Inside my head, warring factions fight over every little thing I feed them. Their cackling kept me up at night when I saw a poster for Avril Lavigne’s upcoming Korean show. Here in this column I’ll let both hemispheres of my mind have their say.

Cons go first, because that’s the side my conscience supports.

Con

Do I really have to explain it for you?

Avril bothers us because part of her key to success was ripping off punk fashion and culture. Her songs approximate a watered-down approach to watered-down punk music from bands like Sum41 and Blink 182, but I bet both even those bands used to smash shit and drink forties in their teens. Avril, she’s a disgrace to everything punk.

Avril is more fake because she claims to be genuine. That’s more an offence to us than anything virgin-turned-whore Britney or walking STD Christina could do.

Half the time, Avril denies any relation to punk music, or any sort of tradition. Asked for her opinion about the Sex Pistols, she told Entertainment Weekly, “Why would I know that stuff? Look how young I am. That stuff’s old, right??So, somehow, this girl has, while shunning punk, made a sound approximating it through making the music that she wants to make, which sounds pretty punk herself. Then she changes her creed for a different interview.

The same year, shortly after this first quote, she came out with this brilliant one: “I created Punk for this day and age...I’m like a Sid Vicious for a new generation.?Johnny Rotten put it best when he said “I wish she was Sid Vicious, so she’d be dead.?

About all she’s good for is a hate-fuck topped off with a good old donkey punch to the ribs to get her thoroughly-raped-by-the-music-industry vagina to clench up.

Pro

Both sides of this debate agree that Avril Lavigne is fuckable. Verily. There’s no debating this.

She’s hot, and her influence brought the dirty schoolgirl motif back into punk fashion. We need more chicks dressing like her at shows; I just wish fewer of them were actual grade-school students.

Avril Lavigne is the crown princess of the gateway punk bands. How do people get into punk? By following a trail that begins on MTV or in stadium shows. Other gateway bands include Green Day, Blink 182, Sum 41, and any other band with a number that isn’t Korean. People who get into punk through these bands quickly smarten up, because TV and mall punk can’t compete with street-level bands.

So how many of us would be here without a gateway band? We don’t need to give her an award, but we should understand her accidental contribution.

This show could be a great place to put out the word about Korean punk. Probably a good number of people at that show have been looking for what we have.

Editor's note: The content of this article does not reflect the opinions of Skunk Label. We have the utmost respect for women; however, any media whore--male or female--is open game. If you cannot handle material like this, you probably shouldn't be listening to punk in the first place.