If your childhood was anything like mine, you probably grew up obsessing over Hannah Montana and everything that she was. Which makes me feel, now, as a 21-year old, like I’ve grown up with Miley Cyrus. This, for me, is a comfort. It’s comforting to think about this girl that we haven’t actually ever met, as a friend, as someone who grew up alongside me and essentially, went through the same things we all did as teenagers.
So straight off, I have a soft spot for Miley. After all, she did teach me that ‘nobody’s perfect’ and here I am, 10 years later, still trying to figure out how to ‘work it’.
As we all have probably seen, Miley seems to have had a bit of a meltdown over the past few years, which, honestly can be expected. I know that if I was in her shoes, I would have gone off the rails a long ass time ago, so big ups to our girl for lasting this long. However, the more I think about Miley’s ‘breakdown’, the more I feel that it wasn’t a breakdown, but in-fact, a young woman expressing herself on a worldwide stage in a way that has never been done before, which has led us all to think the same, that she ‘must be gone mad’, but, has she?
A woman of Miley’s age or standing has never acted the way that Miley has over the last few years. I mean, I’ve never seen Beyoncé do an interview topless or Taylor Swift smoke up live on stage – but Miley has, and that’s what makes her special.
To put it frankly, Miley Cyrus doesn’t give a fuck what you, me or anybody else thinks about her, and too god damn right. All that Miley has done in the last few years is held her middle finger up to social norms and said no, I’m not going to be the girl society tells me to be, or act the way that makes society happy, I’m going to do what makes me happy, and that’s all that matters.
Miley has stood on stage, in front of thousands of people, wearing pretty much next to nothing while grinding on the floor. People, and I mean, plenty of people have spoken out against this, slut shaming her and labelling her a bad role model to her younger fans. Why? Why is it not okay for Miley to express her sexuality to the world, she is a woman, women like sex? Just because we’re women doesn’t mean we should be quiet and frigid. Miley has changed the way women in the industry represent sex. She has shown us that we don’t have to be sexually submissive, that we can be sexually dominant and that that’s ok. And it is. It’s perfectly natural for women to enjoy sex just as much as men, so why can’t we express it in the same way.
Miley Cyrus has liberated our libidos. People say that women have lost their standards, but people like Miley have just helped us to change them. She’s helped us to realise that we are the same as men, and if we want to talk about sex in songs or act sexually in public, we can, and nobody should be able to stop us or tell us that we are wrong. Men do it all the time. Male rappers rap about women in a sexual way all the time. They have women dressed in erotic clothing in their music videos constantly – why is that okay? Why is it okay for a man to sexually objectify a woman but not okay for a woman to sexually objectify herself? I don’t believe that Miley is a bad role model for her younger fans, I believe Miley is paving the way for female liberation. Miley is educating girls without even being aware that she is doing so.
Maybe Miley isn’t the picture we all have in our heads of a feminist, but she is a modern-day feminist. And she proves this every single day. Miley has taught us that it’s perfectly okay to do and wear whatever you want. She has forced us to believe
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY YOUTUBE