What? 15 Year Old Girls Have Backs?!
I think I figured out why some people are outraged at the infamous Miley Cyrus picture in Vanity Fair. The Wall Street Journal editorial page tells me that coastal elites in “Manhattan or Hollywood” (does the Bay Area count?) are totally OK with 15 year olds who are seen on TV every day by millions of people having a not-very-revealing picture of them published in a magazine. That’s because we coastal elites go to the beach a lot. And at beaches people wear swimming attire. And surely even the salt-of-the-earth folk at the Journal know that this swimming attire leaves a lot of skin exposed. But I guess in “Buffalo, Charlotte or Iowa City,” they don’t have beaches and so they expect 15 year olds wear their niqabs until they’re 18.
But seriously, what’s there to be outraged about? The picture itself is almost impossibly tame. And it’s not like she was sitting by her pool and some papparazzo snapped a candid shot. The photo shoot was overseen and the subsequent photos approved by Miley and her parents. So what are they apologizing for? Sure, she’s 15, but she’s also a 15 year old with more national exposure, power, influence and money than most adults can ever dream of. If she’s a victim of anything, it’s her and her parents own ambition.
I mean, seriously, have you been to a high school dance before? A high school? A gathering of 15 year old girls outside of the FLDS compound? Sheesh. But I guess I’m a coastal elite, so I don’t have the “ordinary wisdom” of “Small Town USA” and can’t grasp the “photo’s essential vulgarity.”
PS – If you look at the behind-the-scenes photos that Vanity Fair released, it’s even more clear that nothing untoward was going on. But wait, the photographer, Annie Leibovitz is a lesbian! A ha! Now we know what this was all about!
