I woke up this morning concerned about the world food shortage and Korean defectors attempting self immolation in protest of Beijing and was astonished at the amount of attention a young woman named Miley Cyrus was getting for a topless, or shall I say backless, photograph in Vanity Fair.
Just to connect the dots, I too have weathered a recent bout of hysteria over a supposed topless, or shall I say strapless, photograph in a magazine. In my case it was an understanding that the photo in question be shoulders up regardless if I was wearing a suit of armor, chastity belt, wet suit, strapless bra or nothing. It is, was and will always be irrelevant and only became an issue when it was publicized as "topless". All the nipple loving/leering people wanted to know...was it true? Kids I know asked their parents and me if I had posed topless. Saturday Night Live in a funny parody alluded to it as well as the efficacy of Activia yogurt and we all had a good laugh and it sold magazines and it is/was over. Now this.
Apparently young Ms. Cyrus has apologized for something she was told would be artistic and now feels embarrassed about. I feel for her. Of course she is embarrassed. She is a young girl. She shouldn't have to deal with any of this. I don't feel that she was duped. I know the integrity of Ms. Liebovitz and the magazine and I know there were people present at the shoot that should have been looking out to make sure that this didn't happen. In the offending photo she looks tousled and soft and vulnerable and yes...even sexy. She is fifteen after all, and the word sex is starting to come up. I seem to remember a fourteen/fifteen year old Brooke Shields commenting that nothing came between her and her Calvins. There would be no problem if Ms. Cyrus doesn't represent something that is counterintuitive to that image.
In the article in the New York Times Business Section, a Disney executive is quoted, saying "For Miley Cyrus to be a 'good girl' is now a business decision for her. Parents have invested in her godliness. If she violates that trust, she won't get it back." In the world of constant scrutiny how can a young person not violate this and develop a mind, body and spirit of their own? Look at the '50s and the idols of that time. Many gay men with beards...sham marriages. Young stars trying out their sexuality secretly. My own mother (pre-show business) was married at 14 to be able to explore her own passions.
Today's generation of performers have had to navigate the treacherous shoals of adolescence in full frontal viewberty of the peering voyeurism of the media and it's voyeuristic participants. We have watched them as they stumble out of the safety of childhood, not that being a professional actor as a child is safe, but that is another blog, into the glare of celebrity, rehab, prison, teen pregnancy and now this, a backless shot of a young girl. It was called "artistic'. If we keep a young person's natural sexuality in check during their performing years what happens to it? It has to come out. Daniel Radcliffe is starring in Equus which includes nudity and parodied his natural urges (hilariously) on Ricky Gervais' EXTRAS. He has had to carry the weight and morals of Harry Potter and Warner Brothers and can now, as Harry has grown up and the series is nearing its end, tread lightly into adult fare and explore his art.
When these young people get all dressed up for award show red-carpet events don't we all comment how beautiful, stunning and grown-up they look in their strapless/backless dresses and heels and tousled hair? None of this is new. None of this should be news. But it is news because it is a business. It is all Business. It is called Show Business. Show Abyss-ness! I call it Show-OFF Business. You throw a child into the jaws of a business and they will get eaten.
I know how Miley feels. I too was a little embarrassed by my recent topless "scandal" and the subsequent parodies, but I am an adult woman. I protected myself during the shoot and I can take the heat. I only wish that her guardians had protected her.
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What should we do, really, us grown-ups, when the lunatic fringe gets all hot and bothered over something like this? Hmmm? When little Bush's 28% gets all het up and wants to crap all over the daily news cycle, knowing us grown-ups will get distracted from Real Life(TM) and feel obliged to waste time responding to their nonsense?
Let's quit responding to right-wing
What'd'ya say we get real and say to the dumb fucks: "Look, a-holes, sit the f*ck down and shut the f*ck up. We don't care what you think. You don't have any brains. Your leaders are crooks, your opinions don't matter, and we've got more important things to do than waste time slapping you with a newspaper every time you try to hump our leg with phony "alarms" like this latest Miley Cyrus topless bullshit.
Today it's Miley Cyrus. Yesterday it was something else, and tomorrow it'll be something else again. But it's all bullshit, faux entertainm
All we're doing is helping the assholes make a big goddammed deal out of absolutely nothing.
Woe is me. Whatever shall I do to disinfect my sick mind?
As usual, the MSM is so out of touch with reality, they can't help but make themselves look more despicable than this so-called "scandal." Shame on them, again!
Cater to your initial base of little kids who need a 'good girl' role model.
Or attempt to ostensibly be a 'bad girl' to try and gain older adolescent appeal.
I mean come on. You're 15. stick to the good girl shtick, there'll be porn of you
on the internet somehow soon enough.
The photo shows modesty and vulnerabil
Stop acting like she did a terrible thing or a terrible thing was done to her. She took a picture. It's not pornograph
Get over it people, or buy differentl
In another 12-36 months, Hannah Montanna will be too old and too tall to play the role, and where would the always dreamy Ms. Jamie Lee imagine she'll go?
The Hollywood landscape is littered with the anguish of a thousand child stars who never could escape the bitterswee
I submit that Miley is not "so embarrasse
Sheesh.
Also, enough!
Once I was shopping in a department store and watched a mother in her 40's, dressed like a living Barbie doll, as she helped her teen-aged, somewhat awkward daughter select a pair of jeans. The kid came out of the dressing room, and the jeans were so tight that they went right between her buttocks. When she expressed some doubt about how they looked, Mom said "Oh baby, your ass looks FABULOUS in those jeans. Don't worry about it--you look so HOT the guys won't be able to keep their eyes off you!" I felt so bad for the girl. Her mother couldn't see that this is exactly what she was afraid of.
Just keep looking into the empty mirror.
Sadly, Miley is an idol for millions of children around the world, yet her parents, agents and Vanity Fair think it’s OK to dress her up like a little whore and put her in a mag that she has no business in. This degradatio
Kids are our future and we should not glorify sex/image and make it out to be the most important thing in the world to them.
If people think the photo is sexual, then SHAME ON THEM.
In 1970, I was 13 yr old girl, we had a dance at my school. I went and danced with my friends. The vice-princ
A few weeks after that, he pulled me aside when I got to school one morning and said my skirt was too short. No one had ever said anything about that skirt before and I'd worn it a lot.
Well, he took me into the office and had me stand in the middle of the room and called in fellow administra
I was a beautiful girl, unaware of my sexuality and the effect it had on perverted older men. I had done nothing wrong or sexual, but this freakazoid was obsessed with me because of what HE thought and felt about me.