“Are you trying to find naked pictures of Miley Cyrus?” asked my girlfriend yesterday, glancing at my Google image search results. Needless to say, I wasn’t. I was trying to find those Vanity Fair photos to judge this ridiculous controversy myself.
Today I think I’ve got a better handle on the whole thing, thanks to Nancy Gruver’s post on Stockholm Syndrome in the Media. Gruver has done a lot of thinking on girls in the media. She’s the founder and CEO of New Moon, a fabulous feminist magazine for girls. Here’s her perspective:
Girls are barraged by sexualized images all around them and everyone they come into contact with in daily life is also surrounded by those images. The images viscerally teach “the importance of being sexy” if you are female. The images teach all of us that acting sexy is how girls/women can have power without being rejected as domineering or bitchy (see media coverage of Hillary Clinton for the way “non-sexy” female power is conveyed).Now imagine the extreme confusion girls feel when they are surrounded by images promoting the power of female sexiness and at the same time are told that it’s bad for girls to be interested in sex, to act sexy themselves, to dress sexy, etc. The real message being conveyed, of course, is that girls shouldn’t want to be powerful.
Usually, I barely follow this sort of stuff. Bubblegum pop stars are well below my notice. But if I have to watch another young woman be eaten by the celebrity gossip/entertainment industry machine, I might just cry.
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10 comments
She's 15.
That's the end of the argument, as far as I'm concerned. I can't believe how many people are trying to defend this. I'm wondering what they'd say if it was a 15-year-old boy, too...
Posted by Thene
April 30, 2008, 4:53 PM
I'm 16, so I guess I can comment on this?
She showed her back. And shoulders. It was maybe a little much, but she's an older teenager, not an 8-year-old kid.
I bought a halter dress for my semi-formal this year. Does that mean I'm being "eaten" by some kind of pop-culture monster? That I'm being brainwashed?
No. I occasionally like wearing stuff that's slightly more revealing once in a while. Mostly, I wear t-shirts and jeans - sometimes I don't. But if I wear a miniskirt or halter top or whatever, I don't like people assuming that I'm a) stupid, b) a victim of brainwashing or c), any less feminist.
And I don't have low self-esteem, either.
Posted by Lindsay
April 30, 2008, 6:08 PM
Lindsay, I think the problem isn't the amount of skin displayed nearly so much as the pose. Have you ever seen a picture of a man (of any age) in that posture? The 'sex' here is implicit rather than explicit, and the construct of 'sex' that's being conveyed is appallingly fucked up itself.
Posted by Thene
April 30, 2008, 6:54 PM
Thanks for the comments. :)
I'm sort of neutral on the "is it exploitation or is it empowering" debate. I didn't mean to take a position on that, Lindsay. I also didn't mean to imply that looking sexual makes anyone anti-feminist, brainwashed, or self-loathing!
Legal or not, your average 15-year-old is a sexual being. That's just fine. Photos that acknowledge that are just fine too. I think what a lot of feminists worry about is the hypersexual nature of media portrayals of women in general, and we'd like to hope that we can protect younger women from exploitation, at least for a few years.
Gruver is talking about something else, though. Women are told that we should be sexual up to a threshold, but after that we're branded as sluts and bad girls. It's a fine line, and there's sexism on both sides.
Posted by Allison
April 30, 2008, 10 PM
Don't worry, it wasn't directed at you. More at the general OMGing of the mainstream media.
And you are totally right.
Posted by Lindsay
April 30, 2008, 10:20 PM
Well, Thene, there were those pictures of Daniel Radcliffe with his shirt off while Equus was running in London, right after he turned 16 and sprouted all those muscles...
Posted by Cate
April 30, 2008, 11:37 PM
Cate - if Cyrus was posing in a way that showed off muscles, I wouldn't be nearly so disturbed. Instead, she's bending forwards and clutching a sheet to her chest.
Posted by Thene
April 30, 2008, 11:40 PM
Sorry! I just realized I sounded really overly harsh in my first comment. I was not having a happy day.
Sorry about that.
Posted by Lindsay
May 1, 2008, 8:41 AM
Lindsay: I thought your comment was fantastic and much needed. When I read it, I immediately thought "right on."
All too often, the media talks ABOUT teenage girls and doesn't talk TO teenage girls. The media makes judgments and assumptions and never opens up a dialogue with young women to find out how they feel about issues. This is so unbelievably damaging, because it means young women have no voice or autonomy.
The only reason those images of Myley Cyrus are controversial is because we, as a culture, have demonized and shamed female desire, sexualized children, and made all nudity pronographic. Our discomfort with sexuality means that as soon as we see any possible reference to it in young people we play the blame game, screaming exploitation, and nine times out of ten, we blame young women for being misguided. Frankly, it says more about society than it does about Cyrus or Leibovitz that we all see pornography and obscenity in those images. In fact, those outraged were partially satiated by Cyrus telling them she was "embarrassed." More shame for women, no?
This entire scandal comes out of a culutre that refuses to provide comrehensive sex-education to young people and instead wants to believe that teenage girls are not sexual until their wedding night. This is a culture that values "purity" in women above all else. Because of that value system, Cyrus is "ruined." And she's being treated like she's ruined.
Disney released a statement in which they said Vanity Fair created a situation "to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines." Hypocricy much? ALL DISNEY DOES is manipulate children to make money. And now, to top it all off, they're hiding Cyrus away, as if they're embarrassed and ashamed of her.
And headlines from yesterday:
"WHILE topless scandal teen star Miley Cyrus hides in the hills after her sexy Vanity Fair photo shoot, Disney executives are reportedly plotting to push her to the side in favour of an untainted young star."
I think that says it all.
Finally, read this article by Germaine Greer. Please. http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/c...
"No matter how much energy Disney - which makes the TV show Hannah Montana, in which Cyrus stars - might put into denying the obvious, 15-year-olds are sexually aware."
Posted by Stacey May
May 1, 2008, 10:18 AM
Agree totally with the last two comments. It's really quite a classical flirty-but-modest nude shot and as an ad, it's measured compared to some jean ads and perfume ads targeted at the same audience. You can find many similar displays in any overview of western oil painting. If anything, it's sadly cliched and the choice to use a younger woman to model such a pose rather than attempt to "un-age" an older one is visually more sensible,given the look the photographer is after. Like a million other pictures like it, it strikes me as soft, pretty and rather formal and then bores me. I shed no tears for a girl, who is,after all, being payed to be on show, but I cannot imagine how bored the world must be, if this is all it takes to set scandal ablaze.
Posted by Myra
May 1, 2008, 1:16 PM
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