If Malaysian officials' logical system holds, Avril Lavigne is sexier than Gwen Stefani and the Pussycat Dolls and only as potentially morally corrupting as Beyonc�.
The Canadian faux-punkette has become the up-to-the-minute Western toss off star to face trouble in the Asian land as she was uninvited from acting a planned Kuala Lumpur gig. The Muslim-majority country's Arts, Culture and Heritage Ministry canceled the depict today amid growing protests and claims the singer was, quite simply, "likewise sexy."
While that, of course, is altogether subjective, the timing of the planned gig�just deuce days before the nation's Independence Day on Aug. 29�was non and, per a aged ministry prescribed, was the real reason for the cancellation.
"It is not well-timed," Shukran Ibrahim told the Associated Press. "It's non in the spirit of our National Day. If we go ahead with the concert, it is contrary to what we are preparing for."
Another unknown ministry official told Reuters that the concert was indeed off, but non for right, adding that the date had simply been postponed and not scrapped all together.
"We did not reject the concert," the official said. "We asked them to find oneself another date as the original date is so close to the Independence Day. That's the only reason."
Not according to the headlines.
Earlier this week, officials with the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party's youth wing vocalized their objections to the show, careless of its timing, locution Lavigne was "considered to a fault sexy" for them: "We don't want our people, our teenagers, influenced by their performance."
As it happens, Lavigne is not the first to fall fouled of the strict standards imposed on female singers in the country.
Last twelvemonth, Beyonc� pulled the plug on her own planned Kuala Lumpur gig amid similar complaints, but blasted her relocating the evidence to Indonesia on goose egg more than a "programming conflict." Just months earlier, Stefani was allowed to perform only after agreeing to get into less telling costumes, while the promoters of a 2006 Pussycat Dolls show up were fined because of the group's "sexually revelatory routines."
More information