Christina Aguilera Reflects On Backlash She Got After 'Dirrty' Release

When Christina Aguilera rebranded herself ahead of her album, "Stripped," she did away with her conservative and mainstream persona. Instead, she dyed her hair black, took nude pictures, and began to release sexually overt music, like "Dirrty." 

This came as a surprise to many of her audience, primarily because feminism and body autonomy was spoken about in hush-hush tones at the time. However, in her interview with Cosmopolitan, Christina Aguilera explained that she won't change anything.

"I love the female body, and I think it's something to be proud of, not something that men should dictate ownership of," she said, as reported by Billboard. "'Dirrty' was extremely controversial at the time, but it would be nothing now. I hope I paved the way and helped set the ground rules that women can be any version of themselves they wanna be and proud of it."

This, however, wasn't the first time she was speaking about it. In March, she told Paper magazine, "It was an exciting and controversial time for me. Either women are not sexual enough, or we're not fulfilling enough of a fantasy for you, but then if we're overtly sexual or feeling empowered in a certain kind of way, we're shamed for it."

The music video was directed by David Chapelle and took place in a dimly-lit boxing club. It had all the risqué clothing and a bad vibe that came out of the blue.

An Unleashing of the "Dirrty" song showed us clearly that her vanilla days were over.

"It was that pop-star time of N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and me. When we came out, there was an essence of innocence that you had to sort of portraying blindly," Aguilera says, speaking from her home in LA. "And I wasn't about to play that game; I wasn't that girl. I wanted to be honest and truthful. So I came out with Dirrty, and that was my f**k-it moment. That was me stepping up and saying I was a woman proud of my sexuality. I was proud of my vulnerability. I was proud of the fact that I've fought my way through this industry."

Her second Spanish album, "La Fuerza" dropped on January 21, 2022. In the interview, she disclosed how important it was for her children to connect to her Latin roots just as she did.

"There's truly nothing like Latin love and energy … Growing up as a little girl, it was a language spoken in my house — my dad is from Ecuador, and my mother was fluent in Spanish," she stated. "When they divorced, I stopped hearing the language. You have to keep that up and surround yourself with Spanish. Doing it now was extra important, even though it's not my first language and out of my comfort zone. For my children, I wanted to show them what was part of them and mommy. You can always learn something about your roots and culture. It's so important to me as a mother to approach the material now differently."

"La Fuerza" is the first of Aguilera's three-part album to be released this year.

While she featured on Washington D.C.'s "El Zol 107.9" to talk about new music, the artist was asked about her "Stripped" album ahead of its 20th anniversary.

"It's crazy; we are planning how to make this an incredible celebration of such a special album," she began. "After all these years, I hear all these stories and what it means to people. I felt like I was coming into my own. Everything about the woman that I was. We're going to be celebrating, for sure!"

The singer, who also doubles as a songwriter, was born on December 18, 1980, in New York. She began her foray into music as a cast member on "The All-New Mickey Mouse Club." She quickly rose to the spotlight after the release of her hit single, "Genie in a Bottle." 

This earned her a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Her other hit singles include "Lady Marmalade," "Come on Over Baby," "What a Girl Wants," and the sexually overt "Dirrty." 

Over the years, Aguilera has served as a coach and mentor on the singing reality show "The Voice."

At a tender age, Aguilera developed a deep love of music. By the time she got to junior school, Aguilera's sonorous voice had become a household name through many local talent shows, causing envy from her schoolmates and even some parents. It became so bad that her mother eventually decided to home-school Aguilera.