You can make him like you.
Just as a cartoon vase shatters on the head of a cartoon cat, so does cartoon punk Avril Levigne shatter the Billboard charts; the preteen demographic's favorite skater chick has hit Number One.
"Girlfriend," the single in question, rides a lot harder on the effervescent, uptempo aesthetics of producer pop (hand claps, shouty chorus) than on the sulky, vaguely annoying histrionics of adolescence (orchestras, tonsil-baring whole-note laden chorus). That is, "Girlfriend"—-more heavily influenced by Kidz Bop than Linkin Park --exhibits Lavigne reveling in her corporate pop power, having abandoned all angsty teen alternative inhibitions. Whether those inhibitions were ever real is hardly the issue now, as listeners are confronted with a monster they helped create.
For, as much as "Sk8r Boi" and "Girlfriend" share a poppy-go-lucky musical vision--"Sk8r" with its bouncy guitars and "Girlfriend" with its Go-Gos singalong jump-right-to-the-chorus intro, they're fairly exactly narrate the same story from diametrically opposed perspectives; "Sk8r" plays as an anthem to the sexually powerless, "Girlfriend" a paean to the third-wave slut in all of us.
During the bridge to "Sk8r Boi," a more innocent Avril looks back, now happily going steady with her "superstar" boyfriend, whom she had the vision to see was more than just a stoned high-school loser. Meanwhile, her ballet-performing foil who, due to peer pressure, initially spurned the Boi in question has to stand in the crowd at his punk show, nervously biting her nails and kicking herself for her lack of vision.
"Sk8r Boi" shows Avril the vengeful loser, awkwardly paying her dues during conformist high-school years only to win out "five years from now."
Three lines, however, largely unnoticed in 2002, betray Avril's sadism and serve, in hindsight, as a warning of things to come:
five years from now, she sits at home
feeding the baby
she's all alone
The girl who "took ballet" is now a single mother, scarcely out of teenhood, with no one to help her. And we're supposed to feel good about that because Avril wound up getting the boy. But wait, it gets worse.
In 2007, Avril certainly has a lot more chutzpah than she did when we first heard from her. It appears the post-high-school Avril character of "Girlfriend" has learned the power of her own sexuality, and unlike the largely passive persona in "Sk8r Boi," is now turning outward to pursue new conquests. And, as the video shows, she's willing to trollop it up to pillage as many taken men as she can:
Note self-satisfied lines like "I'm the motherfucking princess," not to mention baby girl's bleached-blonde hair extensions. Gone is the green t-shirt, forever lost is the loose necktie of 2002. Enter Avril of womanhood, with blue short shorts and an uncomfortable penchant for mugging the camera a bit too aggressively.
It's a familiar arc. A girl goes through high school with shattered self-esteem and a love for Blink-182. The years are hellish and drag on. Soon, however, she graduates (or drops out), loses her cherry, starts going to bars, and witnesses with her own eyes the manipulative power of heterofemale sexuality. Five years on, the endearing frustration that made everyone root for her in the beginning has hardened into a callous, insatiable desire to possess and dominate any boy/man she sets her sights on.
Avril's image has always been a little hard to stomach. Her schtick, designed to go after the preteen ladies who hate themselves some Britney but still need some slick studio pop to groove to, has been so transparent as to come off as pomo parody. But there was reason to like the anthemic "Sk8r Boi"; it gave play to the pimply skateboarder fantasy that one day it would be possible have a hot girlfriend who loved watching them try varial heelflips. Now Avril's all about spreading that pootie wherever it'll go, and following it around just isn't as appealing as it was back in the day. She's slept with too many skaters.
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