Topless on TV: The Miley Cyrus / Vanity Fair Saga
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.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I've been trying to ignore this nonsense since the day it started, but since that's proved impossible let me add my .02 and say: "WTF is going on here? Has everybody turned stupid?"
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-wingers and other crazy people for a change, Ok?
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 entertainment for cretins and a revenue-enhancer for what used to be called the "quality" media.
All we're doing is helping the assholes make a big goddammed deal out of absolutely nothing.
We should ALL listen, and contemplate great minds such as Jamie Lee Curtis !!!
I care about this matter, but not a whit about Miley Cyrus, her career, her image, Disney's image, none of it. This only matters in that they created a wildly popular pop-idol for little girls, then sexualized this heretofore wholesome character. I think it's bad parenting to let a kid be in the thrall of any pop star, and especially one that trades on images of being a freshly deflowered 15-year-old who flirts vaguely sexually with her handsome father. It's disgusting.
Well, book me a one-way ticket to Hades. I looked at this photo and was impressed by Miley's sexuality. I'm 30. I guess I have to prepare myself for eternal damnation because I am a disgusting, predatory pedophile for looking at a 15-year old's artistic photo that the media decided to publish.
Woe is me. Whatever shall I do to disinfect my sick mind?
I don't have time to read all previous comments, so apologies if this has been said here before. I know for a fact it has been said elsewhere before that half of Disney's audience for the "Hanna Montana/Zenon type of movie and program are older viewers who treat it as soft-core kiddie porn. There certainly is an awful lot of cutsie, Lolita-like costuming going on. It is just typically ironic and predictable that the flap would come at something that was blatantly over the line of that "pre-teen budding sexuality" image they try so hard to maintain. Here's an idea, how about promoting some real human image, instead of this fantasy-world kind of product? We should have outgrown that kind of Goobereality when The Monkees went off the air. What's the matter Disnoid? Miley's palm gem flashing red?
When this stupid story broke, I expected to see a photo of a girl with no top on and exposed breasts. What I saw was her back, and that was it. And THIS is what the "press" is salivating over?? Girls her age expose FAR more skin than that while at the beach in full public view! This is NOTHING!
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!
Last week I had never heard of Miley Cyrus. Now, without even trying, I practically know what she had for breakfast this morning. Disney should be handing a big bonus to the exec who thought up this OUTRAGEOUS PUBLICITY STUNT! Ladies and geentlemen, that's all it is. It was well planned and has generated gazillions of dollars worth of free advertising for Miley and her show. And Ms Curtis, you're in the business, there's no reason for you not to recognise that.
Miley wasn't "topless"!
She can't have it both ways.
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.
Of course she can "have it both ways." She started in the business as a child and now she's an adolescent. Her fans won't always be 8 either. Kids grow up. Shirley Temple got married at 17. No one can be a child star forever. Miley Cyrus is growing up, as she should.
Dude. She didn't become Hannah Montana when she was eight. Get over yourself. That started a year ago. She isn't grown, she's fifteen. And as far as I know, Sixteen - eighteen year olds do not idolize or view her as a rolemodel. They all are looking at sex in the city already. Her constituency is eighty thru fifteen year olds. There is no reason whatsoever for her to want to be a sex kitten, US secular humanism notwithstanding.
This is such a non-story. Her parents, who I assume love her, were there at the photo shoot and, absent the scornfulness of other witnesses, thought it was a beautiful and not inappropriate photo of a young girl on the cusp of womanhood.
The photo shows modesty and vulnerability and any sexual context is placed there by the viewer. Now, plenty of viewers will place a sexual context on it, since she is the lust object of millions of kids in her age bracket, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Stop acting like she did a terrible thing or a terrible thing was done to her. She took a picture. It's not pornography. Case closed.
Sadly, Miley is a commody with a specific branding used to focus on a particular audience. Because her handlers lost sght of this, there has been a brouhaha that she will have to face. Including the fact that her adult father posed (IMHO) in a very unseemly photo with her. American advertisers will not change their focus of hypersexualization of women and girls, until we change our consumer habits.
Get over it people, or buy differently!
Perhaps he guardians were protecting her. After all, as she makes the transition from child star she will have to demonstrate an appeal that extends beyond the tween demographic. Indeed, her appearance in VF -- largely an adult gossip/fashion magazine -- argues that this shoot was done with the intent of giving her a transitional phase.
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 bittersweet anchor of being a child star.
I submit that Miley is not "so embarrassed" by the shoot, but rather the incessant and fatuous moralizing exhibited across the country over this non-issue. Moreover, in her blonde Hannah wig, Miley playing an adolescent sex kitten has been going on for many years already.
Sheesh.
Also, enough!
I enjoyed reading this piece. Curtis has a lot of insight into the world of super-celebrity, and is fortunately articulate enough to be able to share that insight with others. As a society, we have a huge double standard with regard to sexuality and what constitutes an acceptable display of sexuality.
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.
Narcissus knows how you and Hannah feel too.
Just keep looking into the empty mirror.
Yeah, sure Jamie Lee....you woke up this morning CONCERNED about the food crisis. Slim chance that you will ever need to be concerned about the food crisis.
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 degradation of our society is happening very quickly and topics like this are becoming much more frequent..
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.
I saw the photo of Miley. I had no idea who she was. My only thought was what a beautiful girl and what a beautiful photo. Could that be because "I" wasn't looking to see a sexual pose?
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-principle pulled me aside and told me to go home because I was dancing too sexually. I had no idea what he was talking about. I felt ashamed and went home.
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 administrators and teachers and had them look at me and my skirt. They looked uncomfortably at at me and at him. Finally, one of them spoke up and said my skirt was fine. Then they all chimed in and said the skirt was fine.
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.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
