Christina Aguilera is radiant despite the circumstances. She has just returned home to Los Angeles from Phoenix, Arizona, where she played the NFL Commissioner’s Super Bowl Party and will soon depart for Chile, where she’ll play the Viña del Mar International Song Festival. But currently, she is trapped in a Zoom room for the duration of a press junket.
Aguilera is 42 years old, and for 23 of those years, she has been an internationally famous pop star. More precisely, she is one of the few entertainers in human history for whom the term “pop star” is truly appropriate. More impressively, she is one of the few humans in human history who is able to make a Zoom room look truly glamorous. A wall of white cabinets suggests that she is beaming in from the dressing wing of her Beverly Hills manse, and a crouched assistant, periodically moving through the frame, indicates that there is work being done. There is always work being done when you’re Christina Aguilera. A center part divides her platinum hair, all liquid and incandescent, all sunlight illuminating waterfalls of milk.
In celebration of her spokesmanship with Merz Aesthetics and Xeomin, a brand of incobotulinumtoxinA injection treatment for frown lines between the eyebrows, Aguilera was able to grant Allure a 19-minute conversation on topics pertaining to beauty, video games, and injectables. “I think we all can rely on a little help,” she says, her cheeks bubbling up into a smile. “Why not?”
Allure: Can you describe for our audience what your makeup looks like right now?
Christina Aguilera: We’re giving a little at-home, kind of faux-natural-but-not-really-natural-maybe. We’ve got some shadow, some lashes. My lashes were looking busted today, so we had to give a little zhuzh there. It’s a good chill-glam look.
Allure: It looks great. We’re speaking on the occasion of your partnership with Xeomin and Merz Aesthetics. What’s your general attitude toward cosmetic injectables?
Christina: I think it’s great to share and to be honest and open about what you’re doing — in your comfort zone, of course. I’ve always been a pretty open book about embracing my body, my looks, and things like that.
But I’m a pretty reserved person when it comes to a lot of things. I think to each their own, and I think we [should] all do what’s right for us, so I don’t believe in judgment where that’s concerned whatsoever. But for me, I like to make sure what I put in my body is the safest it can be. I live a big life. [Editor’s note: While all injectable neurotoxins — Xeomin, Botox, Dysport, Jeuveau, and Daxxify — are purified versions of botulinum toxin type A, “Xeomin is sometimes considered the ‘naked toxin’ because it doesn’t contain the binding proteins that other brands do,” Kavita Mariwalla, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in West Islip, New York, has told Allure. “Those proteins aren’t harmful but theoretically they could be involved in cases of so-called ‘Botox resistance.'”]