Exhibit C: "What a Girl Wants" by Christina Aguilera

Christina Aguilera wants to be the nasty Britney Spears. She desperately wants to be objectified. "I have breast implants! I have breast implants!" she seems to scream, but no one really listens. And so she's decided to take it up a notch. "What a Girl Wants" shouldn't be an offensive song. The chorus actually reads: "What a girl wants, what a girl needs/Whatever makes me happy and sets you free... Whatever keeps me in your arms/I wanna thank you for giving me time to breathe." There's some complexity there, right? (Bear with me. Just pretend there's some complexity.) But the video seems to be playing to a whole new set of lyrics. The plot? Christina and her posse strut into a room full of drooling guys, one of which is presumably her boyfriend. I say that he might be her boyfriend because when she walks in, one of his friends says, "Hey, your girl is here." In any case, Christina rejects his come-ons, giving the impression that she won't be "his girl" until he knows all about "what a girl wants." Turns out I was expecting too much. Once the video gets going, it's very clear what a girl really "wants" and "needs." An orgy. Yup, by the end of the video, the girls are lapdancing for the boys, Christina is all over the guy who doesn't even know her name, and everyone's happy to get their groove on. And she tried to claim that "Genie in a Bottle" was a song about girl-power.

SOMAN'S SHORTS

Let us all have a moment of silence for Celine Dion who thankfully retired on Jan. 1, 2000.... Here's a rumor for you: Madonna, never very good at being subtle, wins coolness points for her antics on New Years Eve. At a party at Donatella Versace's in Miami, she and pal Gwyneth Paltrow were enjoying dinner when Jennifer Lopez and her posse decided to crash the festivities. Madonna, who's been dissed by Lopez in magazines, reportedly stood up and said "Dinner's over." And the dinner guests dispersed, leaving little Miss Puffy all by herself...I saw The End of the Affair last night and I'm convinced that Julianne Moore is one of the great actresses of our time and nobody seems to notice. She gives amazing performances consistently and still, no respect. Her time will come, I hope. (But it has to make you wonder, why is Ashley Judd famous? She's an awful actress)...Sharon Stone is getting butchered by the press after it was revealed that she's been bribing the Hollywood Foreign Press all these years with little gifts, designed to sucker them into giving her Golden Globe nominations. So that explains why she got nominated for The Muse and The Mighty... We'll take a two week break and come back on February 4 with a spring spectacular--interviews with Carson Daly, Julie Taymor, and, of course, the latest, greatest buzz...(Someone asked me the other day: "If you [k]now so much, why aren't you rich?")