Injectables Company Enlists Christiana Aguilera to ‘Empower’ Women to Get Injectables

From the brand that gave you Joe Jonas “bro-tox,” please welcome to the pulpit “Beautiful” songstress, Christina Aguilera! Aguilera has partnered with the wrinkle-reducing injectable, Xeomin, and the campaign is parroting some truly eye-roll-worthy language to make getting Botox-equivalent injectables seem like an act of radical self-acceptance.

“For me, I like to make sure what I put in my body is the safest it can be,” Aguilera said in the brand placement disguised as an interview for Allure. “I think we all can rely on a little help,” she says to the interviewer over Zoom, as her assistant “periodically mov[es] through the frame.” Wink. Wink. Get it? She is relying on help in more ways than one. Actually, she’s probably relying on help in hundreds if not thousands of ways because she is a global pop star whose net worth is over $100 million. In fact, the brand rep for Xeomin would not confirm to Allure if she has had other types of cosmetic “help.” But don’t think about that too much. She is down to earth just like you and me. That’s why you should get Xeomin, as the logic purports.

Do I care if Christina Aguilera wants to inject her face? No. Do I care if any woman decides to, or decides notes to, inject their faces? Not really, though I wish it weren’t shoved in our faces as A Decision To Make. But do my eyes roll out of my head when celebrities hawk products to reinforce the beauty standards that they, themselves, create and perpetuate as if it’s a Cool New Way to Self-Care? you bet your smooth, smooth butt I do! These campaigns can use all the reassuring language they want—like, “bringing realness to the stage” and “authenticity in [one’s] face”—but it isn’t going to mask the fact that they’re capitalizing on people’s self-hatred and insecurities.

This discourse has been around long enough that brands and brand ambassadors have already evolved to anticipate the first-round backlash these sorts of pieces usually get. What if someone judges Aguilera for getting cosmetic injectables?! “I think to each their own, and I think we [should] all do what’s right for us,” she told Allure. “I don’t believe in judgment where that’s concerned whatsoever.” Convenient!

But don’t injectables like Xeomin freeze your face? Actually, Aguilera has already addressed that, too!

“When I’m on stage, authenticity in my face comes first. I have a very expressive face, and when I sing, the emotion there has got to come through. I don’t have time to have a stoic, still face. For me, it’s about bringing that realness to the stage and my daily life while still doing what I can to feel and look my best. So Xeomin felt like the safest choice for me.”

What’s more laughable than anything Aguilera says in Allure is the statement from Merz Aesthetic’s (Xeomin’s parent company) president: “We’re focused on empowering women and men with the freedom to make the aesthetic choices that help them maintain their self-confidence,” he says in the press release. Coyly slipping in bodily autonomy language like “freedom” and “choice” to imply freezing your face muscles is empowering gets a big old eye roll from me.

For Merz Aesthetics—the largest dedicated cosmetic pharmaceutical company in the world—to imply there’s freedom and choice in making cosmetic decisions when they likely spend millions of dollars in ads to make people feel judged and insecure in their looks is rich! That hermetically sealed alternate universe—where people are getting cosmetic injectables simply because it’s an option on the table, a card in the deck, a bag of candy at the checkout aisle, and not because we’re all insanely susceptible to years of being told we ought to invest in a smoother, “younger” face or face the consequences—is an attractive fiction.