Joyful 1997, everybody: Christina Aguilera is 17 once more. On Monday, Carcy journal debuted a canopy that featured the 44-year-old trying remarkably not 44, apparently Benjamin Button’ing.
Which is to say: Xtina appears younger—terribly younger. Suspiciously younger. Her cheeks sculpted, her buccal fats forgotten, her physique snatched. On-line, guesswork erupted as to how the “Dirrty” songstress attained her timeless physique, past make-up and retouching and Skims. Is it the work of a deep airplane facelift, mentioned to yank subterranean muscle skyward? Is it fats alternative with a fats matrix donated from, erm, corpses? Another mysterious, price-of-a-condo process? Her ’90s nachos are recent out of the oven.
The stumbling block for me isn’t how Aguilera appears however how a lot it issues to us. The feminist in me doesn’t assume we must always even be commenting on the looks of a Grammy-winning pop juggernaut, however one’s picture is such an integral a part of pop stardom.
I don’t need to blindly glorify the efficient work she’s (seemingly) had executed, nor do I need to be part of the legions of tweeters dunking on a lady’s appears (at the present time!?). Is Xtina a wonderful wine or one other sufferer of our lookist tradition? Neither reply feels fairly appropriate. Aguilera’s physique is her personal rattling enterprise.
We’re all somewhat answerable for a tradition that hums on the floor degree of womanhood, seldom bothering to go a lot deeper; we observe, we assess, we swipe onward. We love and have fun folks trying wonderful, but when we actually dig into what wonderful means to us, issues can begin to get murky. A girl trying nice is begrudgingly synonymous with heterosexual arousal and signifiers of her fertile prime: eyes and lips enlarged, mimicking an orgasmic state; supple breasts; childbearing hips. I’m not saying that you just have to appear like a fertility doll with the intention to look good, nor that social or sexual approval is the final word objective for self-representation, however these beliefs have lengthy permeated our requirements of magnificence. Beneath the patriarchy, it’s nearly not possible to separate feminine magnificence from the male gaze.
A girl’s proper to lean into, or away from, these social codes is completely her alternative; that goes with out saying. However the issue with the Xtina discourse is that we’re not speaking about her singing, her subsequent album, her wealthy interior life. We’re not even actually speaking concerning the trend, and we love to speak trend. We’re far more hung up on how 2025 Xtina mirrors the Xtina all of us agreed was scorching in 1997, how she has maintained the visible cues that made her arouse a complete planet.
