This isn't an issue of "how" she is "sexualized", it's an issue "that" she is sexualized. If your argument is that a teeny bop girl, running around on stage in regular teenybop clothes is "de facto" sexual just b/c she is young and pretty, even precocious and that is on the same level as feigning nudity with a sheet for VF or this Elle mag where she's wearing suggestive black leather and knee high boots chanting "I'm not a kid anymore" then you have issues. They are not (should not) be viewed the same. This is how we foster pedophilia in this society, by accepting or purporting that a precocious teen, doing nothing more than being a teen star, is inherently a "sex object."

First, she is "a kid". She's sixteen. As such, there is justification in feeling outrage that she is being sexually exploited. But worse, when she is just being a regular bubblegum kid on TV, with no overt or explicit sexual references or innuendo (like most of her previous Disney stuff), she should be allowed to be - and in fact should be - viewed as what she is, a kid. PERIOD.

There's a strong element of play in that photo, of her at play, which doesn't really (if at all) seem out of place here on the Salon cover, and doesn't actually seem so bad. Larger complaint would be for me, that I think of tired of people posing for the camera.

are the girls like the boys or are the girls delicate semi asexual flowers that take many extra years and special circumstances to mature.

... to model herself on Susan Boyle.

Two lines in the article stood out to me:

"HORRORS, that's a CHILD!"

Well...no. She is a young woman. 16 is not a child. Until about 50 years ago most 16 year olds were considered old enough to marry and have children. I think this is an example of the over-mothering of America where we want to prolong this artificially innocent childhood as long as possible.

"Those are the boots of a 38-year-old woman in midlife crisis!"

You wish. The average 38 year old American woman could never get away with wearing boots like that. I think that if we are really honest with oursevles there is alot of bitterness amongst women who hate the fact that they will never look as good as they did when they were 18. 16-22 year old women can wear things that their olderselves could not get away with.

Just desperate. Miley Cyrus is running around simply SCREAMING that she's not Hannah Montana oh no, she's so not, she's not shesnotshes GROWN UP now and all ...

It was weird watching her do American Idol with the low cut dress and the bed-head. Especially next to the (also 16-year old) Alison Ireheta, Cyrus looked like a kid dressed up in Mom's clothes. She's trying too hard. (Ireheta, meanwhile, looks both more mature than Cyrus and like the teenage punk rock kid she is.)

I don't have a problem with how she's dressed in Elle, I went to highschool with girls who, frankly, dressed pretty damn similar.

But, um...Elle? WTF? Miley Cyrus is a pop-idol for pre- and early-teen girls. Not a fashionista. Aren't the models on the cover of Elle typically representative of the 20's and 30's crowd's fashion, not highschool students?

It's not necessarilly dirty or lewd or anything, but it's sure as hell weird for her to be there, however she's dressed.

It may be because I'm a million years old, but I am bored to death by these controversies about celebrities "baring all" or "baring half" or having "wardrobe malfunctions."

Who really cares? And if people do care passionately, they need to get lives.

They probably also need to get jobs.

And all celebrities should either perform totally naked or in burkhas.

cuz I wanna know.

I've seen this movie before. Britney Spears, redux.

I hope they're setting up a large therapy fund.

Who can blame her for selling sex while she can? Its all she has to offer. The Disney period has run its course. She has nothing pertinent or interesting to say about anything. She apparently can't, like, string a sentence together and I really cannot imagine university in her future.

I mean come on. Its not like she's Emma Watson.

And she's not naked. Like everyone else says, she isn't wearing anything, saying anything, or doing anything you can't see walking down the hallway of most high schools in America.

That's not an appropriate image for my kids to emulate. I will discourage Miley-ness as much as possible, and I won't put any money into the product.

Kids will encounter intense hormonal storms without having a cynical marketing campaign pushing them further out to sea without a lifeboat.

This quote from an earlier letter was excellent;

"....let's encourage these children to have sex by creating a sexually charged society for them to live in and emulate, while simultaneously not teaching them about contraception or family planning and then go completely ape-shit when they get pregnant and consider having an abortion. It's ok - we'll 'get even' by assassinating the doctor who performed the abortion."

One can only hope Cyrus's parents will spare us the travesty of publishing a "Christian Child-rearing Manual" ala the Spears inbreds.

Hard enough to be a kid without all this kind of stupid crap assaulting their fragile measures of common sense.

(linkback) Yes or No? Miley Cyrus: Too young for "hooker boots"? [VOTE] - http://www.pikk.com/662a8

After all, the special word so often reserved for the accidentally sexy schoolgirl who starts actively and boldly embracing her sexuality? Slut.

NOPE, 'slut' means someone who gorges randomly and undiscerningly on a sampler buffet of penis.

I only wish more women embraced their sexuality without making like they have no morals or discernment.

She doesn't NEED to shave yet. That's why it's such a shocker.

... and telling that liberated women must have sex like men (meaning "the most promiscuous men")...

After despising the traditional women traits (sweetness, understanding, even cooking) as opression of the patriarchy and then ensuring than the only thing men can only find in women is sex (everything else is found in other men), therefore producing a skankness race when women want to over-skank each other with more and more provocative dresses...

After all that, are we outraged that younger girls want to imitate their elders sisters? What a hypocritical bunch! You can't have it both ways. You can't be at the same time the sexual revolution enthusiasts and the puritan salvation army.

You can't isolate children (and Miley Cyrus is no longer a child) from the hyper-sexualized culture you have helped to create. (This post is after another one called "O for orgasm". It seems that feminism is obsessed about women's body: see The Vagina Monologues or the bizarre Broadsheet articles about ways of trimming the women's pubic hair)

So please, save us the outrage...