Brit young thing: with the help of Madonna, Linda Perry, and Moby, Britney Spear's latest CD proves the pop tart has grown into a full-fledged gay icon.

It can't be easy to be Britney Spears. Her well-documented evolution from pop music's Lolita to tabloid-splattered woman has rendered her more of a notorious celebrity than a credible artist. The world Seems far more interested in the dirty laundry of her romantic split from Justin Timberlake and her MTV tongue swap with Madonna than in the daring new musical direction Spears is taking on the impressive In the Zone. While that's a real pity, all this drama has effectively roughened her up into the kind of no-bullshit. larger than-life diva our community lives for

In fact, one might even contend that she's reached her long-desired goal of becoming a new-generation Madonna. Fuel for that argument is provided by the former Material Girl herself, who appears on the album's first single, "Me Against the Music." On a track that could easily be subtitled "into the Groove Redux," Madonna looms over Spears like an aging queen who is passing the baton of power to the rambunctious princess. She even offers a few words of wisdom when she warbles, "You say you wanna lose control / I think you oughta bare your soul."

That club-ready anthem propels the listener into Spears's collaborations with heavy-hitting producers and tunesmiths like Linda Perry, Moby, R. Kelly, and Redzone. There's nary a hint of her pristine pop past on Kelly's hip-grinding "Outrageous" or Perry's trippy "Girls and Boys." Instead. Spears swims through dark. often hip-hop-hued waters with occasional forays into minor-keyed electro-dance terrain. Time and experience have given her signature purr a worldly underpinning that endows the Giorgio Moroder-esque "Breathe on Me" and the ornery "Brave New Girl" with a palpably gritty edge.

Although Gossip-mongers will decry the absence of full-on confessionals a la Timberlake's annihilating "Cry Me a River," Spears earns a gold star for not flogging her romantic woes in order to sell records, Rather. she uses In the Zone to strike a power pose. Even on the ballads "Everytime" and "Shadow," she avoids the victim's 'you done me wrong" role in favor of portraying a woman empowered by pain and emboldened by the future. It's during these moments that her position as one of the gay community's newer and more appealing female icons is fully realized. Regardless of the rest of the world's opinion, we get what Britney's about-and it's not just big hair and sex.

Flick is the cohost of OutQ in the Morning on OutQ/Sirius satellite radio.