first round

(3) Christina Aguilera, “Dirrty”
SQUEAKED BY
(14) The Veronicas, “Untouched”
313-303
AND WILL PLAY IN THE SECOND ROUND

Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the song/essay with the most votes at the end of the game. If there is a tie, we will play a one-hour overtime (and repeat until we have a winner). Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/7/24.

It’s About Time For My Arrival: asha galindo on christina aguilera’s “dirrty”

You can only be 21 once, and there was a first time for those chaps, and it was a pretty epic thing. —Christina Aguilera on Dirrty

I stole a purse. Someone’s purse. On purpose. I’m telling you it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was intoxicated, so almost everything seemed like a good idea. A third or fourth Adios Motherfucker? Good idea! Dance to bad pop remixes? Great idea! Go out to the patio for air and see a Coach purse all by its lonesome? Steal it! Definitely seemed like a good idea. Besides, my friends Mark and Lisa didn’t stop me. They watched me grab it, watched me tuck it under my arm, under my jacket, and lead the way to the exit, stopping to get hand-stamped on the way so we’d get back in. In my memory, they cheered my petty criminality. “Our little Winona!” The run to the car a few blocks away was exhilarating. I did that. I lived.
Once safely inside the car we opened the bag: a cell phone, a Ruby Woo Red MAC lipstick, $2 cash, and a Texas ID. We split the booty. Mark took the $2 (back inside he used it to buy Blow Pops from the bathroom lady). Lisa got the lipstick, and I got the purse. We briefly discussed how or why we “actually” did that when the phone rang. We all screamed wildly, as if the people in the club could hear us, tossing the phone between us like a hot potato. Then, we did what any drunk 20-somethings who stole a phone and purse would do: we threw it out the car window and when it rang a second time, we decided to destroy the evidence by running it over.
It was the mid 2000s; branded handbags were all the rage. Louis Vuitton, Dooney & Burke, and my fave, Coach. On TV, Lauren Conrad was fighting with Heidi Montag while at clubs called Butter or eating at Ketchup. Carrying little handbags off their thin wrists, sparkly everything winking in the sunshine. I wanted what they had. I could blame it on the vapid capitalist consumerism that hallmarks American culture, and it seems more reasonable to blame my own drunk-ass lusting after a designer purse I was never going to afford, even if I wasn’t paying any rent. But I’m going to blame Christina Aguilera.
Though blame is not what I mean. “Dirrty” was more than a bop. It was more than something I regularly shook my ass to at Rich’s, the San Diego gay club we frequented, the site of my crime. “Dirrty” was an anthem for feminism, for I’m-not-a-girl-hell-yeah-I-have-pussy-ing. It's the anthem of rebelling against the squeaky-clean image and the safety of tight choreography that handlers prescribed for Christina to become a star.  Instead, she fought to have control over songwriting and more importantly her image. Even though her previous hits “Genie in a Bottle” and “What a Girl Wants” played with a suggestive but sanitized sexuality, “Dirrty” allowed X-Tina to fully embody a sexual, powerful woman. When she sheds her clothes, it’s like she’s shedding the old Christina, the adolescent self and moving into adulthood. 
With her soaring vocal range and her red-dipped blonde hair, Christina Aguilera set herself apart from the cookie cutter pop princesses that filled the 00s music scene. Her second album, Stripped, and its raunchy lead single, “Dirrty,” were evidence of this new, bolder, risk-taker: not Christina, but X-Tina. As in, the X across the tiny triangle of red fabric covering almost none of her ass, worn under ass-less chaps in the stunning music video for “Dirrty.” The video directed by hyper-real surreal savant, David LaChappelle, is a testament to all that is dirty, filthy, rough, raw, and writhing around in mud and wet clothing. And it announced X-Tina with style, and no room for grace. To begin the video our life sized Bratz doll zips up her motocross jacket, pouts her glossy lips, and hunkers her custom helmet emblazoned with X-Tina on her tiny head, before jumping on a motorcycle and riding into her favorite underground boiler room meets sex club. Just a night out with the girls. X-Tina then strips down to her chaps and bikini while being lowered from a cage, and unleashed onto an adoring sweaty audience who are pumped to watch her and her girls, “shake the room.”
I’d be remiss not to mention that all of this, the raunchy club, the women in cages, the plushies, and the girl fights, all of it was also featured in the Redman video for “Let’s get Dirty.” A song that Christina was a fan of, so much so that she asked Rockwilder to produce a track using the beat he created for Redman for her upcoming album. But even with the borrowed beat, and the homage in the video, “Dirrty” is a Christina Aguilera song, right down to the extra R. That this song is unlike the rest of the introspective, bluesy, emotionally powerful songs on Stripped, an album that sealed Christina’s place in the pop kingdom, and despite the backlash about the “ho” image she seemingly portrayed in the music video, “Dirrty” is her moment of becoming: X-Tina has arrived!

