Posted on 11/15/2002 11:55:10 AM PST by Coeur de Lion
I'm waiting in line at the newsstand with my very observant two-year-old daughter, and she is pointing to Rolling Stone magazine.
On the cover is 21-year-old singer Christina Aguilera, sprawled on a red velvet blanket. She is wearing black leather boots, black nail polish, one studded bracelet, ratty hair extensions, and as my child has so innocently noted, nothing else. Aguilera's privates are strategically hidden behind a guitar; her backside is tastelessly, tritely, exposed.
The article lays bare all the silly, sordid details of Aguilera's new album (appropriately titled "Stripped"), her new hardcore music video (titled "Dirrty," with an extra "r" thrown in for, you know, edge) and her transformation from bubble-gum, Mickey Mouse Club member to foul-mouthed vixen. The young woman who once sweetly warbled the theme song to the Disney movie, "Mulan," now grunts and writhes in a thong and kneepads, thrusting herself onto every moving object in her way, while "singing" the following "lyrics:"
Ah, dirrty (dirrty) Filthy (filthy) Nasty, you nasty (yeah) Too dirrty to clean my act up If you ain't dirrty You ain't here to party (woo!)"
DJ's spinning (show your hands) Let's get dirrty (that's my jam) I need that, uh, to get me off Sweat until my clothes come off
In a pathetic attempt to prove that this is not just a made-for-TV act, Aguilera has been spotted around New York City reenacting her "Dirrty" video in popular nightclubs. The New York Post's gossip page even launched a "Christina Aguilera Skank Watch," which tracked her recent visits to local stripclubs, where she "got lap dances" "fondled the breasts of a buxom stripper," and "was spotted cuddling with some sexy female friends at a "Drunk Love" party.
"F*** the pretty," Aguilera retorts when asked by the Rolling Stone reporter about her tamer, younger years as a teen idol.
"F*** the dessert -- where's the tequila?" she exclaims apropros of nothing.
Aguilera's other favorite f-word is "flava." As in: "I want the boys with the flava." Explaining why she doesn't usually date "white boys," Aguilera expounds with faux ghetto flair: "He's got to have some flava and edge to him. I don't discriminate because of color. I actually dated my first one recently. I put some cream in my coffee." Flava lover Aguilera herself is paler than vanilla ice cream when not slathered in coffee-colored, self-tanning lotion.
"I don't see anything wrong with being comfortable with my own skin," Aguilera snaps defensively, as she strikes another gangsta pose and shows off her ridiculous body piercings-which Rolling Stone has painstakingly diagrammed for the masses.
As I am returning the trashy magazine to the newsstand rack, my toddler chirps in again: "Mama, where's her shirt?" I answer: "Her mama forgot to tell her to put one on." My daughter, naturally, has a follow-up question:
"Well, where's her mama?!"
That's exactly the question I ask myself whenever we encounter some young Aguilera look-a-like and her friends hanging out at the mall with their thong straps glittering out in the open, their hip-huggers succumbing perilously to the forces of gravity, their noses and eyebrows and tongues marred with metal, and their faces plastered with red light district makeup.
Where were their mamas-and dadas-to teach them that slutty is not sexy? Gutter talk is for vagrants, not for young ladies who want respect from the world. Promiscuity isn't a sign of maturity. It's a sign of self-loathing. Being "comfortable in your own skin" doesn't require having to bare every last inch of it in public.
From Madonna, to Britney and Christina, to the under-dressed teens at the mall, legions of girls have been raised to believe that letting it all hang out is the only true path to womanhood. Christina Aguilera is a sad symptom of this cultural zeitgeist. Stripped of her inhibitions and sense of self-restraint, it's much too late for mama to put her peep-show-profiteering daughter's shirt back on.
This naked truth cannot be disguised: The era of radical feminist sexual liberation has produced a generation of shameless skanks.
Well I wonder what we can expect, when girls from the age of 8-10 on walk around with text printed across the butts of their shorts... I mean what is up with that? And more often than not, its something sports/school or team related, that just blows my mind. Teenage boys are gonna look at teenage girls butts, no matter what, there is no need to draw attention to it like that.. its not cute, and I'll be damned if my daughter ever goes out in public like that.
No Gloating!
Actually, the whole teen-slut era is about done. Watch Avril Lavigne if you don't believe it. Just like Nirvana came along as the antidote to the excesses of 1980s big-hair metal bands, Lavigne is providing the antidote to the teen sluts. Aguilera will be the last of them. She is already a laughingstock. She has jumped the shark.
I don't know, I think cheap street bitch and skank, better describes her look.
haha... well, from a male perspective, I have to tell you, every guy over the age of 12 knows, you never marry a skank. Guy may chase a skank around for baseline urges, but no guy worth a damn is going to marry one. That's been the truth since time began. There have always been "skanks" for lack of a better term, they aren't the ones you bring home to mom and dad, and never were. There is absolutely NOTHING empowering about being slutty. I am not saying women should never dress up a little provacatively and enjoy the attention they get from it, but to think one has to dress that way, and act provocatively at all times, is comical. And damn sure no way a child should be doing it.
You are probably right.
But everything sorta goes in cycles. Back in the mid to late 1980's, the popular women performers were like Madonna and Janet Jackson, who did dance music and played no instruments. Then, in the early 1990's, you had people like Cheryl Crow, Allanis Morrisette and Jewel who played more of a rock sound and played instruments. Then it kind of changed again in the lat 1990's to the dancing/no instrument types. The big bucks are only brought by a certain style for so long. Then, something "new" comes along, and then something else is eventually repackaged.
Musical trends are funny. The Ska trend(ick), punk trend, sensitive male trend, canadian band trend......
I don't know? She has the best voice out there. Very expressive when she is not singing pop drivel. She surprised me enough to actually consider buying her latest album. She does seem to be having trouble getting anyone to take her seriously though. She should give up on the pop diva image and just do Blues and other songs where her voice really shines. I think she is caught up in trying to compete with Brittany.
Did the word ever really "go away"? I've always liked it. It's pithy, visceral, nasty sounding; a perfect piece of invective.
Also consider that these young females are typically discovered by middle-age white male music executives. I think they are just living out their perversions through the girls. I think the executives push this stuff and convince the gilrs it will help sales, but they just really want to see these young gils naked out there. I can just imagine what the board room meetings sound like a few weeks before people such as Christina and Britney are going to be on some awards show and perform. "Hey, i got an idea - lets have her strip down almost naked, and have this big snake - and have her thong hanging out - yeh"(as they high-five each other and laugh hysterically).
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