Some members of Britney Spears’s camp have come up with quite an excuse to explain her recent less-than-flattering fashion efforts. An insider tells us that handlers at her label, Jive Records, are insisting that it was all part of her master plan leading up to the release of the August issue of W (that would be the one in which she finally admits to losing her virginity to Justin Timberlake). “They’re saying that they made her look so ugly that when Michael Thompson’s photos came out she would be so hot that people would be shocked,” our insider reports. Fashionistas find this all quite amusing since the shoot was apparently inspired, in part, by Teri Toye, a legendary transsexual from the eighties who modeled for the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Jean Paul Gaultier. Toye returned to her native Des Moines, Iowa, in 1987 to live the life of a suburban housewife. A W rep says that the only inspiration came from Velvet Underground singer Nico.OK SOMEONE FAN SPACEMIU>>> Spears’s rep insists the pop princess never planned to be ugly and is thrilled with the pics.