How Christina Aguilera Changed My Life Forever

Fade in.
The year: late 2002. 
Location: Earth.
The questions on this young mans mind: What have you done to yourself, Christina? And how can I do it to myself?

Alright. Full disclosure here. The initial response to Christina's performance that year was admittedly less life changing and more...eye opening, in a very physical and lustful sense. For a solid month I just did not know what to do with what I was seeing from this seemingly innocent pop princess, shaking the dirt off in a way that actively begged for more dirt to be thrust on for shaking off. As a recovering romantic, it blew my goddamn mind! That the human body can move in such a way that I could forgive the horrifically catchy, yet ultimately irritating noise this creature produced was simultaneously impressive, and depressing to behold.

You have to understand I was on a very different path at the time. I was a scholar, a son, an artist; torn between living the life I wished to live, and the life that was expected of me. I lived off a single bottle of Gatorade and a small bag of crisps a day so that I might put what little finances I had toward art supplies without revealing the fact that I had been indulging in "meaningless endeavours".  After all, a future Electrician shouldn't be wasting his money on such trivial things. At the time, I could accept this premise. Free thinking hadn't occurred to me yet and Electricians do make a substantial income, so it wasn't an entirely unappealing punchline. Certainly not a satisfying one, though.

I walked the halls of a fine institution with a quiet contempt for the provocative, because what was that worth to a young man in love with love? For him, this girl with bizarre taste, style, and a massive brain on her shoulders was far more sexy than any tube top or micro-skirt would ever be. It may well still be to be honest but it's a pretty close race now. I had a sense of propriety, of integrity, of dignity. and anything else was anathema to who and what I thought I was at the time.

Enter the "Dirrty" music video.

Suddenly it was all so disturbingly clear. Base desire kicked in with a vengeance and what once was considered unthinkable was immediately a simple and unavoidable truth.

"My God" I thought. "I am exactly as easy as the type of guy I thought I wasn't."

The social barriers that I had invested years and years of time on went down like fucking card houses, and existence itself seemed to transform before my very eyes at the sight of this princess diving headlong into controversy and "self expression". From that moment on, everywhere I looked there was a very different play taking place, and even the stage itself seemed to be manipulated by it with ease. This went on for about a month, as previously mentioned.

Then I started becoming desensitized to the whole shebang and began thinking about an entirely different aspect of the matter. Why did this hit me so hard? Why hadn't I seen this of myself before? Why did it take this once innocent young lady weaving and swaying just so for me to see it now? The answer was in the very question. It never occurred to me that Ms. Aguilera might not have wanted to churn out the music she had before then. That perhaps it was all just another path lined out, not by her but by some other external force, driving her to be everything she didn't want to be. Maybe that isn't at all the case, but at once I knew why I was so enchanted with her dance. Freedom. And boobs and ass. But mostly freedom.

In a mere 5 minute video, this woman had lived more freely than I had in my entire life up to that point. Even with that endless animal bleat hounding my brain saying "good lord, would you look at them stems", I couldn't help but love the stark beauty of what she might really be doing. Who she was becoming. Who she may well have been the entire time, but for all the wrong reasons decided to hide. I still didn't care for her music but that's beside the point. She was setting herself free, and it was amazing to witness.

So here's to you, X-Tina. You're as dirrty as you want to be and while it may not have been your intention, it has made all the difference to this former depressed Electrician to be, now happily starving artist. BRAVO, NAUGHTY GIRL!