Struggling in spotlight

Aguilera growing up exposed

Christina Aguilera's recent Rolling Stone cover -- in a cropped tank top with her denim cutoffs unzipped and falling down to reveal her skinny midriff and a teensy, weensy bikini bottom -- may seem risque to some people.

 But the 19-year-old pop star points out she is sticking her tongue out in a somewhat goofy manner.

 "I don't think the Rolling Stone cover is bad -- I'm just showing tummy," Aguilera says down the line from a tour stop this week prior to her first headlining gig in Toronto tonight at the Air Canada Centre. The ACC lineup includes the Moffatts, soulDecision, mytown and McMaster & James.

 "But when I first saw it I couldn't believe they chose that shot because it was a shot taken in between shots. I was goofing off in the middle of the shot. I was making a silly face and they just kept it.

 "And then I read the article and I was throwing out different names here and there (Eminem, Fred Durst) and I was like, 'Oh, my God. What are people going to think?' 'Cause I was just speaking my mind. But the whole thing, all in all, I think is that it shows that I was just being real. It wasn't a posed cover. It wasn't something that I intentionally did on purpose. It's just me being me. And the article, too."

 In Rolling Stone, Aguilera also talked at length, for the first time, about growing up in "an environment of domestic violence," referring to her father, an Ecuador-born U.S. Army sergeant stationed in New York, Texas and Japan.

 "It is a sensitive subject just because I was around it a lot," Aguilera says now. "And it was something since Rolling Stone is such a big thing, I did kind of want to cover it. And plus, since it was the reason that Eminem supposedly got so mad at me in the first place, speaking my mind about (domestic violence), like I had to come out with it and say what I really thought. If I can do anything throughout my career to help better this problem that's so private and in the house and kept hush-hush, then I will definitely do what I need to do to get it out there more and become more public with a problem that so desperately needs to stop."

 (Eminem, who talked about wanting to exact revenge on the mother of his child in the song '97 Bonnie And Clyde, dissed Aguilera in his new single, The Real Slim Shady, accusing her of performing oral sex on MTV host Carson Daly and Limp Bizkit's Durst.)

 These days, Aguilera says her relationship with her father, from whom she was estranged for years, has improved. She's even recording an entirely Spanish-language album that's almost finished and due this fall.

 "It's actually getting much better," she says of the relationship. "Just because I'm out on my own, I can see him. I think you can always forgive someone -- it's hard to forget -- but I mean I think it's important to forgive just 'cause I do come from a Catholic background."

 The struggle between Aguilera's private and public personas is something the star has wrestled with since she became a household name -- most significantly this year with the Grammy win for best new artist.

 Much like fellow teen pop queen Britney Spears, Aguilera has had to grow up in the spotlight with the media clucking disapprovingly every time she makes a wrong move.

 In their eyes, anyway.

 "The whole bubblegum thing and, 'How do you feel about being a role model?," explains Aguilera. "And it's like I'm almost 20 years old and it's impossible to try and parent America. I'll do what I can. It's impossible 'cause no matter what I do or what I say, somebody's going to have a problem with it. So in the end, I do have to just follow my own instincts and my own heart and go with it and make the best decision possible. You know, I think I was raised well and I'm not going to do anything totally negative or wrong."