Madonna: Four Minutes To Say Stupid Things About Teen Sexuality

If it seems like every celebrity in existence and their handlers have lined up to comment on the OMG Miley Cyrus Took Her Shirt Off! scandal, it's because they have. Everyone from Jamie Lee Curtis - waxing parental at the Huffington Post - to Heidi Montag - waxing stupid everywhere - has had something to say about it, and most of it has been pretty banal (oh, everybody please just leave her alone so hard to be a celebrity who are we too judge blah blah so many pressures blah her parents blah how's my hair BLAH.)

And now we can add - drum roll please - Madonna to the list of commentators:

"I just want to go on record and say everyone should just leave her alone. I never represented anything wholesome in America ... I only had one way to go," she laughed. "People are just bored. Leave the poor girl alone! She's going to grow up soon, she's going to probably show her knees next — watch out!"

You go, Madonna! Role model the shit out of this! Why have a reasoned, adult response to photo editorials of fifteen year-olds in sexually provocative poses when you, like, pretended to blow Vanilla Ice when you were barely pushing thirty? I mean, COME ON. That would be, you know, hypocritical and shit. OF COURSE you're going to be all GO SLUTTAGE.

So, yeah: three cheers to Madonna for being predictable.

(Srsly. When I first saw that quote, I thought that the last line read 'she's probably going to be on her knees next' and I was all, well, yeah, coming from Madonna, that sounds about right.)

I said it before and will - because this is how I roll - say it again: the girl is just fifteen years old. I know, I know, fifteen is the new twenty-five and sheets are the new blouses and what's wrong with sexual expressiveness blah blah blah BUT. I just don't want this kind of cultural norm for my daughter, so I'm reserving my right to continue to be icked out by this shit.

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Comments

[Tracy]

And I wonder what expectations she has of Lourdes.

[Crystal]

I really think the whole thing has been blown WAAAAY out of proportion. I mean compared to the Britney video with the catholic schoolgirl outfits or her cover on RollingStone, the sheet was downright nun-like.

I teach 3rd grade currently and I can say that parents freak the hell out over stuff that consistently go over the kids heads. At their age I was singing "Like a Virgin" at the top of my lungs without a clue as to what it meant. I was a tween when "SEX" came out (Madonna's Coffee table book" and I shrugged it off.

[Diane]

To echo Crystal's comment, I have noticed this now that I have a daughter and I am introducing her to the movies I loved as a child. "The Chipmunk Adventure" movie, for example, has a song where the Chipettes dance around singing about "Gettin' Lucky." My brother and I must have watched that movie a hundred times as children and we never thought anything of it. I can only imagine what some people would have to say about that nowadays.

That said, yeah, the girl is 15. I think the photographer's photoshopping and whatnot after the fact is what is disgusting. When I saw the behind the scenes pictures, I thought the sheet looked like a big flowy shirt.

[AJMick]

Many of us watched Looney Toons growing up and never picked up on the sexist/racist/inappropriate undertones. Get ovah it!

[Mrs. Kennedy]

Madonna's always been lot more liberal about sex than most people, so this comment is consistent with that. Normally I think she's pretty arrogant, but I agree with her here, Miley wasn't showing any more skin than the average teenager at the community swimming pool here. It's harder for parents to deal with this stuff than kids, that's for sure. I'm sure Lourdes knows all about STDs and birth control already.

[AmyC65]

Crystal, I may go over the heads of 3rd graders, but before my 5th grader even knew about it, we picked up her BFF and she immediately said, "I'm so mad at Miley Cyrus..." and started going on about the conflict between what Miley stands for and what Miley did etc.

I'm with Catherine, I am icked out by it and dissapointed and it's not the norm I want for my kid, either.

[LauraJT77]

I am very upset about this Miley Cyrus issue. This is just another example of how we sexualize young girls and society objectifies them which create negative attitudes towards women and a whole host of other issues. My job is to treat adolescent sexual offenders (usually males) and I cannot tell you how difficult it is to help them understand how they or their peers or families objectify women b/c there are constant images surrounding them all the time and they seem normal to these boys. Our clients are coming to us younger and younger and our opinion is that the huge amount of women being objectified in the media and in society is a huge contributor to that (there are other factors of course as well and I am not discounting them at all). I hope this Miley issue can spark some discussion and changes in this arena.

[JZMom]

I think the part that bothers me most is that Cyrus' reaction was, "OMG, I didn't realize how the pictures were going to look. This is all Vanity Fair's fault..." or something like that. (I fully admit I haven't been following this very closely, so I may have missed something...)

I, too, am a parent, and am a school administrator. What I see more than anything is kids messing up and neither they, nor their parents, take responsibility for the mess-ups. They all find ways to blame other people. I already see adults (I'm looking at you, W) who make mistakes and blame them on other people. I would have loved it if she said, "Yeah, I did it. Wanna make something of it???"

[Deborah]

These things *should* go over the heads of young kids. That's not the point. The point is as has been stated sexualizing young girls. This has been happening for some time, from clothing lines to films. The fact that they don't understand doesn't make it acceptable. Teaching them, in an appropriate way, about birth control and sexual diseases is not the same as letting them post half naked, in a sexually provocative way, at the age of 15. They *shouldn't* understand these things - but their parents should. And if any one is to blame for this, it's Ms. Cyrus's parents. What the heck were they thinking? It's creating an atmosphere where making young girls sexual objects is okay. I thought we fought this battle in the 70's? Now it's okay because so-called celebrities like say so? Sorry I'm not quite as liberal as the expert Madonna on this subject. And yeah, at least she's consistent.

[disnazzio]

Laura, I agree with you completely. And to AJMick, we weren't ALL blissfully ignorant of the racism in the media we consumed. Some kids are painfully aware of it. I'm sure this will come as a shock to you, but a lot of the kids who are painfully aware of it are the ones at whom it's directed. I'm sure it's nice for you to have the privilege to "get over" racism. Lots of other people don't have it, though, so perhaps you ought to get over people's desire to discuss it.