I have loved many people in my life, but for a while, I loved Christina Aguilera the most.
It started as most millennial pop culture obsessions once did: standing in the aisles of a record shop. My dad said I could choose anything, so I chose ‘Stripped’, Aguilera’s second (and at the time, newly released) album.
Slotting it into the car’s CD player on the way home, I rolled down the windows and felt my old identity slipping into the breeze, replaced by a gust of something new.
Maybe I wasn’t a pre-pubescent girl obsessed with cartoon dogs and rainbow flannel skirts. Maybe I was a misunderstood woman with a powerful voice and poetic angst - I just hadn’t found the right low-rise jeans yet.
The years that followed were a blur of GeoCities fan pages, collecting every magazine poster I could find, and wearing a fake nose ring from Claire’s Accessories. I changed my Nokia ringtone to ‘Fighter’, perfected the dance routine from ‘Dirrty’, and kept the brochure from the 2003 Xtina tour beside my bed like a bible.
