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
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Civilization Progresses As We Help Each Other
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. - John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)
This opinion enters the realm of morality. Only in part does it involve legal repercussions if inaction causes injury to others. Morality and law often overlap (by design), though mostly in the area of criminal law.
If you were to stand by watching another person being beaten or killed, you might be charged if you could have done something to prevent it but did not.
At its core, this dual responsibility (guilty by action or inaction) raises the question of to what degree we are each our brother's keeper. That is, what is our responsibility to help someone who may not have helped us if the roles were reversed? Are we both responsible to and for each other and what are the consequences of not acting?
In an urban environment where helping others has become less common than it was in pioneer days or when people were spread across the land more evenly and people helped each other because they knew that one day they were need help themselves, many of us give little thought to the possibility of helping others.
Charities must beg for donations because people do not have a natural inclination to give money to help others. Yet stories of heroism where one person has risked death or made a great commitment to help another reach the news media as well.
Today someone who helps another is considered to have done so out of goodness. In the past, it was more of a social obligation for everyone. Mill considered it duty.
In movies, on television and in newspapers we give unintended social lessons that each of us must look after our own best interests because no one else will help us when we most need help. In general, we have responded to this with me-first selfishness.
Yet the good examples, the role models, are with us every day. With each passing day, especially as the world experiences increasing numbers of natural tragedies, more opportunities to help others present themselves. At the same time, more people than ever before complain about the selfishness, the greed and the thoughtlessness of others.
People will tire of the ethics of reality TV programs and realize that the world should not be that way. It's part of a cycle.
In the past, such cycles were traditionally broken by war, where people need to help each other through catastrophe. Most countries of the world are not at war today, but their people take a greater interest in the welfare of people of others countries than ever before. When people hurt and die, others will care.
Civilization advances only when people help each other. This opportunity presents itself today as more of us take an interest in an earthquake in Iran, a tsunami in Sri Lanka or a flood in Bangladesh. They all kill people. We feel the need to help the survivors. In doing so, we learn about the lives of people we previously knew nothing about.
More of us than ever before no longer stand by and watch tragedy and wrong as spectators.
Mill said it was an obligation. We see it today as more of a necessity to help others in need in the global village that is our home.
The lessons of civilization are learned slowly and painfully, but they happen and we do progress.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light through the dark smog that some people view as life today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
This opinion enters the realm of morality. Only in part does it involve legal repercussions if inaction causes injury to others. Morality and law often overlap (by design), though mostly in the area of criminal law.
If you were to stand by watching another person being beaten or killed, you might be charged if you could have done something to prevent it but did not.
At its core, this dual responsibility (guilty by action or inaction) raises the question of to what degree we are each our brother's keeper. That is, what is our responsibility to help someone who may not have helped us if the roles were reversed? Are we both responsible to and for each other and what are the consequences of not acting?
In an urban environment where helping others has become less common than it was in pioneer days or when people were spread across the land more evenly and people helped each other because they knew that one day they were need help themselves, many of us give little thought to the possibility of helping others.
Charities must beg for donations because people do not have a natural inclination to give money to help others. Yet stories of heroism where one person has risked death or made a great commitment to help another reach the news media as well.
Today someone who helps another is considered to have done so out of goodness. In the past, it was more of a social obligation for everyone. Mill considered it duty.
In movies, on television and in newspapers we give unintended social lessons that each of us must look after our own best interests because no one else will help us when we most need help. In general, we have responded to this with me-first selfishness.
Yet the good examples, the role models, are with us every day. With each passing day, especially as the world experiences increasing numbers of natural tragedies, more opportunities to help others present themselves. At the same time, more people than ever before complain about the selfishness, the greed and the thoughtlessness of others.
People will tire of the ethics of reality TV programs and realize that the world should not be that way. It's part of a cycle.
In the past, such cycles were traditionally broken by war, where people need to help each other through catastrophe. Most countries of the world are not at war today, but their people take a greater interest in the welfare of people of others countries than ever before. When people hurt and die, others will care.
Civilization advances only when people help each other. This opportunity presents itself today as more of us take an interest in an earthquake in Iran, a tsunami in Sri Lanka or a flood in Bangladesh. They all kill people. We feel the need to help the survivors. In doing so, we learn about the lives of people we previously knew nothing about.
More of us than ever before no longer stand by and watch tragedy and wrong as spectators.
Mill said it was an obligation. We see it today as more of a necessity to help others in need in the global village that is our home.
The lessons of civilization are learned slowly and painfully, but they happen and we do progress.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light through the dark smog that some people view as life today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
