On the 23rd of this month, Miley Cyrus turns seventeen. Can we all remember that for a moment? Sure she's made some racy choices, but let's stop looking for controversy where there is none. Pole dancing? Singing on top of an ice cream cart while holding a pole does not count as pole dancing. The part she filmed for the new Sex and the City movie? She's an actress. How is doing her job a controversy.
I know. I know. She's a Disney star and a supposed role model for tweens everywhere. She's also a kid - growing and maturing the same way I did. I did far worse when I was her age. I look back on the things I did when I was seventeen (ten years ago, by the way) and blush and I wasn't even a particularly wild child.
Now bloggers are attacking her little sister, saying her Halloween costumes were outrageous for an eleven year old. It's Halloween. She was not dressed as a dominatrix as some of my peers have claimed, but as a vampire. Sure those costumes are easily confused, but I saw the pictures and completely failed to see the big deal. She was an eleven year old girl being an eleven year old girl.
The claims that we're only a few years - a few cases of Red Bull and Cheetos - away from another 2007 era Britney Spears if little Miley continues the way she's going. To that, I can do little more than laugh. I don't think any of us have to worry about Ms. Cyrus becoming a head-shaving, paparazzi-bedding, umbrella-wielding popwreck via the reformed Britney. At most, I think we might face another dirrrty Christina - grinding in a shower with scantily clad backup dancers, but hey, that worked out pretty well for Xtina, didn't it? And look where she is now - married with a beautiful baby and a pretty normal life.
C'mon, folks. Ease up on Miley. Let her grow and change and explore the options life has given her. Will she crack? Will she endure? Only time will tell. All we do by hounding her and examining her every move for any possible angle to create scandal is put more pressure on a seventeen year old girl who needs anything but that.