I may have been the naked-ass girl in the video, but if you look at it carefully, I'm also at the forefront. I'm not just some lame chick in a rap video; I'm in the power position, in complete command of everything and everybody around me. —Christina Aguilera on Dirrty

I was firmly in the pro-X-Tina camp. I viewed her taking control of her image, being obnoxiously raunchy, and letting the world know she was in charge as a watershed moment. Though I was a shy and quiet girl, still too afraid to process her own power and sexuality, I was inspired by X-Tina. I knew what she had done was subversive and ballsy and in the heat of the song as the bass is thumping and Red Man is barking, I transform into X-Tina too, if only for a few minutes. 
The first part of this transformation though was the shared bottle of Kamchatka vodka (the cheapest bottle we could find that was at least Russian) in the car before going into the club, so that we wouldn’t have to buy three or four Adios Motherfuckers (a concoction best described as a blue-long island iced tea) but would be uninhibited enough to dance with abandon. To Britney and Kelly Clarkson. To Cascade and Beyoncé. And especially to “Dirrty,” a song that never failed to pull us from the bar line or the bathroom stall for a chance to “shake the room.” If you’ve never danced in a gay club to Christina, it is an empowering and encouraging place, it was for me. When “Dirrty” was playing everyone on the dance floor were all pushing each other towards our dirrtiest, nastiest selves, emulating the slut drops and the subtle choreography from the video. But it wasn’t just being dirrty for “Dirrty’s” sake, we were prying loose the door from the jamb, opening our hearts and legs towards our own joy, infinite and free. 
I’ve never been freer than under the influence of vodka, theft, and X-Tina reminding me “it’s about time for my arrival.” Because I was drunk and dancing, I could be whatever I wanted to be, my eyes closed, my hips churning away in the assless chaps in my mind. Every lyric pushed me to the belief that it WAS time for my arrival. I too was freshly 21. I too was beautiful and young and had the world at my feet. I, too, was an alive sexual woman. I deserved to be a little bad, a little unruly, a little getting riled up in a hurry. I wanted to get dirrty. 
I became in my own moment of rebellion: I stole that purse. I’m not going to lie; stealing IS as exhilarating as The Bling Ring made it seem. I kind of recommend it.  Don’t make it a habit or anything but try it. Cheat a little. Test the boundaries. It feels awesome, a secret, a crime. I was the kind of kid who never did anything bad. Absolutely nothing. I never did anything, period. My mom didn’t have to set up any boundaries for me. I was too afraid to test them.  I never snuck out. I didn’t date. I never went to parties. I was never really drunk until I was 21. The worst thing I did was not clean my room on a regular basis. I was ripe and ready to bloom. Should that have manifested into petty theft? Shrug, but even Winona Ryder was a shoplifter. 
When my friends and I returned to the club from the car after destroying the evidence we were nearly immediately confronted with a crying blonde and a group of friends drunkenly trying to support her. I looked nervously at Mark, who shook his head and led the way to the ladies’ room where he bought Blow Pops we could stuff in our mouth instead of talk. I felt guilty. Again, I was drunk. That doesn’t seem like a good excuse. Now it seems like a symptom of alcoholism but I’m going to ignore that.
Had I known the victim was a woman my own age on vacation from Texas, I probably wouldn’t have done it. For all I know she was dancing right beside me, feeling every bit as Dirrty, and empowered as I did, having the night of her life, free from whatever shackles she had back in Texas. And I ruined her life, or at least her night. 
20 years or so later, I want to apologize for my younger self, and I can in retrospect understand the weight of this crime that I so nonchalantly share as an anecdote of my youth. What if she was flying home to Texas? And I dropped her ID card down a storm drain because that seemed like the funniest move. But there's a part of me that is unapologetic. It wasn’t that stealing a purse was good for me, or anyone, but it was a necessary mistake. It was a shy fat girl version of being lowered from a cage onto the dance floor. Ring the alarm, cuz I'm throwing elbows.

