Discovered via Wired: “Navel Gazing: Britney Spears and the Semiotics of the Belly Button” as published by the online arm of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
“She was perfectly outfitted in the iconography of the coquette—pleated skirt, kneesocks, pigtails—but the key signifier that positioned her on that cusp between innocence and knowledge was a feature that, although common to all humanity, usually is given little serious consideration—her exposed navel.”