So. Miley Cyrus. *cue rant*

First and most importantly? She’s FIFTEEN. If anyone should be taking heat for this, it’s her parents. Maybe some folks are savvy enough at fifteen to make better choices, but I’m not going to judge the kid. Seriously. FIFTEEN..

As for the “oh my GOD, think of the CHILDREN” brigade: My daughter is the tweeniest tween you’ll ever meet. LOVES Miley like crazy. She hasn’t yet seen these pictures, and she probably won’t until and unless some little douchebag…pardon me, I meant to say “badly behaved fifth-grader who lacks supervision”…chooses to show them to her.

Because how many ten-year-olds do you know who read Vanity Fair? This is yet another example of the media creating the story…at least in terms of “how will this affect her fanbase?” Now the pics are all over, and I’m having to send my spawn from the room when the fucking TODAY show runs the story at seven-fifteen in the morning. (I counted the minutes they spent on it, btw. Several more than they spent on the tornadoes in Virginia or the explosions in Afghanistan.)

~Edward R. Murrow, please pick up the nearest white courtesy phone in heaven. We’re in serious shit down here.~

As for the whole “she had it coming because she said she liked the pictures” thing – I suspect Miley DID like those pics. Thought they were way cool. Because she’s a fifteen-year-old girl in America, the land of the free and the home of the “good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere, but whatever you do, DON’T GET CAUGHT” ethos. And I suspect that after the shit hit the fan and Disney called her on the carpet, she was embarrassed. Because, in addition to being human? She’s FIFTEEN.

I remember fifteen. I remember some of the choices I made, and the very bad consequences of those choices. The regret and shame I felt as a result. I remember having no one in my life to tell me how to make better choices, and literally no healthy examples around me, so I had to learn by trial and error. And trial and error? Sucks. Hard.

Fifteen-year-old girls are supposed to have someone to examine their MySpace and FaceBook pages, supervise their slumber parties, grill their dates, set curfew, double-check their homework, and not let them out of the house in indecent outfits. Because they are FIFTEEN, and often not capable of taking care of themselves – at least in this culture. Over in the FLDS compounds in Texas, Arizona and Utah, a fifteen-year-old girl is often taking care of herself, a forty-year-old husband and three kids. But I digress. Although not really, because is this REALLY that different? Isn’t it all exploitation of one kind or another?

So where the hell is Billy Ray, besides posing with his daughter in one of the creepiest shots I’ve seen in a while? Busy being no better than a pimp, that’s where he is.

And I’ll say it one more time: FIFTEEN.

Sel

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