Dirty Girl Cleans Up

"Pain is rewarding, in every capacity," Christina Aguilera tells me after we've spent two days together. She's talking about a tattoo needle -- she acquired some fresh ink commemorating her marriage last November -- but Christina's interest in pain, and pleasure, is well documented. It takes me a little longer to get up the nerve to ask her about her genital piercing. It's fascinating that Christina Aguilera subjected herself to this. It's an act of reckless courage that speaks volumes about her -- this chick is fearless, sensual, unique and tough. When I bring it up, at a Hollywood restaurant as we knock back some sparkling water, Christina's eyes roll back in her head and she gently clenches the tip of her tongue between her teeth. "I have a high tolerance for pain," she says. "But that one brought me joy."

Christina hasn't lost those defining qualities, but the diamond dazzler between her legs has since been removed -- it sits in storage, "cataloged" alongside the assless chaps and risqué stage lingerie of her dark, introverted "Dirrty" phase. These days they are no longer necessary. Inspired by her lifelong love of vintage soul, blues and jazz, as well as her marriage, Christina, 25, has spent the past couple of years reveling in the mutual joys of the personal and professional satisfaction that has eluded her for so many years.

Christina is soft-spoken and open. Just the same, she rarely makes eye contact. When she speaks -- in low tones that convey the contentment she's worked so hard to achieve in the last few years -- her eyes dart around the room. It's clear she trusts what she's saying; it's less clear she trusts in who she's saying it to. Two words figure large in her everyday conversation: "whatnot" (an all- purpose space filler, as in, "I would sing and do my little dance and whatnot") and "love" (a constant refrain, applied to the following: colorful people, checking out other people's CD collections, Danny Elfman's scores for Tim Burton movies, organized messes, her labelmaker, watching Roseanne reruns on Nick at Nite and -- most frequently -- her new husband, Jordan Bratman).

When Christina first struck it big at age nineteen in 1999 with "Genie in a Bottle," she felt confined by the wholesome strictures of teen pop. She rebelled on her second album, Stripped, co-writing fourteen of her songs, involving herself in the production, pushing sexual boundaries and transforming herself into her scantily clad alter ego Xtina. Along the way, she was widely derided for dressing like a streetwalker and -- in the memorable elocution of one Saturday Night Live skit -- constantly shaking "her man-hungry poon trap." But while the personal attacks flew, her music performed. Stripped sold 9 million copies worldwide, and the hip-hop-driven single "Dirrty" was followed up by "Beautiful," the "words can't bring me down" ballad with a video that took on body issues and sexual identity. The world began to notice that Christina was no one-trick pony.