reason why I'm smiling is because I'm grateful. I'm not the type of person to walk around and be like, "Shit, I'm the coolest girl." I still think her music rocks. But the whole thing hurt my feelings. I felt like, "I thought you liked me. You sent me flowers."