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Miley Cyrus? From Autobiography to Slutty Photos


Miley Cyrus is a 15 year old singer and actress who is making Uncle Walt and Mickey some of the easiest money since they began pimping the Disney Princesses for all they are worth. She is the star of a hit tweeny-bopper show on the Disney Channel, that coincidentally co-stars her Achy Breaky Dad, Billy Ray, as – surprise – her dad. Her fans cover the gamut of girls from preschool to high school and her recent tour sold out in something like a nano-second, I’ve read. Last week I was not surprised to hear that the reigning nice girl pop princess was offered a seven figure advance to write (herself probably – the kid is just that talented) an autobiography of her life. At fifteen. Sounds plausible to me. You? Okay, I think it might read something like this:

I was born to a one-ish hit wonder country star known for his mullet and tight jeans. By the time he’d played that song for all the money he could wring from it and his acting career on the WB panned out, I was finally old enough and miraculously blessed with a bit of talent myself (and most importantly wasn’t fat or facially challenged) to be pimped groomed for a career in the business.

or something like that.

Today my husband tells me that the acrid taste of presidential politics, with all it’s racial and gender slurring fun, has been displaced by a scandal involving the next Britney Spears tweener cross over to female singer/actor/writing star – our own sweet, innocent Miley. It happens. Annie Leibowitz is a camera toting siren that has led many a celebrity into the twisted world of art cleverly disguised as slutty photos to help prevent the middle class from infiltrating the the ranks of the nouveau hipsters. She’s just a kid despite her talent and fame and money and stage parents and predictable future as a deeply troubled and in need of many, many years of therapy. It happens to a lot of very young celebrities only a generation or two out of the trailer park.

And the pictures? Run of the mill pseudo-suggestive. The kind any parent could order up at the JCPenney Photo Studio. I have seen the ad:

Bring the kid and too old for them attire and we point, click and photoshop. Pictures with inappropriately dressed father (or mom/son) are entirely optional. REALLY. No pressure from us at all.

Miley Cyrus is probably a nice kid. Her folks are probably good parents. The photos are, inappropriate, but not much more so than the senior photos I saw during my last two years as a high school teacher. The big question is why? When so many teen stars implode at ever younger ages, why would you take the chance with your daughter? She’s fifteen. There is time for the adult career when she is an adult and if she is truly talented, she will make it. Why push? Why risk her reputation and yours as a good parent?

Cracking the “Bitch” Glass Ceiling


Very interesting commentary from Judith Timson of the Globe and Mail on Thursday, writing about the Pennsylvania primaries and Sen. Clinton’s victory there. The op-ed piece went on at length about Clinton’s “macho” campaign and Sen. Obama’s rather weak response to the full metal jacket approach of Team Clinton. 

My favorite quote in the article was a quote from Maureen O’Dowd:

In fact, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd mischievously wondered: “As the husband of Michelle, does he know better than to defy the will of a strong woman? Or is he simply scared of Hillary because she’s scary?”

I have to say that men mated to strong women certainly do know quite about more about that old saying of discretion being the better part of valor then most, but it makes a person wonder if Obama’s approach to politics isn’t a bit too Christ-like for his own good. How many cheeks does the man have? And more importantly, how much longer is he going to duck real issues with his “dazzling oratory skills”? As a woman, I can tell you that there is only one oral skill that counts and unless Obama is planning to use that to get himself enough votes to defeat McCain in November, he’d better start putting some facts and plans where his mouth is and stop trying to channel JFK via MLK or vice versa. This is no time to be charismatic wonder bread. The United States is in trouble with even more on its way in terms of the ecomony, health care and the looming Social Security obliterating Boomer bomb that is set to go off in a huge way about three years or so from now.

Timson’s piece voiced the opinion that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been good for women because she has shown that a female doesn’t have to be “nice” when competing in politics just to avoid the “bitch” label. That term loses some of its punch when the woman being labeled so don’t retreat into apologetic nice girl form. When did “nice” become synonymous with being female in the workplace? Work/career is about the job and while good manners should apply, making friends is not the objective, getting the job done is what it is all about. Clinton has broken that “bitch” glass ceiling making it possible for other women to follow. Whether she wins the nomination (and I don’t think “they” are ready to let a woman run for president yet), she has done something important.

Chasing Youth


A recent headline story at MSNBC that discussed the downside of plastic surgery and other medical beauty enhancers and age “restoratives” got me thinking, yet again, about the fact that I am approaching fifty.  There is a great line in the film When Harry Met Sally about turning forty when the Sally character wails to Harry that she is going to be forty soon and when he reminds her that this “soon” is still eight years off she replies, “But its out there.”  And I think probably every woman understood what she meant. Old looms for women in a way that it doesn’t for men.  And it’s not that men aren’t judged physically – they are – but more in terms of weight and fitness than for getting older with its requisite wrinkles and hair loss. Women are condemned for it all. The loss of skin tone. The weight gain. The wrinkles. The graying hair. Mainly just for the fact that we can’t stay twenty. Although seriously, who wants to stay twenty?  Aside from the youthful appearance and stamina, there is the larger issue of the lack of common sense and wisdom that only life and experience can bring.  Speaking for myself only, I would not trade who I am and what I know to be the twenty year old girl I was again.

Still women, many of them, will try just about anything within their budgeted grasp (and a few beyond) to keep the obvious signs of age at bay. The trouble is that anymore these methods of age eradication are too easy for the average person to spot which leaves them not marveling at the woman’s youthful appearance but trying to guess just how old she really is.

Botox is a curious thing. It’s poison really, but it is used to paralyze facial muscles which has the effect of smoothing wrinkles. The dangers were supposedly minimal but the most recent studies have found that contrary to what doctors who use botox have told patients, the toxin can and does cross the brain’s blood barrier.  So in addition to a smooth, expressionless face, a person is also exposing brain tissue to a deadly toxin.  Who knew?  Well not the people who touted Botox as some miraculous fountain of faux youth, and they really should have.  Known that is.  It’s not as though patients need to be wrinkle free to make it through a day as opposed to say migraine sufferers who also receive injections of Botox as a form of preventative treatment.  If a person were to weigh the benefits against the risk, which group of people are taking the bigger chance?

We women bear some of the responsibility for this obsession.  We willingly support industries which hack none to subtly at our self-images.  We buy the magazines, the cosmetics and the hair dye. We diet or jump on every exercise bandwagon to roll by or swallow dubious pills that tout even more dubious results. I don’t know that we can be entirely blamed though.  Would we know that we should be unhappy with aging if the end result – being marginalized – were not so evident in our culture?

I admit I highlight my hair to hide the loss of pigment (I can’t call it graying because the strands are snow-white), but I haven’t succumbed to a full on dye because I know I am too lazy to maintain something like that.  And I exercise but this stems back to my fat pre adult teen years when I was “such a pretty face”. The trauma lingers. I also have a pretty strict diet though this owes nearly entirely to my food allergies and loss of gallbladder than a love of self-deprivation.  So am I part of the the problem? Fifty looms – five and a half years – and I can’t say that the idea is welcome or repugnant at this point. I really don’t know what I will look like by then though I am sure that my husband will still find my bum luscious though I doubt that I will be attracting any whistles from the population at large (though interestingly I did get a whistle while running last week at the gym – not bad for forty-four.)

Youth is best left to the young. The rest of us might be better off redefining what beauty looks like at 40 or 50 and beyond rather than letting the standards be set for us. Or better yet, we might try focusing on things that are real aging issues like maintaining our health and our minds.