A few weeks ago James Lileks brought up the new Christina Aguilera song and video “Dirty”. He spoke of how she had managed to take all the pleasure that one could derive out of the carnal acts and made them feel grimy, dirty and something akin to human plumbing. At the time I had only heard snippets of the song and hadn’t seen the video. Now that I have, I realize that Lileks was dead on. This young girl, in trying to break the taboos of society and destroy her pop princess persona has managed to take all the fun out of sex.

She dresses in chaps and a thong. An outfit the Village People would kill for. She gyrates mechanically talking about sweat and licking and lap dances. Most of what she discusses has nothing to do with erotica or pleasure but, rather, of a sexual release that many men feel they need to attain anonymously from crab-infested professionals with self-esteem issues.

But that’s beside the point. Christina is doing her job and doing it well. She has destroyed whatever image she thinks she once had and replaced it with a finely tuned persona of a town whore. I’ve never found her attractive. She’s far too skinny. But I never actually thought I’d see her ass cheeks. I have now. I’m not a better man for it.

But Christina understands how to attract a teen audience. She’s doing what she needs to do by horrifying the parents and portraying the most extreme version of sex that she can. Her video will be forbidden by parents and decried by feminists. Though she will say that her music is dealing with a sexual awakening of a female, one can’t help but think that she’s exploiting herself to sell more records. She looks like some gay cowboy’s fantasy of what a heterosexual male thinks is attractive.

In reality, she’s wrong, of course. Granted, to attract a teen boy or a pervert, the fewer clothes she wears, the better. But to attract a mass audience, she’s going about it the wrong way.

I liken it to the mating call of the teen male that you hear blaring through your neighborhood at night. The thick, distorted ba doom boom of the thumping bass that comes out of the hatchback of some stupid, souped up Honda. The boy bobs his head, drives with one hand and tries his best to attract the female of the species who, apparently, can only hear the lowest range of sounds.

He does get attention. But when I see him, I just think about how much money he spent on that sound system and how poorly he’s using it. I desperately want to sit down with him and reset his levels so that you can actually hear the whole song. Not that he cares. But, sonically speaking, he’s going about this music all wrong. Crystal clear audio is a beauty to behold.

In a way, this is what Christina is doing. She’s trying to attract by extremes. She doesn’t realize that history shows that suggestion works far better than beating someone over the head with your point. Betty Page is still considered a sex goddess because she was able to suggest sex without getting naked. The same can be said of many of the screen sirens of long ago. If you want to talk about a long-standing sexual fantasy, ask any grown male about Emma Peel and her cat suit. Or Julie Newmar. It’s the suggestion of sex that gets men riled up, not the blatant flaunting of it.

But it will take a long, long time for someone like Christina to realize this. Let’s face it, she ain’t exactly the smartest orange at the produce stand. If she wants to learn how to market herself, she should talk to Eminem. The man is a brilliant marketer. He set up a persona and does nothing to break it down. He doesn’t even talk much about it outside his music. He remains an enigma. Nothing about Christina Aguilera is an enigma anymore. I know what her butt cheeks look like. There’s no mystery.

We try to stop kids from doing things that we find pleasurable. Not because we don’t want them to experience them, but because we want them to learn control. It doesn’t just apply to sex, but also drinking, smoking, breaking things, over-eating. Teaching kids to control their impulses allows them to grow up with a good balance between what is fun and what is appropriate. There is a time and place for just about everything and a good rule of thumb is to always do whatever it is in moderation. Too much of anything, good or bad, serves no purpose.

So, Christina, I know that your new album and image is “all about the stank.” But, my dear, no one wants stank. Those that do are not the people you want to attract.

When it comes to sex, my young friend, simmering works better than boiling over. You catch more flies with honey, as they say, than with something that looks like it needs to be washed, disinfected and tested for communicable diseases.