bras, and a whip. And, yes, there a few moments that are uncannily Gaga-ish. Two stick out in my mind: namely, those shots of Christina in white with a harem of dancers, and the moments where you see the diva, wet, in red lingerie. 
The retort to this whole line of criticism, however, includes two arguments: 1) When it comes to Madonna, nearly every pop star has taken pieces of her performances/styling/etc. So there’s that. And then 2) With the Gaga argument, can we really fault Christina for taking from Gaga, when Gaga herself has so ripped from a variety of other artists? Then again, Gaga seems to rip from her musical influences and then blast it in a totally different direction. Right?
The worst part about Xtina’s video, beyond the rather unabashed unoriginality of it, is the sad stink of I’ve-been-gone-forever-had-a-baby-and-now-want-to-be-relevant-again desperation. Cue: the girl-on-girl makeout sessions! Text messaging! Fire balls! When watching, there’s wasn’t a moment where I didn’t feel like Aguilera was clawing for relevancy, in a crazy, far beyond, post-Aguilera world. True story: Aguilera has been gone for a long time. There’s a desperate need, sort of like when she blipped back for two seconds with “Keeps Gettin’ Better” a couple years ago, for her to resuscitate her look and build it in the image of what’s relevant now. But maybe she should have gone in a totally different direction to avoid comparisons? Given us something totally different? The thing about Aguilera is that she’s used to zig when everyone else was zagging. And now, it seems like she decided to zag along with everyone else.
