After gettin into pissing matches with fellow pop divas Britney Spears and Hilary Duff, Avril Lavigne still can't find anything good to say about her musical contemporaries. Cosmopolitan magazine's April issue, now on newsstands, features Lavigne on the cover. Inside, she is asked the question, "Is there any singer your age whom you like or respect?" Lavigne has one simple response:

"No."

'FALL IN LOVE'

The hot-pink cover, which also blares the words "Ultimate Sexual Pleasure," features a fetching shot of the former tomboy. In the article, titled "The One Nobody Knows," Lavigne is asked ruminate on the nature of love as it pertains to songwriting.

"When you fall in love, you have emotions going through your body, and the same thing happens when things are going badly with a guy," she says.

The 20-year-old singer says she's only dated two guys in the past four years (the latest is reportedly Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley, though she wouldn't talk about it when asked) and claims writing about love is easiest when she's feeling "superemotional."

Lavigne says most of the songs from her 2001 debut Complicated and 2004 followup Under My Skin are about guys she's dated.

"I actually had an ex-boyfriend tell me he was sorry after he heard one of my songs," she said.

BUSTIERS

She explains why these days it seems like she favours bustiers and curlers over her old cargo pants and wife-beater-look.

"I've actually always been girlie, but now I'm more girlie -- especially in terms of the amount of time it takes me to get ready in the morning and how much I like shopping and clothes now," she says.

Readers also learn Lavigne most overuses the "F" word; wanted to be a cop when she was young and that her "surprising style trick" is to carry a black Sharpie marker around for emergency manicures.

The day before the interview the singer said she'd head-banged right into her mike stand during a video shoot, bruising her nose.

"I want to use that footage for the video," she said.

ann.marie.mcqueen@ott.sunpub.com