Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty” Dukes Out Double Appropriation

Hello again, Avril; it’s been a while since we’ve seen you, and honestly, I’d prefer to never see you again. The release of the official video to her latest single, “Hello Kitty,” hasn’t incited me with the sweet and sugary partied-up feelings its apparently supposed to — rather, I feel as if she took ten pounds of sugar-free gummy bears and stuffed them forcibly down my throat. Her video is a mess; undoubtedly filmed somewhere in the States — not in Japan, as she wishes all of us to believe, features a pastel-coloured Avril dancing and singing happily in a candy store, a sushi restaurant, and the street — all while accompanied by four generic-looking Japanese women who remain expressionless throughout the video.

What has Avril coopted this time? You guessed it. Japanese culture. Not even a specific part of Japanese culture, it seems, since her video is all over the place — is she trying for a Harajuku vibe? A lolita-esque cutesy feel? Whatever she’s aiming to appropriate, she doesn’t succeed in making it lovingly specific — rather, she makes the whole presentation generally offensive. She even includes words from the Japanese language in the line “mina saiko arigato kawaii” which is, of course, nonsensical and redundant. Roughly translated, “mina saiko” is “you rock, thank you,” a term used by Japanese popular musicians to thank an adoring crowd. “Arigato” is “thank you” and “kawaii” is “cute,” so in sum, the line reads “you rock, thank you, thank you, cute.” Are you rolling your eyes yet? I have been since the first ten seconds of the video, so if you’ve made it this far, I applaud you.

From the bad lolita-style dress to the WOC she is using as accessories to the misrepresentation of the language, Avril has reentered her weeaboo phase in a way that puts mine — and many others’ — to shame. An article recently published on Death and Taxes mag’s online site was aptly titled “Avril Lavigne’s new video wins gold at the cultural appropriation Olympics” — which is something I fully agree with.

On top of the cultural appropriation, the lyrics of the song itself attempt to convey some sort of queer narrative — the most stereotypically male-gazed based one of all: the lesbian sleepover. Yes. You just read that correctly. “Hello Kitty” is a song about two or more “girlfriends” getting a little more than friendly during a “kawaii” overnight get-together. Verses such as “It’s time for spin the bottle / Not gonna talk about it tomorrow / Keep it just between you and me” and “Let’s be friends forever / I wanna do everything with you together / Come and play with Kitty and me” use not-so innocent sleepover games and Sanrio’s character Hello Kitty as obvious euphemisms for the kind of “slumber party” this really is. And it’s gross. Avril Lavigne is presenting a probable lesbian relationship in a way that most male-oriented lesbian porn is presented; two or more underage girls exploring their sexualities at a sleepover, usually in full view of an adult male (in-video, I mean — there is always an adult male watching on the other side of the screen, of course).

The narrative of the girl’s only sex-over with the backdrop of the cute and innocent Japanese fetishization combined make this video and the song itself impossible to stomach. Avril Lavigne is a straight, cisgendered white woman who grew up in North America, who has most likely never been exposed to queer struggles, and who has definitely never experienced a “real” Japanaese culture beyond what she does in the video: dressing up in pastels, eating sushi, and taking photos of her offensively identical lackeys with a deco’d Fujifilm instant camera. It’s obvious that she is attempting to appeal to the raving hoards of young North Americans who adore Japanese culture and understand it in the same way as Avril presents it here, in her video, but by doing so, she is perpetuating dangerous stereotypes that many, many people without her kind of exposure are attempting to dismantle. The same goes for her coopted queer narrative. Lesbian porn is extremely damaging to queer women across the globe, as it turns them into objects to be commodified, objectified, and generally demeaned in order to please their aimed consumers: heterosexual, adult, cisgendered men. Avril has been quoted as calling this video “flirtatious and somewhat sexual” but also “obviously about [her] love for Hello Kitty” in an interview with Digital Spy, and here is what I have to say in response:

Avril Lavigne, your apparent love for Hello Kitty may be genuine, but if you have any respect for the woman who designed her or for Japanese people and culture as a whole, it is not apparent in your song or accompanying video. Your lyrics are not only offensive to Shimizu Yuko, the creator of Hello Kitty, but to queer women who struggle daily with exactly the kind of objectification your song is presenting to your fans. Young queer women are already endangered by adult men who want to “conquer” them, who want to view them in private, natural and intimate acts, who want them to be nothing more than a form of entertainment, and the fact that you are coupling this in-song male-gaze driven storyline with a character designed for pre-adolescent girls makes your music a disgusting attempt to regain the popularity that you once had and never deserved. Your entire video perpetuates Japanese sterotypes, including, but not limited to, the “innocent” aspect of Japanese women; the robotic, passive persona of Japanese women; the “kawaii” aspects ingrained in their general culture; the vanity present in how Japanese women apparently present themselves; and so on. As someone who fights against cultural appropriation and for the basic rights of queer persons of all genders, your song and video made for mass media consumption have offended me and, undoubtedly, offended many others.

Let’s hope that Miss Lavigne decides to retire early, and let’s follow that up by hoping her chosen retirement location is nowhere near Japan, for the sake of us all.