I'm going to let others who have thought about this more speak to the issue of Miley Cyrus and her backless photo in Vanity Fair. I find it interesting how we are willing to exploit young womens sexuality when it suits us. Look at all the fuss over the TV show Gossip Girl. Two week ago those OMFG ads with teens having sex was plastered all over NY and nobody made as big a stink as they have over Miley's back. This show appeals to the older tweeners and the kids on that show are drinking, doing drugs, having sex, staying out late, wearing provocative clothes (check out the picture on the cover of last weeks NY Magazine) but you know, its just a TV show...it's not real. Right. These girls are in a no-win situation. They get ridiculed for not being cute or skinny or sexy and then get punished when they try and look the part. Maybe that's why the Miley Cyrus thing has caused such a kerfuffle.
Here's Nancy Gruver's (from New Moon) take:
Like an iron grip in a velvet glove, the hypersexualization of girls in the media holds actual girls hostage under the pretense of entertaining and informing them. And, like in the Stockholm Syndrome, it's not surprising when girls start to identify with the all-powerful culture that's holding them hostage. Stockholm Syndrome in MediaAnd the always interesting Germaine Greer:
We train female children to be manipulative and to exploit their sex. From the time she is tiny, a girl in our society is taught to flirt. She is usually dressed like a mini-whore in pink and tinsel, short skirt, matching knickers, baby-doll pyjamas, long hair falling over her face. She learns to court attention and, when successful, to hide her face. If she's lucky enough to get to be a big sister she might get over this sleazy conditioning, but very few daughters these days get to grow out of being "daddy's girl". When the time comes she is likely to reject approaching womanhood, desperate to keep her thighs skinny, and nearly as desperate to acquire hard, high breasts. The idea of growing into her own body is charmless, frightening. Sexing it Up
I'll post other interesting ones that I find.
