What she seemingly has never been called though, is ‘too sexy’. Until now. Ahead of an upcoming tour around Asia, the youth wing of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party have raised issue with the Canadian poplet with the dead eyes. For being too sexy.

The world can be a very odd place. Now, we understand it may be a more conservative way of life over there, but calling Avril Lavigne ‘too sexy’ is akin to calling Brooke Hogan a ‘purveyor of finely thought out political commentary’ – it just doesn’t fit. How, exactly, is looking really bored on stage considered sexy, even in a culture where sexuality is somewhat repressed, or hidden away?

Answers on a postcard.

But that is the route the complaint has taken, and it’s one that’s sure to raise some issues about the portrayal of pop stars, movie stars and those generally in the public eye as sexual icons. Either that or it’ll just get tossed under the rug with the rest of the comments that might actually raise some intelligent discussion about how artists become highly-sexualised commodities more with each passing day.

This is, as an example, the same Avril Lavigne that started out as a ‘pop punk’ girl, wearing rather modest shorts, normal t-shirts and singing about being tough in the face of her crappy little relationships, or something. Now she’s essentially a whore, dressing like a tart in order to get on TV as much as possible, singing about utter shite. It’s a clear, blatant marketing decision – as the old adage says: sex sells.

And now it’s getting her into trouble, so we can all laugh. Just as we did with the spitting.

Speaking to the Associated Press, a spokesman for the Islamic Party, Kamarulzaman Mohamed, said:

“It is considered too sexy for us. … It’s not good for viewers in Malaysia. We don’t want our people, our teenagers, influenced by their performance. We want clean artists, artists that are good role models.”

So who would the youth wing of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party want instead? Well, according to the AP:

Malaysia requires all performers to wear clothes without obscene or drug-related images and be covered from chest to knees. They must also refrain from jumping, shouting, hugging and kissing on stage.

So, someone who doesn’t like drugs or obscenity, who doesn’t move much and who won’t want to get off with anyone in their audience? From the world of music?

In other words, not many artists play Malaysia.

The Pussycat Dolls did play back in 2006 mind you, which makes hecklerspray wonder what exactly the Malaysian government thought they were getting when they were booked. Whereas other groups and artists could conceivably be covered up, asked to tone down their lyrical content and to stay still, hiring a glorified bunch of strippers to do a live stage show was never really going to fall within the realms of ‘decent’.

But hey – who are we to comment? We’re always naked at hecklerspray.