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Stripped was the second album by Christina Aguilera. It was released on October 29, 2002. It has reached the top 5 of the album charts in both the US and UK and features two UK number one hits in "Dirrty" and "Beautiful." While the raunchy themes of the album attracted the most publicity—not all positive—the theme of self-acceptance is arguably the more important theme of the album.

1 "Dirrty" and sex

The move towards a raunchier image for Aguilera was shown in her appearance in the video for "Lady Marmalade" which showed her, Lil Kim, Pink and Mya dressed in lingerie. The track was produced by Timbaland and Missy Elliott and appeared on the Moulin Rouge!Moulin Rouge is a 2001 musical film directed by Baz Luhrmann, which tells the story of a young British poet and composer who falls in love with the star of the Moulin Rouge cabaret. It uses the colourful musical setting of Montmartre, a district in Paris, soundtrack for the Baz LuhrmannBaz Luhrmann (born Mark Anthony Luhrmann New South Wales, 17 September 1962) is an Australian film director. His films are distinguished by their flamboyant and colourful theatricality. Luhrmann graduated from NIDA in 1988 and has directed the following f film. The song, a remake of the 1975 hit by LaBelleLaBelle was an American disco group, melding dance music with funk and glam rock, resulting in such memorable songs as " Lady Marmalade". The group was led by Patti LaBelle, who later had a successful solo career. Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash and Cindy Birdso, went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The song also topped in Australia with the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack being the best selling album of 2001 in that country.

For Stripped, Aguilera had changed her fresh, youthful image into that of a highly sexualized woman with hip-hop and porn-star influences. After the release of that album, she has taken part in photo shoots for the magazines Maxim, Rolling Stone, and Cosmo Girl . Many of these photographs featured her nude or semi-nude. At the same time, Aguilera began to cultivate a more sexually provocative image. She denied that this change was a matter of publicity, claiming that the erotic emphasis better reflected her true personality than did the image she cultivated in 1999. She told German paper Netzeitung, "I like having sex. It's fun....I love experimenting with my sexuality. I want to try out as much as possible. It would be wrong of me to hide this side of my personality. I have fun being sexy and tough at the same time."

The video for her 2002 single "Dirrty" featured her writhing with members of both sexes including a female-only shower scene in which she was wearing only a thong and a bra. As she puts it, "I like the way I am. This is how I bring out my sexuality."

The "Dirrty" video also made the news when the government of Thailand banned the video from national television, because a pair of posters that appear in the background of the boxing ring advertise, in the Thai language, the sex tourism and sex with underage girls of Thailand. The producers and director of the video claimed to be ignorant of the meaning of the posters. She is currently banned from entering Thailand as it is considered to have offended the Thai people.

Musical peers such as Shakira, Jessica Simpson, and Kelly Osbourne criticized the video, but Aguilera responded by pointing out, "I may have been the naked-ass girl in the video, but if you look at it carefully, I'm also at the forefront. I'm not just some lame chick in a rap video; I'm in the power position, in complete command of everything around me. To be totally balls-out like that is, for me, the measure of a true artist."

Christina Aguilera was involved in a lesbian kiss with Madonna at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony on 28 August 2003 in the opening performance of Madonna's songs "Like a Virgin" and "Hollywood"—this was overshadowed by the kiss between Madonna and Britney Spears at the same ceremony. The raunchiness of Stripped seems to have been a trigger to increase the sexual element of pop singers in the subsequent year including the kissing at the MTV Music Video Awards and the " wardrobe malfunction" in the Super Bowl XXXVIII Halftime controversy featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake.

"Can't Hold Us Down", another vocal collaboration with Lil' Kim is an attack on the double standard on society's views on sexually active men and women.