Saint Shakira Seduces the Skeptic

Shakira Mebarak Ripoll is the fourth richest woman in music — after Madonna, Barbra Streisand and Céline Dion  — with an estimated fortune of $38 million. At her age, she could catch them, if not their estates.

What new news lies in this Shakira article, written in the Bahamas by Telegraph UK’s Julia Llewellyn Smith?

Well, I’m a Shakira novice, and I didn’t know her entire name.

This divine woman is our saint of Anne of Carversville, body and soul — hips and soul, I could say — but Shakira should only be envisoned with her mega-watt brain attached to her deeply sensual, She-Wolf body.

Remember, Saint Shakira is a Smart Sensuality woman. She is my good luck charm and I only hope that I can help her half as much as writing about her as helped me.

Julia wasn’t initially so enamored with Shakira, but she writes a nice piece of press by the finale.

“As she’s been famous in her native Colombia since the age of 13, I’d dismissed her as South America’s Britney Spears with an overexposed navel and a penchant for ridiculous lyrics … “

I like a woman who admits her prejudices.

Regarding Shakira’s Smart Sensuality brain, Smith says it’s a “mind of steel”. The metaphor is descriptive of Shakira’s disciplined approach to living.

Meat once a week, otherwise fish and vegetables. Exercise every day. Say no to certain foods. ‘You can’t achieve anything in life without a small amount of sacrifice,’ Shakira advises those of us who can’t say “no” to opening the refrigerator door.

Our London rainy-weather writer, now seduced by a balmy Bahama-evening breeze, describes Shakira as “friendly” and “considerate” and “charming”. Way to go, Shakira. The reserved, hard-to-impress Brit is melting in your mindfield.

Spanish speakers report that her songs in her native tongue are far more profound than her English numbers, and bewail her selling out and becoming a homogenised clone.

A clone of what? Who? Madonna a few years back? Not so bad. The Britney reference is your problem, Julia.

Shakira has a global agenda to leverage as many people as she can around her messages — all of them.  Recognizing how pathetic Americans are at learning Spanish, she now sings in our language. No problem.

Of course Shakira wants to sell albums and buy those schoolbooks, but Shakira’s leveraging herself as part of her grand social scheme. 

Who knows. Perhaps Shakira Mebarak Ripoll wants to head the UN, a significant step up from her UNICEF ambassadorship. Or the World Bank. How about the Grameen Fund, which will be a global economic superpower in its own right soon.

If saint Shakira mandates her Latin American presidents into keep their promises on building schools and educating poor children, the global high and mighty might explore other diplomatic skills lodged in her She-Wolf, steel-mind arsenal.

The woman’s a bona fide, global mover and shaker.

Back to the article. Julia covers the usual: childhood in Colombia, her early songs that didn’t make a dime; her nine-year relationship with Antonio de la Rúa, the son of the former president of Argentina; and the babies.

Ah — Shakira plans on breastfeeding. That’s new news, right? As for marriage, she and Antonio are in the Brand and Angelina camp. No, no … Shakira says nothing about gay marriage.

I like the vision of Shakira writing her first lyrics in English. She locked herself up with a personal tutor, studied the lyrics of Bob Dylan and the poetry of Walt Whitman and wrote the English lyrics to her album ‘Laundry Service’, ‘with a dictionary in one hand and a thesaurus in the other’.

By the interview’s end Julia is smitten, too — not saint-smitten, but good enough.

In many ways Shakira embodies the having-it-all dream women today are supposed to live up to: world domination, babies, followed by more world domination; semi-pornographic gyrating while also being a modern saint and PhD student.

I’ll be damned. The Brit did use the “saint” word. Let it be our last.  Anne