ONCE, YOU made even Bob Dole drool.

Now randy teenage boys suppress a yawn when you bare your perfect belly, a sorry one-woman samba parade gone on too long.

Oh, Britney. How did it come to this, so soon?

You were the Marilyn Monroe of the Mickey Mouse set, the sort of blazing superstar all the girls in child pageants dream they could become. For a time, we couldn't look away.

When you bounced onto the stage, little girls cast aside their Barbies, forever smitten. Middle-aged men were drawn like moths to light. Experts debated your meaning in the greater sociocultural sphere of things.

All the while, you sparkled and twitched and whirled, an all-powerful Lolita, bewitchingly innocent but full of sexual energy, generating oodles of money with each carefully choreographed thrust of your hips.

Now, we shudder to watch.

We know all too well how this story ends: the string of mediocre albums and movies, the hospitalizations for "exhaustion," the series of breast implants and face-lifts leading to the inevitable day when you become perfectly indistinguishable from the drag queens who love to impersonate you.

Like the image of all child stars, yours was an untenable arrangement from the start. We never wanted to see you grow up, but you couldn't feign girlishness forever.

And even if you wanted to, there was Justin Timberlake, your curly-haired true love, and all the world was watching as you strolled the red carpets together. You may have been willing to continue to hide behind the shield of virginity, but he wasn't. When you moved in together, everyone winked and nudged.

And after you broke up last spring, he went on the radio, full of locker-room stories about bagging the most desirable chick in the world, admitting that he was nothing but a dirty dawg.

Betrayed, you cast about for a response, donning pimpy hats and low-cut jumpsuits, your cleavage desperately pumped up for the cameras.

You sang angry songs about revenge, began curling your lips into what you imagined was a sexy, brave sneer.

Dragged kicking and screaming into young womanhood, you floundered for a new identity. You palled around with Donatella Versace, sporting hot pants in animal prints.

It was a bad omen.

Sure enough, the downward spiral continued:

You were caught smoking (!), then mocked for your Clinton-esque denial, insisting you were just "holding the cigarette for a friend."

You made a brief cameo in "Austin Powers," which should have been funny and lighthearted, but somehow seemed like an unwitting parody of yourself.

You fell from atop the Billboard charts with a loud plunk and lost your gig as the public face of Pepsi.

In a final indignity, commentators hinted that you were to be eclipsed by, of all people, your little sister.

Wisely, you announced a six-month hiatus, telling reporters that you needed "to just have Britney time and just do what Britney wants to do" -- and we realized with horror that, like Dole, you had begun referring to yourself in the third person.

At 21 years of age, what is left for you, Britney Spears?

Nothing but millions of dollars, a few platinum albums, and a pleated skirt with a sordid past.

So why not retire to Paris, where you could enjoy long quiet afternoons sipping wine at French cafes?

Or maybe take up an international political cause -- land mines, say, or childhood polio -- and spend the next 10 years touring obscure Third World countries where you will always be the princess of pop.

Then again, there's always college.

thestate.com