Christina Aguilera is embracing her curves and shares how she is taking control of her music and of her body in a recent interview.
Appearing on the Sept. 29 cover of Billboard magazine, the 31-year-old singer opens up about the struggle to stay thin in the music industry.
The 31-year-old "Your Body" singe is currently promoting her new album, Lotus, and shared with the magazine why she no longer feels the pressure to maintain a stick thin figure, despite the demands of the music industry.
"During the promotion of my album Stripped [in 2002], I got tired of being a skinny, white girl," Aguilera says. "I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl."
"The next time my label saw me, I was heavier, darker and full of piercings!" the five-time Grammy Award winner laughs. "Let me tell you, that wasn't an easy pill for them to swallow. I had gained about 15 pounds during promotion and during my Stripped tour [with Justin Timberlake, 31].
They called this serious emergency meeting about how there was a lot of backlash about my weight. Basically, they told me I would effect a lot of people if I gained weight -- the production, musical directors."
And at the time, Aguilera gave in to the pressure of industry standards: "[They claimed] people I toured with would also miss out if I gained weight because I would sell no records or tickets for my shows. I was young, so I lost the weight quickly and was toothpick thin during Back to Basics promos and touring."
But after the 2010 flop of her album Bionic and her divorce from then-hubby Jordan Bratman, Christina has taken control of her image and insisted upon creating her next album on her own terms.
"I told them during this Lotus recording, 'You are working with a fat girl. Know it now and get over it.' They need a reminder sometimes that I don't belong to them. It's my body," Aguilera adamantly states. "My body can't put anyone in jeopardy of not making money anymore-my body is just not on the table that way anymore."
Christina released sexy music video for the first single, "Your Body" in which she has no problems showing off her new curves.
