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Leaving aside, for the present moment, the ongoing and increasingly heated public exchanges between Sinead O'Connor and Miley Cyrus...
Feminist and conservative readers alike probably found Sinead O’Conner’s first open letter to Miley Cyrus vaguely satisfying. Likely, it came from a place of genuine upset and concern, and is, at a minimum an understandable response to being implicated in Miley’s infamous Wrecking Ball video (apparently inspired by O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U video). Here’s a quick breakdown of where Sinead got it right, and where she may have paradoxically given Miley both more AND less credit than she deserves.
FIRST, Sinead was right that Miley matters (e.g., “Whether we like it or not, us [sic] females in the industry are role models and as such we have to be extremely careful what messages we send to other women…we aren’t merely objects of desire"). Yes, indeed, research suggests that young women use media models as “sexual super peers” on which to base their own attitudes and behaviors. Ubiquitous media representations of young women as sexual objects also socialize girls and women to view themselves from the outside in, a practice that interferes with both cognitive abilities and emotional health. Further, such images socialize boys and men to view and treat women as sexual objects vs. sentient humans. And, yes, there is something profoundly problematic about the literal and figurative objectification of African American women as teddy bears and sexualized backdrops to Miley’s routines. Reducing a group of women not only to their bodies, but to a particular sexualized body part, while also dressing them as actual animals increases the likelihood that they will be considered fair targets for both discrimination and violence. (Also problematic is the sexualization of a teddybear—a child's plaything—which has somehow received less attention in the blogosphere.)
HOWEVER, presuming that Miley has been brainwashed by the music industry's agenda, as Sinead did (e.g., “[the music business] will prostitute you for all you are worth, and cleverly make you think its what YOU wanted”), may have underestimated Miley’s relative sexual agency and business savvy. As painfully constrained and problematic as the comparison may be, Miley’s raunchy VMA performance was, in fact, light years more human than that of the passive, glassy-eyed models that populated Thicke’s Blurred Lines video (allegedly designed to be ironic; what was the incisive cultural commentary again? I think I missed it). We might view Miley’s dancing, and her “you’re not the boss of me” styled anthem, as an attempt to distinguish herself from the lifeless male fantasies that populate the other end of the narrow spectrum of mainstream female sexuality. Moreover, she actually managed to make Robin Thicke look vaguely awkward and uncomfortable as the object of her aggressive sexual antics—an act that has since been appropriated, albeit in more sophisticated clothing and to greater satiric effect, by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the Emmys, and again by Tina Fey in her opening segment of the season premiere of SNL. And, at the end of the day, Miley is cleverly twerking her way to the bank (and to an apparently self-aware gig on SNL).
NEXT, pointing a foam finger (sorry) at Miley herself may obscure the powerful sociocultural norms that have led to both her style and to her success. Miley may be considered a logical extreme of our cultural obsession with fame and with female sexuality. Young women are repeatedly taught that to be acknowledged and valued as human beings, they must first be acknowledged and valued for their physical appearance (see, for example, every Disney movie ever made) and sexual allure. Is it any wonder that Miley apparently believed that swinging nude on a wrecking ball and licking a sledgehammer would communicate deeply felt emotional pain? Miley’s current “brand” should be considered in a social context in which female performers are consistently rewarded (and reviled—a tough line to walk!) for nudity and hypersexuality. We are each implicated in this context, and in our culture’s ongoing ambivalence about female power and sexuality (this includes you, Robin Thicke). It may thus be more productive to interrogate our own fascination, both positive and negative, with Miley’s career (documented in a recent NY Times article), alongside any criticism of her we may have. We might consider the myriad ways we contribute to a media climate in which a young woman’s success and self-expression is conflated with her willingness to gleefully self-objectify.
FINALLY, Miley is both a product of and a response to our current cultural moment, in addition to a contributing factor. Singling her out as a destructive force may not only preserve a double standard of scrutiny on female vs. male media figures (Justin Bieber, apparently, has "never looked buffer!" in a newly released shirtless pic), but may distract us from the larger task at hand: how to expand the boundaries and definitions of what it means to be powerful, young, and female.
References:
Brown, J. D., Halpern, C. T., & L’Engle, K. L. (2005). Mass media as a sexual super peer for early maturing girls. Journal of Adolescent Health, 36, 420–427.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 173–206.
Rudman, L. A., & Borgida, E. (1995). The afterglow of construct accessibility: The behavioral consequences of priming men to view women as sexual objects. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 493–517.
