Censored: Avril is too hot to handle!

Has Avril been too naughty lately?

Seriously, another wrong reason to put Malaysia on the world map. The government had apparently announced that the Avril Lavigne concert is canceled because it was deemed to be "inappropriate" for the Merdeka month. In short, Avril is too "sexy" to hold a concert in Malaysia. All the rest of the reasons that were given are irrelevant. As usual, they tried to defend vehemently that it has nothing to do with the recent PAS Youth lobbying for the ban. For them, there are also loads of others that had nothing to do with each other, like Saiful's personal timing of events, the DNA bill or the arrest of the Perak excos. Well, coincidence or not, it's all pointing to an event called the Permatang Pauh by-elections. If all those are "coincidence", wow..I guess Anwar and the Pakatan Rakyat fellas must have offended Lady Luck so badly that she needs to punish them. As for me, it's just a way that the current government is using the ban to show that they're good listeners to their fellow religious comrades who had just complained.

After 51 years of independence, some folks in the government think that they should be the ones who set the "moral standards" for Malaysians to follow. Aduh, Avril is one of the singers who is clad in the most mildest manner in just shirt and jeans for concert. Perhaps they get too excited seeing her "moves" in her "Girlfriend" MTV. Gwen Stefani also kena before for her attire but at least she still gets to perform after some adjustments. So, going by this kind of logic, if Avril gets banned, she's sexier than Gwen..hahahaha. Some of the ridiculous regulations include no jumping, shouting, hugging or kissing on stage and female performers had to dress from top to bottom. Ermmm..then how to have concert in the first place? Actually, I'm wondering if it was U2, Green Day, Justin Timberlake, P Diddy or Akon instead who comes to perform, would they get slapped the same way? Probably not, cos they're male.

In that case, wouldn't that move close to the notion of gender discrimination too? The PAS Youth fellas and some folks in the government who are always protesting whenever a female comes on stage to perform are seriously living in another age. It's not surprising if they end up being the same bunch of people who puts up the silly fallacy that women are asking to be raped by the way they dress or even baju kurung are also too sexy for display. Gosh, in that case, they might as well lobby that all women should have paper bags over their head or have communist-Mao uniforms so that men don't salivate the moment they see skin that is exposed by women.

I think that these fellas in the government should see the immoral behaviour that is happening at their own turf rather than picking on other things for distraction. For instance, rasuah/bribery, racist remarks at Parliament or the repeated broadcast of Saiful's 'adventures' are much more sinful than Avril shaking her butt on stage. And what effect is really achieved by banning the concert when people already had access to the Internet to watch and listen all they want? I think young people are seeing stuff that are 1000 x more harmful than the poor harmless concert music. If you wanna ban Avril or Gwen concerts and set them standards as moral corruption of the youths, then everything else in entertainment should be banned. They shouldn't waste time in sporadically picking on a few random stuff if they think they are the gatekeepers of morality.

These international artiste have decided to pick Malaysia as one of their stops and I think the government should be honoured in that it boosts the country's image as a globalized city. You won't ever see them picking Angola or Bangladesh for their stops. Sooner or later, some of them would just go to any other Southeast Asian venue other than KL. For goodness sake, Indonesia has a larger Muslim population and yet it's easier for female performers to put up a show without someone nagging down their neck about how they're dressed or what they do on stage. We do really need some forward thinking leaders in the government and educate a section of the population who gets too excited over ang mohs/mat sallehs/ Westerner's "unholy" display of the human body.

*Note at Saturday, 23/8/2008 : This morning, government says the Avril show goes on and will proceed as usual. Good for them but the reputation damage has already been done.