At thirteen

13. 2002. Avril Lavigne is seventeen. Microsoft word, you are wrong, with your red squiggly line ’n all. There is no error in Lavigne. L A V I G N E. Where was I? Right, I enter the living room and switch on the TV. MTV. Dilemma / All I Have / Here without you / Lose Yourself / Hands Clean. And Avril Lavigne. It was the first time that I ever saw Avril through the TV screen. It was the first time that I saw her at all. With her long sleek caramel coloured hair, her smoky eyes, strumming her guitar. Was it a telecaster? I do not remember. What I remember most, though, is her tie. Her black tie was a thing to behold. 12. At thirteen, Sister Giovanna taught us how to be good girls. Girls was the word she used. G I R L S with an emphasis on the s. She taught us what to do and what not to do in order to obey (a) our superiors, (b) our superiors, (c) our superiors. Choose your pick. Skirts no higher than our knees, hair tied back, no more than two piercings – one on each ear lobe. That’s that. Then, Avril pops up on screen and my world – our world – is turned upside down. 11. Somebody else 'round everyone else / You're watching your back like you can't relax / You're trying to be cool / You look like a fool to me / Tell me. 10. And boy did we feel cool. We felt the cool-est. With our smoky eyes and sleek hair down to our arses and most of all, with a tie round our neck, loosened just a bit, a cool noose if you will, to look like Avril. To almost become Avril. Scratch that, to become Avril. Each and every one of us girls at the village’s church school was an Avril. 9. Then, my music career began. I started to sing, to attend singing lessons, to perform on stage – the platform from which I felt I could conquer the world. And on that stage, I felt, more than anything else that I was Avril. 8. The question was: How does a tie tie everything in? Or rather: How does a tie tie everything together? 7. Most of all, I was a fool for thinking I was cool. We all were fools. As I see it, at the time we were the cool fools. Trying to look a bit older, a bit wilder, a bit sexier perhaps. 6. We were the superstars of our existence and we felt we could conquer the world. Oh yes, we did. 5. You come over unannounced / Dressed up like you're something else / Where you are and where it's at you see. 4. The thing is, we were not even dressing up as someone else. We became you Avril and in our little big heads with our little big dreams it made so much sense to wear exactly like you. We wore much more than your tie. We wore your hair, we wore your eyes, we wore your skin. And everything made perfect sense. 3. Your tie cost a 100 dollars. Mine, a fraction of the price. 2022. Twenty years on. It all comes back to us. That thrift shop at the back of an alley closed down. Boy, do I miss that place. Of course I can’t relax, Avril. You see, they built a block of apartments from where were used to buy our ties and bangles and all the stylish stuff to make us look hot. 2. Google_Avril_Lavigne_Style. Headline: From skater girl meets edgy chic, to punk rock glam and gothic grunge, Lavigne's personal style has continued to inspire individuals as the pop-punk aesthetic makes its way back into the mainstream. 1. “Complicated” means consisting of many interconnecting parts or elements. Synonym for intricate. 0. In the early days, it started with her music on MTV. Saturday afternoons, sweat and drums. Complicated came on and it made life so much easier.