My, how you've grown

It is a suit. Unfortunately. The diminutive captive writhing around the cage, grabbing the bars, arching her back and offering various signs of late-stage bestial dementia, looks all the world like she’s naked as she howls “she wolf” into the skies. As the new single from her latest album ricochets around the world, Shakira – part-Colombian, part-Lebanese, all-hot – continues to prove that a singing sex-symbol doesn’t ever need to resort to much in the way of actual sex. Suggestion works every time.

The sex is always there, of course. Her hips don’t indeed lie, and you can’t name an album Oral Fixation, complete with coquettish pose in which her forefinger (few body parts are ever quite as phallic) poised delicately between her plump, receptive lips, without the certainty you’re treadng somewhere around the lowest common denominator. But by the same token, there’s never been a YouTube sex tape, a knickerless Oscar dress or even a telephoto-lens shot of topless sunbathing. And Shakira made the transition from child star to adult phenomenon without the need for an Aguilera-style public declaration about how much she loves a good seeing to – or a Britney-esque pregnancy to underline the point. She’s even had the same boyfriend, Antonia De La Rua, for some eight years – and he’s a sushi-eating lawyer, the son of a former Argentine president and depressingly well bred.

The bottle-blonde belly-dancing Latina has just launched the marathon publicity campaign for her latest album, also called She Wolf, and the response to the inevitable questions about the song and the accompanying video sound a touch rehearsed – or at least, what was once cheeky and spontaneous has been polished by automatic repetition. “You know, I never felt entirely human!” she purrs, just to get us peaking at the right level of excitement. “But, no, it’s about that more animal side of all of us, that wild side, and about defending the individual liberties with teeth and claws. It’s also about those subconscious desires that exist between every man and every woman.”

Shakira is clearly excited by the new record. She uses the word “adrenalised” a lot, which is of course completely made up. But it makes sense, and considering she only learned to speak English adequately in the last four or five years – “I read a lot and watched TV shows with subtitles” – it’s entirely forgivable. In an era when globalisation seems to be an increasing two-way street, the ability to not simply cross cultural boundaries but produce separate material within them is a blueprint for success that the post-Michael Jackson popstar ought to follow.

“Once you reach the top positions in the radio chart, you want to stay there,” she says, unembarrassed about wanting her fame to continue – but resolute that it hasn’t affected who she is. No oxygen tent and pet chimp for her, then. “We all change, sure. I don’t think that fame has necessarily changed me or my essence, but I definitely think that the experiences of being on the road and travelling has shaped me – my tastes, my views on things. But I have also co-existed with fame for so long, right from the days when I was young and was in my hometown and convincing the local press that I had something I wanted to say, and then going to Bogota to convince the country, and then up to America. And with every album it is a new process, you begin again, and I am as nervous now as I was. So, I have grown up with it.”

There perhaps isn’t a great deal in common with a 32-year-old Colombian singer and a 3-year-old men’s lifestyle magazine. Apart from the fact that we’ve busted our backsides for the last three years to keep producing a genuinely cross-cultural product. And we like to think we’re not bad-looking either. And we’re roughly the same height. And, like Shakira, we still get horribly excited when we see our work on display. “It’s the greatest feeling,” beams Shakira, when asked about hearing her songs on the radio. “It still is. I love it.” 

For a full version of this article, see NOX39.