Avril Lavigne
Avril Lavigne was accused of being "racist" after her new video "Hello Kitty" hit the Internet on Tuesday. Reuters

It was apparently OK when “No Doubt’s” Gwen Stefani did it back in 2004, but don’t let Avril Lavigne get away with it! The Canadian singer was slammed on social media Wednesday when her video “Hello Kitty” was released for its "fetishization" of Japanese culture, but it's not the first time an entertainer has done this. Like Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” the new video features Lavigne performing while expressionless Asian women stand behind her.

[Watch the "offensive" "Hello Kitty" video here]

In the early 2000s, Stefani had the Harajuku Girls, a quartet of Japanese women who went on tour with her and appeared in several of her videos. It might not have been a good idea to do that 10 years ago, but Lavinge’s “Hello Kitty” seems to cross the line into intolerably offensive for many since she added a few Japanese words into her song and then drinks sake and eats sushi in the video.

According to MTV News, the video has been yanked from YouTube. It still can be viewed on Lavigne’s official site, though. A spokesperson for the singer told the pop culture news site the video was pulled from YouTube since it was never officially uploaded and was supposed to go live Wednesday afternoon. It apparently went live on Tuesday.

Entertainment Weekly said there are "serious questions about whether it's offensive (expressionless Asian dancers, Tokyo-as-prop) or offensively obvious." Billboard called the video an “unseemly” “train wreck” that was “an embarrassment in any language.” The site piled on that the presence of “four identical, creepily expressionless Asian women” who stood behind Lavigne were offensive to Asian culture.

Lavigne hasn’t responded to the backlash on her official Twitter account. Instead, she has continued to promote her new song by sharing pictures from the video. On the 140-character social media site, some users struggled to deem the video as “racist” but acknowledged to song wasn’t good. Other’s found “Hello Kitty” blatantly offensive. Some of their comments have been posted below:

But not all the feedback was negative:

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