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Main >> Previous Updates >> April 2007 >> Article ID 10377
 Agent Provocateur (Nylon April Article Excerpt) | Type: Magazine Article |
| | Agent Provocateur | Apr 2007 | by FIORELLA VALDESOLO
 Christina Aguilera: Guilty Pleasure? Not anymore.
“Dirty. Filthy. Nasty. Too dirty to clean my act up,” the hushed voice of Redman declares as David LaChapelle’s notoriously lurid lens zooms in on Christina Aguilera’s rear end, which is covered only with a scrap of red Lycra and framed by the famous leather chaps that would inspire countless headlines. The camera eagerly follows the miniature, bare-limbed pop star through a squalid underground fight club, watching as she straddles a motorcycle twice her size, gyrates against the pavement disturbing puddles of murky water, and engages in a round of bare-knuckle sparring with a masked competitor, all with an aggressive, defiant, resolutely masculine bravado. The 2003 video for “Dirrty” sparked a media frenzy over the supposedly sullied pop star, everyone aghast at what had become of the no longer G-rated Mickey Mouse Club member. Now, almost five years later, Aguilera remains refreshingly unapologetic about the entire matter.
“‘Dirrty’ was my take on coming of age,” says a decidedly unsullied Aguilera in our dimly lit corner perch in the plush environs of the bar at Beverly Hills’s L’Ermitage Hotel. “It was a song about being free of any inhibitions and just letting it all out and cutting loose. I had so much fun on that video and I felt so empowered. If anything, I look back and realize that the greatest thing about it was that no matter what your opinion was on it, whether you loved it or you hated it, people were talking about it.” Aguilera is not one to shy away from raising a few eyebrows, and in fact, her eagerness to do just that makes her easily comparable to Madonna, whose name creeps up repeatedly over the course of our conversation. To think that a pair of chaps and some bikini-clad hand-to-hand combat could ruffle feathers all of these years after Madonna kissed a black Jesus in “Like a Prayer,” and toyed with androgyny in all its shapes and forms in “Justify My Love,” is shocking in itself. But with Aguilera it seems the shock wasn’t caused by an actual physical transformation, but by her theoretical fall from grace. What had happened to the sun-kissed teenager swiveling her hips on the beach in the video for “Genie in a Bottle?”
Well, according to Aguilera, that girl barely even existed. “I felt so pent up and locked inside this image by the people around me controlling me,” she explains. “Pop had a huge explosion at the point that I first came on the scene. Everyone was telling you what to do and what to wear, and what to say, and how to be. It was just too much after a while.” So for the release of her second album Stripped, Aguilera was determined to get as far away from the squeaky clean bubblegum image she had been confined to for her debut. She certainly succeeded in creating a chasm between the two, and for all the public criticism she endured for her daring style choices during the Stripped era, few could deny the quality of the tracks. “Can’t Hold Us Down” was a “you go girl” anthem seemingly in response to the trash talk she was subjected to from now irrelevant public figures like Carson Daly and Fred Durst; “Walk Away” intimated at the bluesy styles which would take center stage on her next album; “Singing My Song” was an octave-defying rafter shaker; and “Beautiful,” the heartbreakingly simple and honest Linda Perry-penned ballad that was named one of the top 10 saddest songs ever by Dr. Harry Witchel for its ability to bring the most people to tears. But as Aguilera is quick to point out, that was then—“I’m not the same person who released ‘Genie’ and then ‘Dirrty.’”
One look at Aguilera now and that fact is clear. Gone are the nine piercings (at least the visible ones) that Rolling Stone once took the time to map out.
For the rest of the article, pick up a copy of the magazine (or read it at CPA) |
 Source: Nylon | |
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