The Secret Tragedy of Sk8er Boi

I’ll preface this post by saying, I genuinely do enjoy Avril Lavigne whose music was a fixture of my childhood all throughout Elementary and Middle School. Everything from her intensely focussed blue marble stare that seems to embody both the rebel spirit of a strong-willed teenager and the disappointment only a mother could bear for your life choices (what else is Complicated but a den mother nagging at you to change your clothes?) to her well crafted lyrics and piercing, almost nasal pitch. Like a voice skidding across gravel, but in a really good way.

My favorite songs are the ones where the messages are equally as good as the beat. Hits like I’m With You, Nobody’s Home, and Keep Holding On convey generic emotional support that, despite their utter generic-ness, successfully uplift me. My Happy Ending explores the grief so many of us feel when a loved one has given up on us.

Two markedly different songs are Sk8r Boi and Girlfriend, which have fantastic beats and catchy lyrics, but whose messages are objectively awful.

Girlfriend‘s lyrics are beautiful in their simplicity – a girl likes a guy who already has a girl. Its jealous tone has been a mantra for pining teenage girls since time immemorial, but never recorded in such a provocative, no-fucks-given attitude before. Because the lyrics are heavily biased, the boyfriend is safe from critique, merely a victim of Avril’s attentions with no way for the audience to tell if he’s encouraging them or not. But the video shows just how complicit he really is, and depicts him as truly the worst boyfriend in the world. Though he does not actively seek out Avril’s attentions, he certainly doesn’t discourage her, laughing invitingly at her antics, even though it visibly upsets his girlfriend and even though his girlfriend is being openly harassed.

However, both song and video are deliciously tongue-in-cheek. It’s hard not to enjoy the shameless shenanigans of Avril shoving Avril into a porta-potty before seducing Avril’s boyfriend in a bathroom. (Classy.) Her initial complaint of the girlfriend is that “she’s like so, whatever” so you know not to take Avril’s persona seriously. A stronger argument is that the girlfriend is stupid, but that’s quickly followed up with, “What the hell were you thinkin’?” hilariously insulting his intelligence as well. By playing both roles, her fans also know that they should feel some sympathy for the harassed girlfriend, even though it’s funny to watch her suffer. You’re not meant to take Avril or the song seriously.

And because the song is self-aware, it doesn’t provoke the same emotional nausea that Sk8r Boi does, especially when you go through a break down of its lyrics.

He was a boy
She was a girl
Can I make it any more obvious

Sure, a bit of a heteronormative beginning (WHY SHOULD I ASSUME JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE TWO PEOPLE OF THE OPPOSITE SEX THAT THEY MUST LIKE EACH OTHER, AVRIL???) but not too egregious of an offense.

He was a punk
She did ballet
What more can I say

You could talk about their personalities? But, it’s fine, I get it, you’re setting the stage for two trope characters. The cool outcast and the hot popular girl.

He wanted her
She’d never tell
Secretly she wanted him as well

We’ll refer back to this stanza which is only problematic in retrospect.

But all of her friends
Stuck up their nose
They had a problem with his baggy clothes

He was a skater boy
She said see you later boy
He wasn’t good enough for her

She had a pretty face
But her head was up in space
She needed to come back down to earth

At this point in the song, the ostensibly omniscient narrator has given us some insight into the girl’s psyche, beyond what knowing that she does ballet may give us. She’s the type of girl who decides who she’ll date based on her friends’ approval, not her own feelings. And her friends are clearly a shallow sort, who care only about the clothes her suitor wears. This girl is good enough to see past his clothes, enough to like him, but not strong-willed enough to fight for their relationship at the risk of her suggested status in their probable high school society.

Five years from now
She sits at home
Feeding the baby she’s all alone

WOW did this take a turn. The girl is now a woman, and it’s heavily suggested from these short lines that she’s a single mother, possibly abandoned by the father of her baby. It could be that she’s just physically alone with the baby, and her husband is just out of the house, but either way we are presented with an image of such loneliness and discontent. Even with her child present, she’s alone. Her life has not turned out the way she wanted it to.

She turns on TV
Guess who she sees
Skater boy rockin’ up MTV

She calls up her friends
They already know
And they’ve all got tickets to see his show

She tags along
Stands in the crowd
Looks up at the man that she turned down

Oooh, there is so much bite to these three stanzas. Her ex-Almost Lover’s life has gone in a completely different direction than her own. As it’s only been five years, it can be assumed these are the very same friends who warned her away from the very boy they’ve bought tickets to see. Why they haven’t told her or previously invited her to the concert reinforces her isolation. It also shows that the song is only interested in punishing her for turning Skater Boy down, the friends are left unscathed by their role in her decision. At its core, the song is a common revenge fantasy – one day i’ll make it big and they’ll be sorry they rejected me.