Ooh, I'm overdue
Give me some room
I'm coming through…

Asha Galindo is a writer from California. She thinks way too much about pop culture and would be content to live on tortellini and weed. She got her MFA from the Iowa Nonfiction Writer's Workshop. Her work has appeared in OxMag and Toyon. You can find her online, always @ashiepants or asha.writes

elise gorzela On “Untouched” by The Veronicas  

Untouched by The Veronicas was actually the first draft of the Bible but Jesus thought humanity wasn’t ready for it yet. —Tweeted by @jaypwhite­_

At night I used to lie awake listening to “Untouched” on repeat through my iPod. The slick metal felt cold in my clammy hands. Any moment to myself like on the school bus ride home or at night under my blankets surrounded by my stuffed animals that I hid when friends came over, I could truly be alone to let my thoughts meander and scatter to a song.
The opening violins of “Untouched” almost sound cathedral-like before synthesized drums introduce a beat that feels like it’s straining to keep up with itself, stuttering the way the lyrics later do in the song: ’Cause I can’t wait, wait, wait any m-more, more, more. It’s pop. It’s trying to rush toward the end while maintaining its adrenaline. All I had in 2008 when “Untouched” by The Veronicas played regularly on Boston’s radio station KISS 108, was adrenaline spiking my nerves and blood streams as I grew overnight, and my armpits started to stink. It’s one of those songs that made me want to dance if dancing meant sprinting down the street late at night. Just a kid, a twelve-year-old girl, not worried if there was something behind shadowed trees, but kind of hoping there was.
The Veronicas, who are actually neither named Veronica, are twins Jessica and Lisa Origliasso that mirrored the exact look I wanted in middle school. They both had eyes ringed thick with liner that stared up disinterested behind sleep dark bangs. In the music video for “Untouched,” that I’d watch on my family’s desktop computer, they look bored, half interested in their own feelings as they sing amid a party where emo boys lounged around under their swishy hair. I also wanted this nonchalance. That I would be so cool, so knowledgeable that someone pining after me was a normal occurrence, a situation I knew how to navigate and could fake being uninterested. My eagerness reeked off me. 

See you, breathe you,
I want to be you.

I wanted to look like The Veronicas. Or be them. Or kiss them. I wasn’t sure which. I wanted smoky eyes and to be mean but, like, in a hot way.

