Christina This Generation's Answer To Cher?

She favors the freaky in fashion, the nerdy in men and the bombastic in music. No wonder, as time goes by, Christina Aguilera keeps looking more and more like this generation’s answer to Cher.

This week she even endured a vintage Cher-like bit of critical drubbing. She postponed her new tour - due to poor ticket sales, they say. Aguilera insists she just needs more time to prep the full-on show she wants to give, which will come next year.

In the meantime, she's got a new movie in the can, "Burlesque," in which she stars opposite - you guessed it - Ms. Cher-tastic herself.
She also has a new album to promote, "Bionic," arriving June 8, graced by a cover that depicts her as half-woman, half-machine. Could this be her space-age answer to Cher's beloved half-breed incarnation of yore?

The singer will hype her new look and sound on the MTV Movie Awards June 6, then host her own installment of VH1's "Storytellers" on the 13th. The new wonder-woman, robot/goddess persona she'll rock at all these events isn't just a whim. It makes genuine sense for her - on more than one level. The balance she has lately struck in her life openly courts the superhuman.

"Bionic" caps a personal and public campaign by Christina to bring the classic feminist insistence, "you can have it all," to screaming life (aided, no doubt, by all the nannies that platinum records can buy). "Bionic" represents Christina's first release since giving birth to Max Liron Bratman on Jan. 12, 2008. She had him with husband Jordan Bratman, a music marketing executive who can be seen as her Sonny. By all accounts, he's a similarly levelheaded business guy, the furthest thing from a boy toy - like, for example, Britney Spears' ex Kevin Federline.

Indeed, the contrast between the two singing icons (once seen as rivals) in how they run their careers clearly shows who has more focus and drive. While other child-to-adult stars have strained under the pressures of that transition, Christina seems to have surfed it with ease. The tangential "outrage" and "controversy" necessary to keep her in headlines haven't come through scandals, but courtesy of carefully ­managed photo shoots and the occasional catfight.

While Mariah Carey, Pink and Kelly Osbourne have mixed it up with her in the press, none has drawn blood or reflected too poorly on Aguilera herself. (In fact, the Osbournes wound up selling Christina their old Beverly Hills house, where she now resides.)

Taking another page from Cher, Christina has found that her genius for ugly clothing can be richly rewarded in ink and camera time - even if that has led to multiple mentions on the late Mr. Blackwell's Worst Dressed List. (Naturally, Christina shares that perverse point of pride with the "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" artist herself.)