In The Zone - Legacy

Legacy

"I’m not the type of person to put blame on other people, but I do feel that some things which were done for me were not always in my best interests. Looking back, I feel now that on my 4th album 'less is more' should have been the way to go."

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic commented, "If 2001's Britney was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, In the Zone, is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman." Erlewine compared Spears to her peer Christina Aguilera, explaining that both equated maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs, but while Aguilera "comes across like a natural-born skank, Britney is the girl next door cutting loose at college, drinking and smoking and dancing and sexing just a little too recklessly, since this is the first time she can indulge herself." Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine stated, "For a girl who's always seemed too sexed-up for her age, In The Zone finds Britney finally filling her britches, so-to-speak. Her little girl coquettishness actually works now—maybe because, at 21, she's finally a woman." Jason King of Vibe said the album showcased a transformed Spears, "no longer a girl, and all the woman any man can handle." In 2009, Amy Schriefer of NPR listed the album on The 50 Most Important Recording of the Decade list. Calling it "a primer on the sound of pop in the '00s", she deemed Spears as the ideal vehicle for a futuristic sound, since she was still trying to break away from her teen pop past. Schriefer praised "Toxic" and "Everytime", and also stated, "While the decade's history of celebrity obsession, paparazzi voyeurism and conflicted constructions of female sexuality and motherhood are written on Spears' body, the decade's history of impeccably crafted pop is written on her body of work."

Julie Andsager in Sex in consumer culture (2006) said that the music videos from In the Zone presented a different Spears, and that although the album was intended to target the gay market, the videos were clearly designed for heterosexual men. Andsager suggested that Spears took cues more directly from sexual fantasies, and that the use of sanitized images of attractive young women posed in sexual ways (lesbian chic) serves two audiences: primarily, it sought to fulfill heterosexual fantasies, but as a secondary function, it may also serve young women as a source of instruction in attracting males. From a marketing perspective, the fantasy-fullfilment purpose of the album was apparent not only on the videos, but also in the kiss between Spears at Madonna at the Video Music Awards. Finally, Andsager explained that " has, perhaps, taken her sexuality to its extreme—for network television, at least—at the age of 22"