She no longer takes the bait.

It's one of the many things Avril Lavigne has learned over the course of her short but eventful career.

We're talking about the proliferation of Avril-esque pop stars out there, and I -- as a purely innocent display of journalistic courtesy -- give the young Canadian artist the opportunity to name names.

"Do I want to start that?" Lavigne says laughing.

"Yeah, let's keep the peace going."

You can see why she'd want to do that. Since rising to the top of the pop heap three years ago, Lavigne has feuded or reportedly feuded with young stars such as Britney Spears, Hilary Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Lindsay Lohan ... did we miss anyone?

The ironic part about that is most of those young performers as well as Kelly Clarkson, Fefe Dobson and others have taken a page from the Avril playbook and owe a great deal to the anti-Britney movement she kicked off.

"I agree," says the 20-year-old who performs tomorrow night at the 'Dome. "I think I helped open the doors for younger, female singer-songwriters or just female singers.

"I think there's been situations where girls have been dressed almost identical to me in their videos and their songs kind of sounded like Complicated and they do their little attitude thing.

"Well,they're not me and they never will be me and when people do things that try and copy me everybody knows it anyway. It's flattering but ... I don't really care.

"I'm my own person, I have a pretty strong personality and character and everybody knows what I'm like."

Maybe not. These days, Lavigne is far removed from the baggy pantsed, pout girl of three years ago, and even more mature than the person responsible for 2004's sophomore release Under My Skin.

"Well it's so true because I was only 17 -- I was right out of high school, I didn't even finish," she says of the early Avril. "I was a spunky little kid running around flipping the bird to everyone and a total tomboy and now I'm a woman.

"I've grown up."

Grown up and now engaged to Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley, although, like picking fights with pop stars, Lavigne has learned it's best to keep those things to herself and not comment on them.

As to when she might comment on them musically, we're going to have to wait awhile for that.

In October, she'll finally finish up this tour -- she's been at it for over a year -- and only then will she get to work writing material for her third album.

"It's not so as I have time off where I get really inspired, because every time I go to write out here I'll be in a magic moment coming up with ideas and someone's like 'Avril, you have to go for a meet-and-greet now,' " she says.

"I'm not down with it out (on the road) because I keep being interrupted and I can't really focus.

"I went home for the Christmas holidays and I had time off -- I wrote five songs, because no one was around and I was by myself ... That was exactly what happened when it came time to do (Under My Skin). The day I got off tour I was thinking, 'What am I going to do?'

"A week later, I was writing songs every day."