SECOND round

(3) Christina Aguilera, “Dirrty”
cleaned out
(6) Blu Cantrell, “Hit Em Up Style (Oops)”
107-83
and will play in the sweet 16

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 at the end of regulation, we will play a one-hour overtime (and repeat until we have a winner). Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/14/24. (Note that Arizona does not do Daylight Saving time, so AZ time now = Pacific.)

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

GOOD 4 HER: KATERINA IVANOV PRADO ON BLU CANTRELL’S “HIT ‘EM UP STYLE (OOPS!)”

So, you’ve been done dirty. Two-timed. Stepped out on. Your lover swore up and down that the bruise on his neck was just a mosquito bite. You got a DM that began, “hey girl, are you still with____?” As Shakespeare said, your treasure was poured into foreign laps. As Blu Cantrell said, your man’s gone buck-wild.
There are many healthy, therapist-approved ways to recover from infidelity laden relationships, but the song “Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)” won’t entertain them and neither will this essay. A Y2K banger from self-professed one-hit-wonder Blu Cantrell, this song is the musical equivalent of Princess Di’s revenge dress. It’s the early 2000’s answer to an eye for an eye: when you go low, best believe I’ll go lower. And like the original proverb (not the Gandhi makes the whole world blind remix), this song doesn’t deny the need for comeuppance—instead, it considers the necessity of getting even.
Concerned primarily with vengeance—the wayward step-sibling of justice— the lyrics are based on Cantrell’s personal experience with an unfaithful boyfriend, and the shopping spree that resulted via his credit cards. “Hey ladies,” the chorus instructs, “when your man wanna get buck-wild, just go back and hit ‘em up style.” In other words, take him to the cleaners. Cantrell’s lyrics are completely unconcerned with turning the proverbial cheek. She appoints herself judge, jury and executioner on behalf of the jilted, and delivers her verdict: “for all the lies you’ve told, this is what you’re owed.” As a gleeful middle finger, the song samples Frank Sinatra’s “Boys Night Out,” a celebration of the old guys-will-be-guys mentality, beginning, “hey mister, build a fence around your sister!”
Favoring the dramatic, “Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)” heartily green lights creative retaliation. Go ahead and put your ex’s motorcycle on Craigslist advertising free pick up (you know, allegedly)! Sign him up for eternal spam mail from every branch of the armed forces, plus Scientology! Catfish him until he thinks he’s falling for a fake Instagram account! Go to Neiman Marcus “on a shopping spree-ah” and put a wrecking ball through his credit limit! Oops!
Cantrell’s lyrics—and their encouragement of getting spectacularly and vindictively even—engage with the questions: who is revenge for and under what circumstances is it acceptable? What happens when justice cannot be reached through state sanctioned or otherwise systemic avenues of power?  True revenge—not that born of pettiness or delicate ego—acts as a potential avenue through which the marginalized ensure that those who wield power and agency cannot get away with harming those who do not. Even the desire for retribution acts as a reflexive analysis of the self; there is nothing more powerful than the realization: I didn’t deserve that. Like Athena springing from the head of shitty old Zeus, revenge births subjectification.
This makes revenge inherently political and thus, dangerous for those at the top of existing structures of power, who often condemn such self-sanctioned justice through universalist preaching against violent resistance. Cries for vengeance are flatly answered with “good things come to those who wait,” or the ever-limp adage, “the best revenge is living well.” It’s a very Puritan approach: yes, things are bad now, but don’t bother trying to make them better! Just suffer patiently, you’ll be rewarded in heaven! You know, probably! This criticism of vengeance and push for patience-driven alternatives falls flat when one considers: is turning the other cheek simply the act of looking away from an injustice?
There’s been a determined rise of pro-revenge discourse in recent media: Gone Girl, Promising Young Woman, Lady Vengeance are just a few films that engage with the trope of women determined to get even, even if it means ensuring their own destruction. Good for her, we think, as we delight in our anti-heroine’s ruthless drive. Cantrell’s positionality in this song is one of the scorned woman: a figure that is historically disenfranchised and derided. Revenge from this perspective isn’t pettiness, it’s insubordination. Culturally, we’re fascinated by the scorned woman, but our understanding of the trope is generally limited when, as listeners or readers or viewers, we struggle to get past our usual hang ups regarding what the subject should want. “She ruined her whole life in the process, was it worth it?” Cut to a montage of our protagonist post-revenge, staring blankly into the distance: “she got what she wanted, but is she happy now?”
This is what traditional analysis often misses: vengeance isn’t about achieving goodness or happiness. Vengeance isn’t interested in personal gain;it is one of the very few times we decenter the needs of the self. It’s interested in the action of resistance, not the categorization of its outcomes into cost vs. benefit. There is no exact formula for revenge, no x+ r= settled up. And we the vengeful are often poor allocators. Our actions are often disproportionate, overly cruel. Vengeance is inherently unbalanced, a chemical reaction that threatens backsplash onto the inflictor as much as the inflicted. Blu knows this, noting in her lyrics that through enacting her revenge, she is also destroying a life she’s labored to achieve, a home she’s built—she sings of “paying the bills a month too late, it's a shame we have to play these games,” presumably aware she’s destroying her credit along with his. It's a sacrifice she’s willing to make and a warning to the listener: do not expect to light others ablaze without burning your own fingers.
Revenge is also not equivalent to restoration or self-actualization: in fact, it often requires the sacrifice of such states. Cantrell doesn’t shy away from her own despair, crooning her way to the song’s bridge, where she longs for the good old days of relationship peace. Beseechingly, she asks her ex-lover, “what happened to the days when we used to trust each other?” Infidelity is a very specific kind of betrayal, one that can make you lose some of your grip on reality. Your pride takes a hit. Your little flame of faith is stamped out. You question your own judgment. Your world becomes a dark room and you’re just running your hands over the walls in desperate search for the switch. Revenge requires a similar suspension of reality, and in these lines, Blu subtly warns her listener: do not expect to feel whole and healed once you’ve succeeded.  In “Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)” Cantrell considers that sometimes, moving on is not about reaching peace for yourself; it’s about creating problems for others.
The song’s anguish is fleeting, and the bridge closes out with a delicious evisceration: “and all of the things I sold? Will take you until you get old, to get 'em back without me.‘Cause revenge is better than money, you’ll see!” Ending the introspection with a steep vocal run and a rousing return to the chorus, Cantrell considers the joy of vengeance. An unsavory joy, sure. But one that is completely and utterly hers.

Katerina Ivanov Prado is a writer, professor, and vengeance evangelist.