He was a skater boy
She said see you later boy
He wasn’t good enough for her

Now he’s a super star
Slamming on his guitar
Does your pretty face see what he’s worth?

This reads as a cautionary tale to young women – don’t reject anybody, they might be a somebody someday. But as a young woman who grew up on the immortal lyrics “A scrub is a guy that thinks he’s fly” I’m afraid Sk8r Boi can’t get no love from me. I am Team Ballerina Girl all the way. I like to imagine that she was hanging out with Tionne, Lisa and Rozonda who correctly assessed he was a loser and wisely told her not to waste her time on him.

Sorry girl but you missed out
Well tough luck that boy’s mine now
We are more than just good friends
This is how the story ends

Here is where the song loses all legitimacy. Lines such as, “Secretly she wanted him as well” and the whole scene about her sitting at home alone with the baby conveyed the sense that the narrator was an objective third party omniscient being who had no stakes in either her misery or Skater Boy’s success. But now we know that this song was written by Skater Boy’s girlfriend who is WEIRDLY obsessed with someone her boyfriend never even dated. To the point where she’s imagining Ballerina Girl’s inner thoughts and scenes of depressing domesticity.

Too bad that you couldn’t see
See the man that boy could be
There is more that meets the eye
I see the soul that is inside

Okay, what about his soul? Avril, you’ve painted broader strokes vividly encapsulating Ballerina Girl than you have the boyfriend you claim to be in love with. All we know is that he is a successful rockstar… could that be why you love him so much? You mention nothing of his kindness, his talent, you don’t even spare a word for his physical appearance (meanwhile you make mention of Ballerina Girl’s attractiveness twice). And when exactly did you two get together? Did you date him when he was just a skater boy, or did you meet him when he was already a successful rockstar?

And even if he does have a great soul, where is your x-ray vision when it comes to Ballerina Girl? Why have you condemned her in your lyrics to be shallow and publicly mock her loss instead of expressing compassion? She was a teenage girl who chose not to date someone she liked (the fact that she liked him at all is up for debate since we’re working with an unreliable narrator here) because of what her friends thought. When did that become a crime? Besides, if she had liked him enough, she would have fought for the relationship. The fact that she didn’t could indicate he simply didn’t matter enough to her. And maybe she should only be with someone she genuinely would put in the risk and effort for, rather than be with him just to prove a point that she wasn’t shallow. Why exactly did he like her, anyway? The only attribute we really know about her is that she’s good looking. Is that because Skater Boy actually knew nothing about her beyond her looks and that she did ballet? After all, Avril can only relate the details about Ballerina Girl that she hears from Skater Boy.

He’s just a boy
And I’m just a girl
Can I make it any more obvious

We are in love
Haven’t you heard
How we rock each others world

I’m with the skater boy
I said see you later boy
I’ll be back stage after the show

I’ll be at the studio
Singing the song we wrote
About a girl you used to know

What a weird ending! You rock each other’s world by singing about a girl who rejected your boyfriend? Is this what foreplay was like in 2002? Avril, honey, sweetie-pie, muffin basket, the fact that your boyfriend clearly has yet to move on FIVE YEARS LATER from a girl HE NEVER EVEN DATED is tragic, and a bit scary. He’s actively imagining her miserable and regretting her decision to reject him, and imagining her regret as stemming not from realizing how talented he is, or kind or even handsome but based solely on the measure of his success. And you co-wrote this with him??? Um, how romantic.

Notice too how the video doesn’t act out the lyrics of Sk8r Boi. The impromptu concert distracts from the story being sung, and none of the characters save Avril herself appear in the video. Possibly because the creative team behind the scenes realized that acting out the lyrics would force them to show Ballerina Girl exactly as she is – at worst, a victim of loneliness that probably has nothing to do with the fact that five years ago she rejected some boy she knew, and at best, a pretty girl bewildered by the fixation held by the girlfriend of some guy she never even dated.

Why Girlfriend can be shown, in contrast, is that Avril unashamedly acts the role of a bitch (as well the role of the abused girlfriend), but in Sk8r Boi, Avril assumes the moral high ground with the line “I see the soul that is inside”. There’s no self-aware humor in Sk8r Boi, only misplaced anger disguised as a morality lesson and love story.

This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy listening to the song. The beat is good, the lyrics are still well stylized and Avril’s contemptuous tone is delightful. But I listen to the song with an active empathy for Ballerina Girl, and skepticism concerning the narrator’s reliability.

~Amanda Jerido-Katz