This image was lost some time after publication.

For those of you who gazed in horror upon the gum-snapping octopod on Dateline NBC that appeared to have devoured Britney Spears, your fears/hopes are unfounded: According to her upcoming Harper's Bazaar interview (the one in which she continues her ongoing campaign to lead a normal life out of the eye of the press by posing naked and pregnant on the cover), Spears says she can hardly wait to regain her taut, serpent-charming midriff and go back on tour:

"I can't wait to do that again," Spears, 24, tells Harper's Bazaar in its August issue, on newsstands July 25. "But I really have to take my time and do it right and be safe. Actually ... not that safe. When you perform, you have to be dangerous." [...]

Spears plans to get back into fighting shape after Baby No. 2 due this fall is born.

"After this baby, I'm going to get really intense with it."

It's nice to see Britney approaches performance with the same daredevil swagger with which she tackles motherhood, throwing all forms of caution, logic, and children to the wind as she follows nothing but her own fearless, pop-warrior instincts. Knowing how motivated she is, however, we can only hope she gives herself an adequate amount of postnatal recovery time before getting "intense with it." A child should spend its first moments bonding in its mother's bosom, not hearing her scream "Is it out of me yet?!" as she scrambles onto an awaiting Stairmaster trailing a freshly-snipped umbilical cord.