How Britney Spears went to Vegas and became a feminist role model. No, really.

Fifty stories above all this, Britney Spears was working. She didn’t know about the wind or the dancers or the fire-breather or about the old lady whose day she had fucked up immeasurably, the one who might be the Queen of England. She was sitting in a room in the semi-dark, slightly hunched over, a little bored, at the tail end of a daylong junket in which TV journalists asked her questions like “What do people not know about you?” (“Really that I’m pretty boring.”) and “What was the craziest rumor you ever heard about yourself?” (“That I died.”) and who her secret famous crush is, a question that she’s been asked for years and years and that she’s been giving the same answer to for years and years (“Brad Pitt”).