You can try to justify her performance at the Teen Choice Awards all you want, but Miley Cyrus’ pole dance during Monday night’s ceremony was unacceptable. Sex sells. And societal mores have loosened quickly over the past decade. The stigma that was once attached to pole dancing has lessened dramatically. Health clubs offer pole dancing classes. Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry. Many strip clubs have a higher cover charge than high-end dance clubs do.
And I wouldn’t have a problem with her performance if not for a few major issues:
1. Miley Cyrus is 16 years old. If you’re 18 or older and getting aroused by her performance – and considering that she has a 53-year-old stalker who was recently arrested, there are plenty in that demographic who are – you’re a pedophile. In the United States, it’s illegal to be a stripper if you’re under 18. But Cyrus’ performance ostensibly makes it acceptable. Hopefully, the next time a club owner gets caught for using underage dancers, his lawyer is smart enough to whip out this tape to bolster his client’s defense.
2. Cyrus and her family are enormous hypocrites. (As if you didn’t know this when she was dating a 20-year-old with their approval; I’m certain it was a completely chaste relationship.) About a year ago, they made just short of a federal case out of photographs that Cyrus took for Vanity Fair with legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz. The family and her handlers cried that Cyrus was exploited and that they did not know that Leibovitz had taken “topless” shots of Cyrus – even though her father was on the set; “topless” shots that were about as titillating as a root canal. That was wrong. Wrong they said. But being an underage stripper is okay. Her parents don’t just belong in the Hypocrites Hall of Fame. They deserve their own wing.
Chris Rock once said:
"Sometimes I am walking with my daughter, I'm talking to my daughter, I'm looking at her, I'm pushing her in the stroller. And sometimes I pick her up and I just stare at her and I realize my only job in life is to keep her off the pole. Keep my baby off the pole! I mean they don't grade fathers but if your daughter is a stripper you f—ked up.”
When you hear about the Cyrus clan, the stories always mention how religious and god-fearing they are. Miley Cyrus has been quoted in USA Today that her faith is “the main thing.” There are the Cyrus’ – usually photographed dressed like homeless hillbillies – going to church. Clearly, they missed the sermon about asking themselves, “What Would Jesus Do?”
Now, I’m not a deeply religious person, but I don’t remember the Bible passage in which God encouraged pole dancing. (I’d probably be a more avid reader of the Bible if that was the case.) But if Miley’s church encourages pole dancing, save me a front row pew for the next 500 Sundays.
3. It’s expected that a 16-year-old girl, hormones raging, will act out; however, when you’ve cultivated your career as an innocent, Disney performer, are getting paid millions to foment that image, and, whether you like it or not, are a role model to a generation of young girls, pole dancing is not acceptable. How would you like to be the parent of a 13-year-old who says to their mother that she wants her parents to install a pole in her bedroom so that she can dance like Miley did on the awards show?
Let’s make it clear. I’m no prude. I’ve visited strip clubs and have had lapdances, but never in any of those clubs were the dancers 16 years old. I’m not disparaging the women who choose to dance. There’s great money in it for many of them. But they’re adults. And when you go to a strip club, you don’t see 13-year-old girls in the club idolizing the dancers.
To paraphrase Britney Spears, another pop tart who took full advantage of using underage sex to sell millions of records, Miley Cyrus is not a girl, but not yet a woman. Both touted their purity (though we’ve learned in Spears’ case that that was a lie also) while using sex to sell records. The difference between the two is that Cyrus is still a Disney employee (while Spears was not by the time she released her debut; admittedly a tenuous distinction.)
Regardless, it wasn’t right then and it certainly is not right now. Cyrus stepped it up a notch and in the process, became more of a joke than she already was. Miley Cyrus should be ashamed of her behavior. Then again, considering who raised her, you can’t be surprised.
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