Credit: Dangerous Minds / Chosei Funahara / Album Cover

At its core, punk rock is provocation.

On the one hand, it’s radical self-expression. It’s taking control of your own life and not letting anyone police any aspect of you, from the art that you want to make to the way that you live your life. This is a vital attitude to have at any level. The knowledge that whether you’re the person on stage or in the audience, no one has the right to dictate your life. On the other hand, if a punk does what they do without societal pushback, are they really a punk?

There’s a pretty convincing argument to be made that punk ideology is nothing without people being offended by it. Punk as a culture is inherently reactive; you wouldn’t need to prize self-acceptance and self-control over everything if there were no one upset or disturbed by the way you express yourself. Thus, you’re left with a chicken/egg problem. Does the urge to freak out squares lead to being a punk, or does the urge to be a punk lead to freaking out squares?

Those two might sound similar, but to me, there’s a world of difference. If you’re only taking up the punk mantle because, in so many words, you just want attention, is that really a good use of the punk mantle? This isn’t to say that every punk has acted in good faith. Never forget that the Sex Pistols were a boy band formed to sell clothes. However, one gets the feeling that the likes of The Slits, Sleater-Kinney and Soul Glo would have made exactly the same music and statements if no one was listening, which can’t help but make them more vital than someone like GG Allin.

Then you get Wendy O Williams, who was absolutely the best of both worlds.

How punk was Wendy O Williams?

Everything about Wendy O Williams should put her in the GG Allin bracket of “professional irritant”. The vast majority of people who know the name Wendy O Williams know her for her ludicrous stunts and shocking behaviour. For attacking a photographer for trying to take her picture. For taking a live chainsaw to plugged-in electric guitars at her concerts. In one particularly memorable case, she appeared to masturbate on stage while wearing only shaving cream in Cleveland, Ohio.

In any other case, this would merely be someone committing to the bit. Of knowing which side of her bread was buttered, and that doing outrageous stuff will get you noticed a lot quicker than making great music will.

However, looking into the history of the Plasmatics frontwoman will show that Williams was always making a statement with what she did, even when it was as outrageous as getting arrested for simulating sex on stage with a sledgehammer in Milwaukee. I think the only reason that Miley Cyrus wasn’t taking notes was that it happened over a decade before she was born.

However, this was more than just a stunt. During her young adulthood, Williams had flirted with sex work on more than a few occasions, working as a stripper before performing in sex shows and landing a role in a porn film in 1979. This was actually the break she needed to be drafted into The Plasmatics. Thus, all the trouble she got into for her lewd behaviour, including being beaten by cops at the Milwaukee incident discussed earlier, suddenly becomes more than just a stunt.

It becomes a statement on how women can be forced into sex work out of economic necessity, but it becomes a literal crime to express that same sexuality on their own terms. Making statements like that was what made Wendy O Williams a true punk rocker as you could ever get.