Teens have it so hard today, man.
A quick summary of something stupid: Miley Cyrus. Teen Choice Awards. Pole dancing. It looks like this:
Compared to the Sean Kingston thing from a while back, yeah, there’s a big of a double standard going on why this is not okay and that is supposedly okay.
But I think before you even get into objectification and underage sexual representation and, honestly, hypocrisy toward young female sexuality, I have to register this point again: Why is Miley Cyrus a successful pop star again? I feel like ten years ago we were force fed Britney Spears as a joke (herself a slightly more trashier version of someone like… Tiffany)(Though “I Think We’re Alone Now” is still awesome and “Hit Me Baby One More Time” was never all that awesome), and now it’s like that joke has become a wound and BillyRay Cyrus’ daughter is the salt that the Evil Music Industry Powers That Be are stabbing us with because they can.
It’s such a bizarre conundrum of the young female pop star, any young female pop star, with some initial talent and something marketable that is then seemingly surgically removed and changed into something even more marketable. She teases subliminal and not so subliminal interests of naughty sex and eroticized youth while possibly not quite understanding it herself. And not being given the breathing room to actually make that journey of discovery (which, yes, involves the breaking of certain boundaries to see what they’re made of). All the while surrounded by adults who should know better, but possibly don’t know better, or just have $$$ in their eyes. Then there’s the younger generation, who either are lead to believe that this is okay, this is socially acceptable, or that actually find something they can relate to, a down home-ness, a simpler mindset, an affinity for something positive in skeeziness.
I’ll stop myself there. I understand how it all works and because of that, I don’t understand how all of this actually works. And I don’t want to. Who are the positive young female role models for their youthful peers in this country?
Beyond that, there’s questions that come with certain aspects of pop culture – lolita obsessions, violence in movies, really bad music that is more choreography than actually listenable music – that don’t have answers. They just pose more and more questions and shudders of worry about posterity. Does everything fall into This Is What They Want?
Obviously she’s not American, but one of the many reason I like Lily Allen is because I still get the sense that she’s either doing or at least trying to do everything on her own terms. Her mistakes and her successes have one very important thing in common: They belong to her equally. Also, she’s awesome.
I’ll leave this particular spice of WTF with saner words than I can manage on the subject, one of Counterforce’s favorite internet crushes, Tracy Clark-Flory:
“That’s some potent imagery: an emblem of childhood (an ice cream cart) juxtaposed with a symbol of modern young womanhood (a stripper pole). Looks like her managers are following the Britney Spears sexy-virgin path to success — or self-destruction, depending on your perspective.”
In other news:
Jake Ryan: “Be my guest.”
Will Arnett and Mitch Hurwitz team up for new FOX pilot.
Big Willie Styles in Vegas for his B-day.
Crystal ball sets hour on fire. Should’ve seen that coming!
Guy coming to rescue gets shot in the balls.
Watch Community, the new pilot starring Joel McHale and Chevy Chase.
Everyone wants a piece of you…
what a perfect title! i hadn’t watched either of the clips on the award shows about miley or kingston until today. reading news stories about it, you would think miley was having guys “make it rain” up in that award show. it was sooo not as bad as you’d think! she took nothing off! she didn’t dance risque but that’s probably because she can’t dance, period. i think people look at this and see her becoming the next washed up britney; divorced, single parenting, and doing very questionable things. all this while miley is still on disney, claiming virginity, and under the age of 18.
the sean kingston video in comparison, it doesn’t even compare. yes, he’s a man. and he’s a legal adult. so he can go on a “teen” award show and show that it’s perfectly fine to have girls dress in revealing firefighter outfits and dance around a stripper pole.
the double standard isn’t going anywhere for a while though. a loooong while. look at the male vs female teacher issue when one gets caught sleeping with a student. when the teacher is a male, everyone is in uproar! “oh that poor child,” etc. when the teacher is female, the usual male response is: “where was that teacher when i was in school?” america is wonderful. i’m holding a town hall meeting to discuss this topic.
Actually, the typical male response to hearing that a hot female teacher fucked a underage male is: “Nice.”
I think that in the case of both Britney & Miley, they both wanted a much more adult image.
Britney’s famous Rolling Stone cover w/ David LaChapelle was her idea.
There’s a huge conflict in expecting these girls to be just sexy enough and also forcing them to interact socially in a very adult world and still remain virginal and child like. Taylor Momsen is fond of saying that she doesn’t like hanging out with kids her age because she can’t relate to them, and why would she? She makes a shitload of money and has access to partying and hot older men. That’s the same story with all these girls and no one should be surprised when they start wanting to bust out of this virginal Disney persona. Miley’s 18 for crying out loud. She’s clearly still doing Hannah Montana for the paycheck.
Miley’s 16. And my own problem with her – and I’m well aware of how much pressure she could be under and how hard it is to grow into a person, let alone a woman under all the spotlight – is that she’s trying to be the wholesome pop star, the anti-Britney, the anti-everyone else, and yet reap all the benefits of flirting with the fringes of her burgeoning sexuality.
Taylor Momsen just makes me laugh though. She is Little J, and starring in her own show that exists only in her own mind. And in it, she dresses like Courtney Love.
Who the fuck is Taylor Momsen. What an awful name. Miley and Britney aren’t real people, so I could give a shit about them. It’s their handlers and imageers who are the problem.