Letters to the Editor
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Are "the Plastics" ex-communicating their Leader?
All does not appear to be right in Girl World anymore: first Jamie-Lynn is preggo, and now Hannah Montana dared to appear fully covered in a *gasp* bedsheet....
The Plastics interviewed for this article - and their ilk nationwide - are sending some serious meanness poor Miley's way. Quick - someone find Tina Fey so she can deliver another rousing speech to save all their teen girl souls!
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Three poinTs here...
1) It's only when someone else does that sort of thing, then SHE is a whore. There's no self-inspection at the teenage level. Everyone does it, actually: when we're rude to people, we're just having a bad day; when someone else is rude, they're bad people. When we lie, it's a slip/one-time thing, when someone else does it, it's reprehensible, etc.
2) They're not dressing slutty, it's the fashion of the day. When they dress sexy, they're not necessarily thinking like hookers, they're not going to go out there and exchange sex for money. They're just following what the advertisements tell them is cool: more skin, more cleavage, more legs, etc. It's fashion! I can't for the life of me find anything that covers my chest anymore in the malls, thank goodness for the internet!
3) There has to be a line drawn somewhere. Granted, this line was drawn at a much earlier point before than it is now, but there still has to be a line- and that line is selectively applied by the teenagers of today as a tool to separate themselves from the "sluts", even though, given the opportunity, they would probably do the same thing as Miley.
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the right wing promoters of "traditional morality"
must be very pleased with themselves.
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This is UPSIDE DOWN
Dressing sexy, as she and so many of her classmates do, was one thing. Dressing in bedding, seemingly otherwise unclothed, was apparently quite another: contemptible, an actual evocation of sex itself. It's a paradigm about this generation of teenage girls that's perplexing to anyone who's aged out of it: They exude sexuality, even as they've internalized a language of shame and anger around it, a language that makes anyone who crosses some ever finer line of appropriate behavior a slut or a whore.
The opposite is true, at least the way men see it.
A slutty tease, all dolled up in Barbie clothes, is skanky. It shows that the girls are scared of sexuality, but trying too hard anyway to appeal to some theoretical model they have in their heads about what they think guys want.
A woman with only sheets surrounding her is super sexy and classy. It shows a confidant woman who no longer takes her cues from the silly girls around her but has foudn her internal sexual compass. She is confident and she knows her body and what she wants.
But keep kneecapping your girls and teaching them the opposite, ladies.
At least in Europe they still seem to understand classy and slutty, so the tease is not in silly trailer trash clothes, but in the turn of a word, the flirty gesture and the winking silent understanding between man and woman.
Looking at the Miley Cyrus photos while wrapped in bedsheets made her seem like a mature sexy woman. Contrast this with uber skank Britney, who still can't get sexy and in tune with her body, even though she is a decade older.
I do not know what impulse in women thwarts them so completely, but it is a sorrier world that girls think Cyrus is the slut.
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Shocking!
Teenage girls are snarky and judgemental? Who would've ever guessed it? I am completely aghast!
(I'm a former teenage girl, so I know.)
And on top of that, isn't this just how EVERYBODY reacts to certain celebrities? I mean, Britney alone is probably responsible for 90% of the feelings of moral superiority that Americans have.
Not that it's anything new. I'm sure there were plenty of folks that left the first performance of "Oedipus" saying "Thank the gods I'm not as messed up as THAT guy!"
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When you call another girl a slut, you are degrading yourself.
Judging another woman's (or girl's) worth by her sexuality does a disservice to all women and girls.
I wish someone was making more of an effort to explain this to these girls: When you call another girl a "slut," you are degrading yourself. You are embracing an arbitrary standard that is applied only to girls. You are embracing your own second class citizenship.
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brother..
yeah, Brightstar, possibly you have a point of some sort (although what it is I'm not entirely certain), but let's not forget: She's 15 years old! And that's the real point. Making a 15-year-old look like a "mature, sexy woman"--if indeed you feel that way--is creepy no matter how you look at it.
What came up for me is how our society is teaching girls ever more extreme attitudes about sexuality, and one of its goals: hooking a male.
the whole point of being a tease is that you don't deliver the goods until you have the male firmly on the hook. I won't say that's the ONLY point of being a tease, but it's one of the meta-points, shall we say?
A teenage girl's entire value system is often wrapped up in being attractive enough to the boys to snare a likely one, without giving it up. These NY girls reacted the way they did because Cyrus crossed one of those microscopic lines: she is, metaphorically, giving up the goods without snagging the male first. Or, she's giving up the goods to snag the male.
Either way, she went against the Code.
At least, that's how I read it. Very interesting stuff in any case. Makes me glad I'm 50. Experience does have its advantages.
I'll be interested to read the women's side of this, since, in the end, we males probably don't have any real insight into this stuff, do we?
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this is news?
Well, I guess it must be serious research. After all, some reporter somewhere talked to a handful of teenage girls. That certainly sounds like it merits publication both in the NY Times and Salon!
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Miley's audience is younger than that
Teenage girls hate Miley already because they're at an age where they have to prove they're no longer the little girls who idolize her. The Hannah Montana audience, judging by the letters posted in response to a local newspaper giving out tickets, seems to average about eight. It's only natural that girls of the age interviewed are expressing vitriol.