more on avril

...but on the subject of avril lavigne...there was a featurette on her in the new york times magazine last week, wherein it was brought up that she does, in fact, have a bit of a brouhaha behind her. the point of contention is that a lot of people maintain that she, formerly a good, churchgoing canadian girl, had been manufactured and styled in to her current skatepunk style.

i'm in two minds about this. on one hand, i say "yep, this is probably true. though everyone wants to fuck the minister's daughter, that is a slightly disturbing way to market her emerging sexuality. i mean, she's a child. and in the wake of the whole pedophile priest scandal, that's just not going to fly the way it did when britney busted onto the scene. we need to make her look like she could not just defend herself, but kick out asses. yeah!" on the other hand, though, i say: "she's 17! if she's not changing every five seconds, there's something seriously wrong with her. it's law: the church-going good girl butterfly will most likely turn into a street moth sometime during her adolescence. it's a rite of passage. and it's important."

anyway.

the thing i found most interesting about the article is that, in response to the aforementioned accusations, she apparently called over to her band members to verify her "realness," and one of them, the guitarist, i think, immediately offered up: "no, she's for real. if she weren't, we wouldn't be working with her." to which i am in only one mind: fuck that. you're a teenage musician living the rock and roll dream. you'd do it for anyone who offered to help you make a career out of it, whether they were kelly clarkson or courtney love. speaking as a musician, i have to say that, if you love the music, you've got a high chance of throwing your sense of ethics out the window if someone offers you a chance to do it for a living. really. real musicians are whores in that aspect. i'm certainly no exception.

so, to hell with your noble idealism and belief that you are an ARTISTE. if anyone offers you a chance to do what you love for a living, you're not going to care too much if it's wearing borrowed spandex. you stick out the ethically questionable bits long enough, put in your time, you'll get to live out your nobility eventually. so, mister eighteen year old ethically sound guitarist man, please excuse me if i don't believe you any further than i can throw you. you'd play guitar for mariah carey if it meant you'd never have to get a desk job. don't try to tell us you wouldn't. at least, if you want me to keep believing that you actually love the music.

anyway, would it really suck all that much to be on the road with avril lavigne even if she is manufactured? for pete's sake. false or true, she's still pretty cute.