How A 15 year old Scandalized A Nation

How A 15-year-old Scandalized A Nation

Miley Cyrus did the unthinkable. She had the unmitigated gall to grow from a child to a woman without going through a graceful transition period where the American public could approve.

The daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus (think Achy-Breaky Heart and television's Doc) is the runaway star of Disney's Hannah Montana, about an ordinary girl who makes it in the big time as a singer. With a fortune in Hannah toys and accessories in the marketplace, Miley had become the poster child for the clean and safe young American girl, a role model for all young girls with dreams.

But Miley crossed the line. She reached physical womanhood without becoming of legal age. With her parents at the photo shoot, she posed for Vanity Fair magazine's June issue. I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but she posed with one shoulder and part of her back bare. Actual skin showing in the photo.

The fact that Miley and anyone else in the world would bare more skin in a bathing suit on a beach was irrelevant to self righteous American bigots. In the magazine picture she clutched a silk sheet around her and her hair was slightly mussed. Obviously Miley would be teaching young American girls who looked to her as a role model, an ideal, that sex is the right thing to do, the bigots claimed.

Oh, the dreadful degradation that Miley would bestow on American girls would stagger the imagination. Girls as young as three years old would see their idol as a shameless hussy and want to be like that themselves. Why three year old girls would be reading Vanity Fair, where many other models would be seen wearing far less than Miley, remains a mystery.

So does the claim that a bare shoulder and part of her back is sexually stimulating. Unless the bigots themselves find it stimulating.

Why parents who would not want their daughters to read the magazine would read it themselves is another mystery. Or I should say, hypocrisy.

Parents who know next to nothing about children want someone to blame if their daughters descend into sluthood and Miley fit the bill perfectly. Miley's embarrassment and claim that the photo was not to her liking and the distance her parents (who had approved the shoot with controversial photographer Annie Leibovitz ) put from the photo's publication was just what the scandal-lovers wanted.

The photo looks suspiciously like an art picture from the 1950s. Yes, art, not Hustler. Only Miley wasn't nude. But art doesn't matter to the bigots. Bare shoulders are all that's important.
The hypocrisy of the bigots boggles the imagination of anyone who observed the situation without emotion. The politically correct bigots wanted someone to suffer. They found Miley. She's a sweet girl, she should do the trick nicely.

All parents of young girls should take the time to explain to their daughters the grief that Miley Cyrus and her parents will experience. Not because Miley did something wrong. Because fame brings shame in the United States of America.

That's how it works. Tell your daughters about how cruel the morality police bigots can be.
Don't bother telling them about the sins of the bigots themselves, the ones they keep hidden away. Those sins don't get published in Vanity Fair anyway.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make their children aware of the cruelty that prejudice can do to people so they can avoid it where possible.
Learn more at http://billallin.com