I think like many a parent, I am semi-outraged by the Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair photos.I have a 15-year old and I'll be damned before I let her take pictures implying she is naked... with a bed sheet making people wonder why she is naked with a bed sheet...and 15. Never mind, grossed out. However, I am even more annoyed that Hollywood is telling me why I shouldn't be outraged:
The frenzy over Miley Cyrus' Vanity Fair cover shots was inescapable earlier this week -- everyone seemed to have an opinion on the snaps, and most of them were critical of the tween star and her parents. But that's starting to change, as some familiar names -- like Sally Field and Rosie O'Donnell -- have come out in her defense.
Hollywood never gets that the world they live in is not the same one we poor shmoes are raising our children in. We do not have the benefit of the money and fame to save them after failed marriages and drug addictions. Whatever.
So here I am reading these dopey celebrity quotes from the likes of Rosie O'Donnell and Nick Cannon when the last one came up. I could not have written anything better myself to back my point up:
"I think it's hot. When I was 15, I was doing the same thing except I bared it all ... She's just showing her back. She's growing up. I don't think she's doing anything harmful ... I think she's hot!" -- Tila Tequila
I just got back from my kids' karate class, where one of the moms had
the issue of Vanity Fair with the photos in it.
Until now, I haven't wasted much time thinking about this issue. My
daughter is a Hannah Montana fan, but my daughter doesn't read Vanity
Fair, and neither do I, anymore.
I saw the photo reproduced elsewhere and thought, hmmmmm, provocative,
perhaps a bit too sexy, but nothing really all that indecent -- and
didn't give it a second thought.
I still felt that way after seeing the actual photo. It did look
"arty," and her makeup was other-worldly -- as if she were dressing up
as a vampire. It didn't look real.
But then I noticed the other photo on the previous page, with more
realistic lighting, of her in a slutty see-through top and (padded?)
black bra, lying down and posing with a man who was draped over her,
in what looked to me like a lover's embrace. It was.....her dad.
EEEEEEWWWWWW!
I wasn't really emotionally invested in the whole thing. My reaction when I saw the pictures was "eeww, how incredibly inappropriate, yet typical of Hollywood" end of story. Forgotten until I would see another news story about the backlash...and another...What bothered me more than the pictures was the constant barrage of "if you think these pictures are icky, then you need to get a life" from the media.
Yeah, like if we don't want our daughters posing like that, then we have a serious problem.