*

At St. Augustine’s School we became middle schoolers in fifth grade, officially, and I no longer wore a little kid plaid jumper but the coveted polo and skirt. No longer a little girl running around the playground in a little girl jumper. The Older Girl skirt was required to hit right at the knees and a polo tucked in at the waist. We found ways around these rules. Tucking in shirts was dorky so we rolled the edges, creasing the fold with our fingernails so it would stay put, giving the appearance of being tucked in. And we rolled the waist bands of our skirts as well to be a couple more inches above the knee. Knee high stockings in white or navy blue were pulled up high, especially during winter to try and hold in warmth as we prayed outside under the American flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Our shoes were black flats. Before middle school, before skirts, I wore chucky black Mary Janes, but we had moved into Older Girl territory, and it was more fashionable to wear sleek little ballet flats that left only a veil of plastic between me and the ground. There was something about becoming an Older Girl that felt like a curtain between me and the rest of the world was thinning. Anything was possible.
According to dress code rules, we weren’t allowed to wear nail polish that wasn’t a nude color or any hint of makeup. Once, my friend A came to school wearing mascara and Mrs. Meaney (yes, this is her real name) took a pack of makeup wipes out of her desk drawer and had A smear the black off her face in the middle of religion class.
On weekends, where the school dress code couldn’t touch us, I went over to A’s house where we practiced putting on eyeliner and painted our nails black. A and I messaged people on AIM while snacking on cut up melon her mom brought to us. We tried to draw manga characters or played World of Warcraft. We listened to Avril Lavigne, 30 Seconds to Mars, and The Veronicas. On repeat. The music loud as we dance-jumped around her room and scream-sang off key until we couldn’t catch our breath.
A and I took photos and then edited them on Picnik to post on Facebook. I looked at these photos obsessing, analyzing my jaw line and my lips, whether or not the expression on my face looked good or not. In a photo I remember but cannot find, my hair is flat from A straightening it, smudgy eyeliner rings my eyes as I glare from under the limp bangs crossing half my face. I’m wearing an Avril Lavigne Kohl’s line hot pink sweater with black stars that I’d bought with my mom’s Kohl’s Cash. My head is leaning on A’s shoulder as she looks up through clumped mascara lashes. My mimicry of the older girls I saw at the mall who lingered outside Spencer’s was never quite right.
At night, A and I slid on socked feet though her front door, put on our sneakers, and walked through her deserted neighborhood burning with adolescent energy. The hope and nervousness that, under veil of night and away from homework or nuns, we would happen upon an adventure. We called each other Soulmate because we had never met anyone else that got the other this well. We sometimes sprawled out side-by-side on A’s bed reading fantasy books in silence.
I devoured books about girls that slipped into other worlds or were transformed magically. In those books, if the main character was in love and if the person she loved touched her, grazing their fingers over her arm, it was described as burning. A trail of touch seared itself to the character’s skin, lingering, a mark that lasted after the person had left. I had never been touched in this way. I had never kissed someone except for a boy in kindergarten behind the shed on the playground, but that did not feel like what these books were describing. The idea of romance was something I only experienced vicariously. Other than books, music was my portal into other worlds and dreamscapes. I could imagine any scenario with a song thumping through my ears as the soundtrack. “Untouched” describes a desperate longing for someone where words fall short.

It’s not enough to say that I miss you
I feel so untouched right now, need you so much somehow.

I dreamed of what that might feel like. To be wanted that way. Wanting someone didn’t even really mean sex to me when I was twelve. When I tried to imagine kissing someone, late at night lying in my bed, I’d imagine two mouths mushing together and then one swallowing the other whole. I wanted to want someone and for someone to want me back that bad—where kissing meant consuming each other because we couldn’t stand to be apart.
When Sunday night came, I scrubbed at my painted black nails with remover, but I could never get them fully clean. I arrived at school with black rings around my cuticles that looked like dirt.

*

At St. Augustine’s, I was one of the few kids that weren’t Roman Catholic. My father had been raised by a Polish National Catholic priest and my mom went to a heavily French Canadian Roman Catholic church with her family growing up. When my parents got married, they decided to join a different church, to start their own family traditions. We were Episcopalian. So when my class walked into St. Augustine’s mass every first Friday of the month, I watched as my classmates dipped their fingers in the Holy Water to cross themselves. I wasn’t allowed to touch.
When our class went to confession, I sat in the pew with the other non-Catholic students in silence. Even though I wasn’t required to whisper my sins to the priest behind a curtain I still thought of all things I had done wrong. I was mean to my brother. I was mean to my mother. My room was never clean. I stole chapstick from CVS. I swore. I imagined kissing people all the time.
For religion class tests, after quiz questions on saints or popes, we sometimes had to write our own prayers. One test instructed me to write a prayer that reflected on my First Communion. I went up to the teacher and explained I wasn’t Catholic and hadn’t had a First Communion; my family went to an Episcopalian church. The teacher shrugged and said, “Imagine what it felt like then.”
I could do that; I spent most of my time imagining scenarios like running away, transforming into a magical being, opening a wardrobe and finding another world, being a famous singer in a band, or falling in love. I had crushes, multiple, and they changed each month. Except for one kid in my class that had long Tony Hawk hair. I’d draw hearts around our names in my journal where no one else could see. But mostly I was in love with fictional people like the goth girl from Danny Phantom. Or I dreamed of celebrities that I would never meet like Avril Lavigne and Jesse McCartney. I wanted Marty McFly to skate to my house on a hover board and one of The Veronicas to make out with me in the dim room from the “Untouched” music video. This is what I prayed for.
I didn’t have the word bi to describe myself at the time. When I told a friend, L, that I thought I was gay, because I sometimes imagined kissing girls, L said, “But you like boys, right? So, then you’re not gay.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I agreed; I probably wasn’t gay then. I tried to convince myself that my crushes on girls must’ve just been some crossover in my brain where I wanted to become them when I grew up. Not romance. 

