Miley Cyrus – Once wholesome now…

By: American Decency Staff

I guess Hannah Montana hasn't heard her old theme song enough. After years of playing a teenage rock star who strives to keep balance in her life by keeping her celebrity status secret from her peers, Miley Cyrus has  not only lost the "the best of both worlds," she's making some of us wonder which world she belongs to at all.

In case you're out of the loop, the formerly wholesome tween Disney star whom we have watched slowly fall from her peak as a teeny bopper singing sold-out shows and shamelessly selling merchandise with her face plastered on it has hit new lows with her performance at this year's MTV Video Music Awards and her latest music video.

A few years ago, when Miley quit "Hannah Montana" she raised a few eyebrows when a photo surfaced of her smoking what some speculated was weed, when she did a fairly innocuous dance which happened to be on a pole, and when a hacker got into her email and put out some pictures of her in her underwear.

That was weak sauce compared to the self-choreographed scandal Cyrus finds herself in today. Perhaps in an effort to become a "serious" musician like Lady Gaga (who wears dresses made out of meat!) Miley's  latest music video features her riding on a wrecking ball. Naked. She also licks a sledge hammer. I'm not sure, but I think it's supposed to be art.

Then there's her VMA performance, in which she strutted out on stage in a leotard with a teddy bear on it, later doffing it for nude underwear to sing a song about sex with singer Robin Thicke while sticking her tongue out and mistreating a foam finger.

It seems that in a desperate lurch for the attention she had as Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus is slipping more towards Marilyn Manson.

It's not so much the things that Cyrus does that are shocking. After all, the VMA's have been known for bringing out the sick side of performers (i.e. Madonna and Britney Spears kissing on stage and Lady Gaga's aforementioned meat dress).  It's more so the whiplash we get while watching "aww shucks," Hannah Montana become "how tragic" Miley Cyrus.

But, if her goal is to get people talking, mission accomplished. Unfortunately for her, the talk is not exactly encouraging.

I give you the top commented post on MTV's video of the performance:

"…My eyes hurt. My ears hurt… It's like a… car crash and I just cannot avert my eyes. What kind of drugs is she on? Seriously? Who thought this would be a good idea? She's got to be on something. "

"… she’s disgusting. honestly a disgrace to women kind."

" Uhhh I will never see her the same again.   I feel bad for all the young girls that watch Hannah Montana if they ever see her how she is now."

That last comment fleshes out the real issue. Three years ago Wal-Mart sold sheets with this girls face on them in the little girls section! There were Hannah Montana backpacks and t-shirts and pencils and now those little girls' hero is humping demolition equipment. What are they to learn from that?

What they learn was recently exemplified by students from Grand Valley State University –  40 miles down the road from our headquarters.  Grand Valley has displayed a modern art sculpture of a wrecking ball – called a bifilar pendulum.  For over 20 years the “wrecking ball” pendulum sculpture has quietly hung suspended not bothering anyone – an innocuous college landmark on the campus of this liberal arts university.

That is, until Miley Cyrus filmed her recent music video of her naked self on top of a swinging wrecking ball.  Once Miley’s naked video was released, it took little time for some college-age “adults” of GVSU to imitate the video – shucking their clothes, climbing on the giant pendulum sculpture, and swinging away as they belted out Miley’s song, “Wrecking Ball.”  

As Miley’s controversial naked music video vaulted her song to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 pop music list, the videos of the stark-naked students posted online also went viral.  GVSU promptly removed the pendulum sculpture citing “safety reasons” and the story made headlines across the country.

Aside from safety and “sanitary” concerns of a group of puerile college kids vying for their 15 minutes of fame, there are far greater concerns regarding the sexualized example Miley Cyrus and other teen idols set for young fans – and adults. 

Writing for Townhall.com, Mona Charen comments about the consequences of Miley’s explicit displays in her quest for notoriety:   “How many of Cyrus' young fans will interpret her behavior as a normal part of growing up? How many will confuse lasciviousness with sexual maturity? …”

However, Charen raises another concern about Miley’s VMA performance.  Since Elvis first swung his hips many parents have recognized the impact of culture influencing the behavior of youth.  But a growing trend is even more disturbing – the sexual exploitation of children.

“[Miley] is hardly the first celebrity to attempt to shock her audience by shedding her ingenue image. Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and others have plowed this ground. But Cyrus did more than cast off her innocence. She used innocence itself as a lecherous come on.

“Cyrus, 20, began her vulgar dance by appearing in a teddy bear costume with dancing teddy bears as back up. She later exchanged this for a flesh-colored bra and panties …

“I haven't ever seen child porn, but I would bet that a great deal of it uses images of innocence and childhood — like teddy bears — for the delectation of its audience. Cyrus has now taken this perversion mainstream.

“Child porn, like every other kind of pornography, once relegated to a seedy underworld, is now as close as a cellphone. It's bobbing along in the twilight, close to the surface of American lives, but kept from full view by the last remaining shreds of propriety that our culture enforces.

“The existence of the Internet has probably already eroded some of the shame that pedophiles once felt. Learning that hundreds of thousands of others share one's perversion must be cathartic.

“But how much more liberating to see the themes of child sexual abuse portrayed approvingly at the VMA awards?

“American popular culture continues to prove that there is no rock bottom, and everyone who shrugs that it's no big deal is a little bit complicit.”

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