Britney Spears' breasts are real. Just look at the way they move. If they are fake, they are made from a perfect secret polymer, stored away just behind Walt Disney's cryogenic chamber deep in the heart of the Magic Kingdom, reserved only for Mouseketeers. The debate in the public forum is cruel, and is intended solely to make the poor girl—one of today's brightest and most talented stars—feel bad about herself. This is yet another attempt on the part of the ugly masses to vilify the beautiful people, the unloved glitterati. And it's working: in her new single, Spears sings movingly about "Lucky," a Hollywood starlet who seems to have it all, but cries cries cries in her lonely world. "If," Spears wonders, "there's nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?" Not only is this THE song about teen malaise, one which Marilyn Manson could only dream of writing with such passionate directness, but it evokes the spectre of chronic depression, a condition which afflicts millions of Americans, and works to make sufferers understand that they are not alone. And further, she strikes a blow for the rights of celebrities to be understood on their own terms, not merely as objects, but as people who suffer all the more for public scrutiny: few and brave are the artists who let us see into that 'lonely world' of the limelight, and lucky are we who hear their song. Those obsessed with the teen's tits would do well to also factor into their appraisal how such a YOUNG woman can grapple with such difficult issues.

And woman she is. She recently celebrated her 18th birthday, making her "street legal" in all 50 states. Many a pundit, including one here at Poor Mojo's Almanack has made of this milestone a lurid spectacle, one which finally makes it 'okay' to sexualize Spears, which, supposedly, has always been her allure. Of course, if we are a nation of pedophiles, then wouldn't this be cause to weep and moan the loss of a treasured icon to her decrepit old-age? And further, are we claiming that Spears' target demographic—12 year old girls—wants to bend her over a table and fuck her till she screams "baby, one more time?" (Which, of course, would imply a generation of lesbians-to-be, or, if they identify with her, sluts and whores.) Of course, she is a budding young star, and of course she has sex-appeal. I'm sure many a masturbatory fantasy came to life at the Video Music Awards this year with the image of Spears, so almost-naked you can taste it, frolicking through her delicious rendition of the Rolling Stones' (normally turgid and cliché) "Satisfaction." But to assume that this fantasy came to be because people are somehow suckered into sexualizing her because she was there on display is to claim that we are not a nation of pedophiles, but a nation of idiots who buy whatever's sold to us. Except for the pundits who know so much better than the rest of us how media manipulation takes place, because they aren't susceptible to its charms.

And all of this still misses the point. Spears' appeal IS her girlishness, her genuine innocence, how wide-eyed and stupid she is about her own image. She has defended her tight tops, claiming that in Louisiana, it's normal to see women go about in sports bras to fight the heat. She can't understand why older men leer, and take hours of time to write slash fiction about her in which she eagerly bathes in the spunk of a dozen motorcyclists after being willingly, thoroughly and enthusiastically sodomized. She hates the fact that there are thousands, if not millions, of internet pictures of her face superimposed over nude, fucking bodies, though she wears barely more in her performances, and swings her hips like she knows how to do little dance, make a little love, etc. It's a childishness that charms, in spite of the sex all around her. You can't help but love her, if only because she just seems to flow with real, true rivers of the stuff. And you can't help but want to fuck her, if only to wake her up. This is the seduction of vapidity, which is the seduction of all pop music—the seduction of the emptiness of the lowest-common-denominator.

In the end, though, all speculations aside about the reality of this sad Little Louisiana-girl Lost's boobs, the point is this: Fake or Real, it makes no difference. They are MAGIC.