Daddys, Don’t Let Your Daughters Grow Up To Be Miley

Her people probably told her that to keep her career moving forward, she had to shed (shred) any image people may have of her as Hannah Montana.  Well, that’s taken care of.

We now have these uncomfortable and persistent images of this girl, 20 years old going on 35, doing vaguely pornographic things with a foam finger (a huge number of sports social media sites this morning talked about how they’ll never view the foam #1 finger the same way again), grabbing her crotch every few seconds, and “twerking”, as the young folks say.  That’s the word they use for dry-humping on the dance floor.  (Sorry about the crudity, but, that’s what it is.)  With a guy almost old enough to be her father. (Robin Thicke is 36.)

By the way, his dad (Alan Thicke) and mom (Gloria Loring), both veteran show-biz pros, must be quite proud of him, too.

I’m not sure how Miley’s dad Billy Ray has weighed in on his daughter’s latest stunt; and, to be honest, I don’t care.

The ironic part is, by doing exactly what the MTV Awards have become known for – outrageousness – the 20-year-old Cyrus not only gave MTV what it wanted, but gave “her people” a double-dose of what they wanted.  In addition to shattering any wholesomeness which may have remained with her Hannah Montana image, Cyrus has a lot of people talking about her.

Unfortunately, the old saw is true: there is no such thing as bad publicity.  At least not in show-biz.

Of course I didn’t watch the MTV Awards last night.  Are you kidding?  With shows like Breaking Bad, Dexter, Ray Donovan, and even Ice Road Truckers (one of my favorite guilty pleasures) available?  I saw her performance this morning on everything from Headline News (where anchor Robin Meade confessed that they toned down the clip they ran in the prior hour of the show, because of all the e-mails HLN got) to Morning Joe (where Mika, Joe, and the gang had a field day clucking about her performance), and linked to scores of social media posts.

The MTV Awards telecast is designed to push the envelope and create talk.  This year, they finally managed to top the Madonna/Britney Spears kiss (which, by the way, is now a full decade ago).  Shows that feature young women strutting around in the skimpiest of outfits miming sex always remind me of a PBS documentary that ran several years ago about the Iraq war.  When asked why he hated America so much and so desperately wanted Americans out of his country, an Iraqi man told PBS “because we don’t want our daughters to grow up to be Britney Spears”.

Pretty well sums it up.

What did somewhat surprise me this morning was reading the reaction on social media of a number of my daughter’s contemporaries, ranging from “made me uncomfortable” to “what was THAT?”  These are young women very close to my daughter’s age (28 next month), many of them her classmates at LaFollette High.  It’s good to know they’re apparently pretty well grounded and see this sort of thing for what it is.  I know the parents of these young women, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that their daughters reacted with surprise and disapproval.

In the grand scheme of things, Miley’s over-the-top porn routine last night has little, if any significance. Tomorrow, it won’t even be a blip on the radar, and it won’t make news again until next year’s MTV Awards show.

But I don’t think I’m the only father whose reaction was “what kind of father lets his daughter be advised by people like this”.

As comedian Chris Rock said shortly after the birth of his daughter, “My number one job in life has just become keeping my daughter off the pole”.

Yup.