(no subject)

[oselle]

One of my favorite blogs, Crooks and Liars rightfully slammed Brian Williams's NBC Nightly News for ignoring real news to run a lengthy piece on Miley Cyrus's suggestive photo shoot.

I personally don't care what Miley Cyrus does, but I was struck by a comment in the Crooks and Liars post:

"I think the ones who look at that picture as sexual are the ones we should be concerned about."

Look, I know it's fun to slam conservative types who want to make this Miley Cyrus thing into one of their patented Won't-Somebody-Please-Think-Of-The-Children! scandals, but let's face it -- a photo of a girl sporting nothing but a loosely-draped sheet, fuck-tousled hair and a faceful of vampish makeup is not meant to be anything but sexual. What the fuck else could it possibly be? Uh...a charming portrait of fresh-scrubbed youth? Annie Liebowitz knew exactly what she was going for with those photos, and I suspect Miley and her dad and her management knew it too. Let's just call it what it is -- high-gloss kiddie porn.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was bothered by freakish comments I read calling her "a slut" for the pictures, but they're obviously supposed to be sexy. If the photographer says to take off all your clothes, you should assume it's sexual.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

The whole Hannah Montana phenomenon has a weirdly exploitative quality to it, so I think this is just the next (and far from unexpected) step. Nevertheless, for anyone to pretend that these photos are meant to be anything but sexual is just...please. A little reality here?

[samaranth.livejournal.com]

I read that Leibovitz was of the view that the pictures had been ‘misunderstood’.

So I went to look at the picture in question. I don’t know Miley Cyrus, don’t watch Hannah Montanah, don’t have much time for Disney…, but I do know (now) that she’s 15, and I think that, in spite of the sophisticated fashion and makeup, she looks underage. And she certainly doesn’t look as if she’s just woken up after a late night watching old movies or anything like that. I can’t accept any arguments about ‘age not relevant’ (it is), or ‘age not determinable…could be a young adult’ (no, she’s clearly still a teenager…look at her facial features, her level of physical development); or even ‘it’s art’. Yes, it’s a glossy shot, beautifully lit, exotically staged – but the makeup, the drape of the satin, the pose? Give me a break. As an illustration of some aspect Innocence, maybe - after all there are some (legitimate) artistic representations out there that are more explicit than this. But for the cover of a magazine? No, I don’t think so.

I found the slide show of the shoot kind of fascinating – not a bed sheet at all, but a satiny kind of wrap, all the pictures taken outside. And she remained half dressed at least.

Illusion is a powerful thing - I think it was exploited to the hilt in this picture.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

The illusion is everything, and the illusion they were trying to create was of a sexy piece of jailbait. Annie Liebowitz can make up whatever she likes about what was supposed to have been "understood" here (let me guess..."a beautiful young girl on the edge of womanhood" or some fluffy shit like that) but as I said...she knew what she was doing.

I think it would have been kind of cute to keep the hair, makeup and pose the same, but have Cyrus sticking out her tongue like in that first slide in the show. That would have said, "Yeah, I know you're trying to sex me up, but I'm still fifteen, you assholes." That would have been pretty funny. Instead, they went with the shot where she's got that vapid, "please fuck me" gaze on her face.

All that said, I looked at the pic again and that makeup is truly awful. She looks like an embalmed corpse. Her face isn't even the same color as the rest of her. WTF?