We Need To Talk About The Poor Girl Avril Lavigne Disses In ‘Sk8er Boi’

Avril Lavigne was pretty iconic in the ’00s: Inventor of ties. Inventor of cargo pants. Inventor of heavy eyeliner and teen angst.

She burst onto the scene with absolute banger ‘Complicated’ and quickly followed it up with the smash hit ‘Sk8er Boi’.

It’s a bop alright. But the thing is, the other day I found myself feeling a bit sorry for the girl in the song. No, not Avril, she’s smug as hell in this track.

I’m talking about the other girl, the one who makes up the rest of the song, the one who sounds like she may have once had a thing for Sk8er Boi.

Let’s do a lyrical breakdown.

“He was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious?
He was a punk, she did ballet… what more can I say.
He wanted her, she’d never tell, secretly she wanted him as well.”

OK, so they were awkward teens and her friends “stuck up their nose,” because they thought Sk8er Boi was a loser with baggy clothes. We’ve all caved into peer pressure as teens. We’ve all picked the “cool” thing over the right thing. It’s nothing new.

In the chorus Avril gives our gal a backhanded compliment – she has a pretty face, but her head is up in space and she needs to “come back down to earth”. All, assumedly, because she didn’t voice her interest in Sk8er Boi when he was a mere teen pleb.

Fast forward five years. Our gal is sitting at home, with her baby, and as Avril happily sings, she’s all alone. We don’t know what’s happened to her or the baby daddy. We don’t know the shit she’s been through.

Either way, she’s home alone feeding her baby and Sk8er Boi comes on TV rockin’ up MTV, and our gal is probably like “oh shit, there’s that dude I kinda had a thing for in high school”. We’ve all seen someone from our high school glow up. Good for them.

Her friends who obviously once thought the dude was a giant loser now all have tickets to see his show, so our gal tags along and watches him from afar. Or as Avril says “looks up at the man that she turns dooOO-OOownnnn”, as though rejecting someone in high school should be one’s biggest life regret because he’s now famous. Sure. OK.

The next chorus sees Avril get a bit vicious.

“Now he’s a superstar, slammin’ on his guitar
Does your pretty face see what he’s worth?”

But she doesn’t hold back there, no siree.

Avril then launches into this gloating tirade:

“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.”

Avril is smug AF because she’s the one who has landed Sk8er Boi, and we don’t even know if she snagged him before he was famous or not! But she apparently sees the “soul that is inside,” regardless of all the fame, and money, and glory he now has.

And Avril wants our gal, our single mum, to know that she lost and Avril won. Avril’s won coz she’s got the man! Avril’s gloating coz she doesn’t have to worry about a baby but it’s totally OK to then rub it in someone else’s face that she got “their man”.

Like he’s a huge prize, and if you rejected him in high school, you should be punished with a miserable life! What if our gal didn’t even WANT Sk8er Boi anymore? Ever think about that Avril? DID YOU?!

But Avril doesn’t even STOP there. She’s hellbent on making this girl as jealous as possible. She hammers the final nail into the coffin by bragging about how they “rock each other’s world” and how they’re in the studio singing a song they wrote about “a girl he used to know”.

Pray tell, it’s been five years, Sk8er Boi is with a new woman but still writing songs about a girl he used to know? IDK if that’s much to brag about Avril, to be perfectly honest with you. I’d be questioning that one, regardless of how much you’re rocking each other’s worlds.

So I just want to shout out to the other woman in Sk8er Boi, the one that probably has some regrets but is single-handedly raising a kid on her own and not bragging about getting a man. You go girl.