CHRISTINA AGUILERA, it turns out, is a fighter, not a lover. –After years of cooing love clichés, smiling pretty, and wearing actual clothes, what a girl really wants is revenge. In her current, kitsch-rockin' single, "Fighter," the "Black Cat"-tiest song on Stripped, the onetime bottled blond retaliates against an ex, backhandedly thanking him for dicking her over because the experience has made her stronger. "If it wasn't for all of your torture, I wouldn't know how to be this way!" Aguilera snaps back, and if her show-offy vocals don't scream, "Look at me now!" then her pasties and crotchless panties of late certainly do.

But wait! Saint Christina, it also turns out, doesn't fight only in self-interest!

While furious about her own romantic slights, she's also ready to rumble over the societal ills that plague homos, body-conscious teens, and those running low on self-esteem. For her previous video, the predictably Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award-winning "Beautiful," Lady Marmalade sympathizes with a cast of outcasts who, emboldened by the song's sappy message of empowerment, learn to love themselves. It's Aguilera's way of saying, "I'm OK, you're OK," and if celebrating same-sex love just happens to also be the pop trend du jour (the faux-lesbo duo Tatu, Pink's "Just like a Pill" video), then, hey, all the more OK for her bank account too.

Besides, her real battle isn't on radio or MTV anyway – it's in arenas across America this summer. On the Justified and Stripped tour, she joins mercilessly humpable man-child Justin Timberlake for the best-looking lineup of the year. It's not the coheadliners who are going tête-à-tête, however: by teaming up with Britney Spears's former boyfriend, Aguilera is waging a whole new war on her arch pop rival.

It's the savviest bitch slap in the long-running rivalry.

The perpetual underdog with her wet poodle 'fros and second-rate dance routines, Aguilera has, until recently, shown no signs of truly challenging the reign of the more plastically pretty and popular Spears. However, now that pop's rules have changed – prim is out, porn is in – they're trying their darndest to out-skank each other to win the hearts, loins, and allowances of America's youth. For those scoring the smut: Britney says "shit"; X-tina says "fuck." Britney sports biker-bear gear; X-tina doesn't sport much of anything. Britney's a slave 4 U; X-tina's a slave 4 U and pretty much everyone else as well. Not surprisingly, Spears's rep is fading, fast.

After all, if there's one nonsinging arena in which Aguilera has recently proved she excels, it's playing dirrty. "Fuck the pretty!" she told Rolling Stone, the grammatically puzzling statement being less an aesthetic preference than a veiled threat to Spears. While Britney's career has faltered following her much publicized breakup with Timberlake and countless P.R. debacles, Christina has Maxim-ized her potential and, as illustrated by hitting the road with her ex-best friend's ex, has shrewdly sent her competitor the message that those who snooze, lose.

Thank god. Aguilera's recent desperation and diehard determination to fight her way to relevancy, Showgirls-style, has made one of music's greatest soap operas – Spears, Aguilera, and Timberlake's ménage à trois of ex-Mouseketeers – interesting again. No small feat, either, considering today's high teen-pop turnover rates and that it's been four years since the saga began.