Throughout her 25-year career, Britney Spears’s age has somehow always seemed wrong. Seemed out of step with the persona she presented to the world. Her 2000 smash hit “Oops! ... I Did It Again” found her sorry-not-sorrying for committing repeated romantic transgressions, sounding like a careless, jaded woman at the ripe old age of 18. In 2021, by contrast, on the surreal only occasion when Spears spoke publicly during her conservatorship hearings in Los Angeles, the voice that came out of the 39-year-old mother of teenage sons as she read a statement by phone sounded flustered, frightened, surprisingly babyish. On Instagram, the 41-year-old Spears often posts videos of herself dancing, twirling around in knee-high boots and ultralow-rise barely-there shorts, an adolescent’s idea of a sexy get-up.