Japan hates pregnant Britney

That's a pregnant Britney Spears on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. I didn't recognize her either. A blown-up version of this cover is causing controversy in Japan, and has been banned from Tokyo's subway system because it is "too stimulating for young people."

Yes, the same Tokyo subway system where, as one of the payoffs for suffering through the dreary life of a Salaryman, middle-aged Japanese men get to grope as many schoolgirls as they can reach during their long, crowded rides to and from work.

So it isn't really young people the Japanese transit authority needs to worry about over-stimulating. Furthermore, this isn't Hit-Me-Baby-One-More-Time-jailbait Britney we're talking about here. Instead it is the I-gave-up-my-singing career-to-have-two-children-by-age-25 Britney being represented.

Who knew a country with a dangerously low 1.4 fertility rate would purport to find young motherhood so stimulating?

Really shouldn't Japan, of all places, be trying to represent pregnancy as glamorous?

In fact, the traditional-sex-shunning Japanese should be doing anything they can to promote to their young people the idea that pregnancy can be just as stimulating as slipping your hand down the skirt of the random girl in front of you.

Even if they did, I doubt many young Japanese women would start emulating Britney and become baby-making machines.

But it's never too late for them to start learning Mandarin.