SHAKIRA


LUV - Dear Every Woman Who Has Ever Lived,


Look, I’m sorry. I never thought it’d come to this. I know we had our fun - with me either going out with you, or being friends with you, or being related to you, or (and I’m aware that statistically this is the most likely) never having actually met you because you had died long before I was even born - but it’s over. There’s someone else, you see, and I can’t hide my feelings for her any more.


Every Woman Who Has Ever Lived, I’m sure you’re perfectly nice in your own way, but there’s a problem. You’re just not Shakira.


Shakira. The most perfect human being in the history of mankind. Not only is she beautiful, but she also has the mind of a colossus. Just read any interview with her for proof - they’re all studded with a unique philosophical insight that can take in everything from radical environmentalism to the canon of Walt Whitman. I love Shakira for this wide range of interests, and for this refusal to play dumb for the traditionally patriarchal media.


And also for that video where she takes most of her clothes off and rolls around in motor oil.


Then there’s Shakira’s dedication to philanthropic works. For 16 years, she’s overseen the Pies Descalzos Foundation, which builds and runs schools for some of the world’s poorest children. She’s spoken at Oxford University about this cause, has been awarded medals from the United Nations for it and served as chairperson for the Global Campaign for Education’s Action Week in 2008. For this enduring and undimmed selflessness in trying to make each successive generation of humanity better than the previous one, I love Shakira.


And also for that video where she wears a skin-coloured bikini and rubs her fanny up and down on an animal cage.


And for that video where she dislocates her boobs and makes them twirl around independently to the rest of her body.


And for that bit in the video I just talked about where she puts her fingers in her mouth and makes a sort of “Uhhh” sound.


In fact, mainly for that.


Sorry All Other Women. How could you possibly compete? I’m afraid we’re through.
- Stuart Heritage


HAT - Dear Shakira,


Up yours, Shakira. Up yours with a catapult.

Up until a few years ago I was able to judge each female I encountered on her individual merits. This one was clever, that one was funny, the other one had lovely hair.

Now? Bollocks, the lot of them. Because none of them are you. Talented, beautiful, disarmingly weird you. You dastard.

Claudia Winkleman could arrive on my doorstep, naked, un-pregnant and wielding two tickets for a lovely beach holiday - and my reaction would be to enquire whether I could take you instead. That’s the behaviour of an arse, Shakira. Incidentally, have I mentioned your arse yet, Shakira? Check it out in the mirror sometime, and think about the hell you’ve unleashed.

Why, Shakira? Why did you have to make explicit reference to your small and humble breasts while splashing around in a bunch of mud and singing in that intriguing, constricted-throat manner that you have? Who can compete with that, you awful, awful multilingual Latina goddess?

Where on earth did you get the idea to do an adorably laughable robotic dance in the video for Objection (Tango), thereby assuring that it’s become my life’s aim to kidnap you and lock you in my bedroom so I can force you do replicate the move over and over and over, forever, just for me? Why would you shaft my sense of propriety so? It’s just not nice.

Because Shakira? OI, SHAKIRA. OVER HERE. Listen, I’m sure this was never paramount in your thought processes as you planned your career, but how is a mortal, puts-her-makeup-on-on-the-train, carries-her-shoes-home-because-they-hurt-her-feet female supposed to compete? Are you serious? It’s just not a level playing field, Shakira, and while it’s laudable that your hips refuse to countenance lying, quite frankly a dash of mendacity may not go amiss at some point. Because I for one can’t handle the truth.

The thing is, Shakira, even when you get it a bit wrong, you somehow get it right. That World Cup song you released last year was pretty poor by your standards - but it also brought to light the irresistible possibility that you may very well actually like football. What the waka waka fuck, Shakira?

Even your slow songs - slow songs being the boringest way to send one’s ears to sleep - only reveal a vulnerability that makes me want to wrap you up in a quilt and stash you safely under my bed. Away from all the NUTTERS. Nobody would harm you there, Shakira. You would be safe, amongst all my shoes and unused USB cables.

Still, at least you’re unlikely ever to team up with Dizzee Rascal to create a video in which you roller-skate along a beach in a microscopic bikini. At least on that score most earthbound women are on the same level as y-

Oh Shakira, you remorselessly excellent cow.
- Stuart Waterman