Jessica

Vozel

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May 5, 2008

Miley Cyrus and the Ongoing Sexualization of Girls

This week, tween star Miley Cyrus shocked America when she crossed over to the dark side of adulthood. When Vanity Fair released photos of 15-year-old Miley draped in a sheet, concerned parents and Disney execs were aghast that their sugary pop idol had become a sexualized young woman. 

Parents told reporters that they were no longer going to let their daughters watch Hannah Montana, Miley’s Disney-produced television show-turned-musical-act-turned-brand-phenomenon. Internet message boards, populated mostly by furious mothers, advocated for a massive Hannah Montana paraphernalia bonfire. There are rumblings that Disney might even replace Miley with her up-and-coming co-star, Serena Gomez. Miley insisted in a statement that the photos were meant to be “artistic” but was sure to cover-up (no pun intended) for her mistake by saying that she was “so embarrassed” once she saw the sexual nature of the finished photographs. 

I have to wonder though, why all of this uproar now? Why Miley? It is troublesome that Miley’s career should take a hit when the problem goes much, much deeper than one girl posing for one magazine in a marginally sexual way. She’s become an unwilling scapegoat for a problem that can’t be fixed by an outraged bonfire or a cast replacement. 

It is not surprising that all of this should come to pass. It’s only a matter of time before all tween and teen stars – especially those who have contractual relationships with Disney, it seems – become sexualized (see: Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lynn Spears just to name a few).  And most 15-year-olds go through a stage of sexual exploration. It’s called growing up. The media, however, capitalizes on that moment of burgeoning sexuality and makes something private incredibly public. 

When a girl grows up in the spotlight, she is bound to be taken advantage of by the sex-hungry media, who always jostle to be the first to capture that moment when virgin becomes whore. Those, after all, are the two image options for Hollywood’s young women aged 15 and 25, and catching one on the cusp of the other is a rare opportunity indeed. It’s both the moment of a young girl’s fall from grace, for which the public salivates (see above list of names), and the idealized image of pure innocence coupled with a budding willingness to leave that innocence behind.

Perhaps the uproar over Miley’s photos is a sign that the public is finally sick of the media taking advantage of women’s sexuality, but I somehow doubt it. More likely, the public is incensed that the media’s flawed approach to sexuality has seeped over into the realm of the young. Our children must be exposed to sex in a regimented, controlled way, if they are exposed to it at all. 

Miley, then, represents an interesting clash between the ways in which women are objectified in the media and America’s puritanical views about sex, and only scandal can ensue from such an intersection. Suddenly advice is popping up about “how to talk to your kids about Hannah Montana’s photos” because parents have no idea how to talk to their kids about sex. It’s much easier to just get angry – and not angry at the media for perpetuating sexual objectification of women and girls, but at Miley and her television show because she’s a much easier target than challenging the ideology that foregrounds that infamous magazine shoot. 

Disney, which cancelled Miley’s scheduled appearance at Disney World this week, is particularly hypocritical. Slate uncovered a Disney ad campaign in Beijing featuring a girl of about 12 in a push-up bra and panties. Though Disney claims no responsibility for the ad, one need not look any farther than the Disney Princess movies for evidence of marketing sexuality to and for kids – belly baring and seashell bras belonging to innocent, virginal women never before exposed to the opposite sex until that moment to which the audience is privy, played out right in front of us on the screen. 

In their own statement of Miley’s Vanity Fare debacle, the Disney Channel said: “Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.” This, of course, is true. But, given the above examples, Disney cannot claim innocence in a culture that feeds on the sexualization of all women, and especially women who were only recently girls.   

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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