Her second official English language album was Stripped. This features many interludes, one before the track "Infatuation", which features her speaking Spanish, and a duet with Alicia Keys; however, Aguilera cannot speak Spanish fluently yet.
By the year 2002, however, her previously heralded vocals were much overlooked as she began to change 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 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."
Ironically, the new raunchy image seems to have negatively affected the sales of the album at least in the US when released in late 2002. While the album debuted at number 2 on the UK album charts and number 3 in Canada, it made a low entry given the success of her debut album. However, the success of subsequent singles off the album meant that Stripped reached a peak of number 2 on the Billboard 200 in 2004. The staying power of the album was also shown in the UK when the album was consistently in the top 20 of the album charts between late 2002 and mid 2004. The album is quadruple platinum in Australia despite only reaching a peak of number 7 - again a reflection of its consistency between late 2002 and 2004.
There have been a number of hit singles from Stripped including:
"Dirrty", the first single featuring rapper Redman went to number one in the UK, Ireland and was a top ten hit in the Netherlands, Spain and Australia - it only reached number 68 on the Billboard Hot100 reflecting the early sales backlash;
"Can't Hold Us Down" another collaboration with Lil Kim was another top 5 hits on world airplay charts and reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100
"Beautiful" earned Christina Aguilera the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards of 2004. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) presented a special award for inclusion to her in February 2003 for the positive images of gay and transgender people.
Aguilera went so far as to condemn her work on her first album, telling an interviewer, "I was playing a part dictated by my then manager and my record company. I hated who I was back then..." The Stripped album contains a number of songs based on personal development themes including "Beautiful", "Fighter" and "I'm OK".
In early 2003 Aguilera aroused much comment when she gained a noticeable amount of weight. Aguilera was quoted as saying, "I couldn't care less about stupid diets. Eating is sensual and fun. I'm not going to let it be spoiled by calorie counting." Whether she will be able to reconcile this attitude to her sexually-charged image remains to be seen.
On June 4, 2003, she joined Justin Timberlake on his final portion of his international "Justified" tour, held in the United States. The tour became a co-headliner called the "Justified & Stripped" tour. In the 4th quarter of that year, Christina continued to tour internationally without Justin, and changed the name of the tour to only "Stripped" tour. During the tour she dyed her hair black. The tour was one of the top grossing tours of that year, as it sold out most of its venues. It also was named by Rolling Stone readers as the best tour of the summer.
In light of the tour's success, another United States tour was scheduled to begin in mid 2004 with a new theme and featuring Chingy as an opening act. This tour was scrapped due to Christina suffering vocal chord injuries shortly before its opening date. It was later reported by The Sun tabloid that low ticket sales and lack of new material were the major factors in the tour's cancellation.