*

One week in middle school, we had Chastity Week. My memory of the entire week is fuzzy because I didn’t really care what the two women leading Chastity Week had to say. I already had my opinions on God and rules. They stood in front of my seventh-grade class and told us the importance of abstinence and the miracle of life. We watched a documentary about having a baby where a man moaned whale noises against his wife’s bloated stomach. The facilitators said marriage was between a man and a woman. All I heard what they left out in that statement.
During that week, I remember one of my friends whispering to me and A, as we walked the mile run in gym class, that she thought she was pregnant. I pretended to know what I was talking about by reassuring her that maybe the pregnancy test was a false positive. I didn’t know what this term meant but had heard it before and so repeated it. I could imagine all I wanted, but I was naïve, untouched, a kid that had nothing to offer when a friend confided a secret asking for help.
One day that week, the two women leading Chastity Week split up the girls and boys. In the girls’ room, a piece of blank white paper was slid onto each of our desks. We were told to crumple it up. When asked to try and flatten it again, to revert it to its original state, the creases couldn’t be removed. They left grey shadows crisscrossing the surface. This was our soul, they told us. If we sinned, which included most of the things I dreamed about, our soul would be marked irreversibly.

*

The dial clicked with each circle of my thumb as I turned up the volume on my iPod while riding the school bus. I wanted the music so loud I couldn’t hear the other kids talking or the bus’s engine churning beneath us. “Untouched” begins with la la la’s that sound like the caricature of girlhood—light and frilly, but the lyrics shift to desperation, to hunger. Being a girl meant blood thumping my ear drums, messy, dangerous, the static of a thousand thoughts running. I thought I’d never grow up and so I wished for it to race by faster and faster like the second verse.
On the school bus, downtown slid by the windows, the river, the cemetery, we drove across the highway overpass that led into my neighborhood. As “Untouched” played, I felt that uncontrollable girlish want pulsing through.

‘Cause right now you’re the only thing that’s making any sense to me
And I don’t give a damn what they say, or what they think, think
‘Cause you’re the only one who’s on my mind.

I learned as an adult that Jessica Origliasso identifies as queer. She said in an interview with NME about the tabloids outing her in the 2000s, “I was 20. I didn’t want to give them an answer because I didn’t know what the answer was at the time…But all of our fans knew I was queer; I wrote about it in so many songs.”
I wasn’t aware of this in 2008, mostly because I didn’t read tabloids or magazines other than Seventeen, which I assumed offered the Holy Grail of Older Girl advice. But I wonder if there was something there that I sensed amid my own confusions. I didn’t know who I was or wanted to be. I was a kid that spent the majority of her time dreaming while listening to that song of what I could become. “Untouched” transported me some place else where life was dramatic and grand, that life held risks that were too great to not try for it. Every time I got a new scar, I’d show it off. I wanted to know the world, to have it impact itself on me, to touch me in a way that left a mark.  

Elise Gorzela is an essayist from New England. She currently teaches writing composition at Worcester State University. Her work can also be found in DIAGRAM.