I received this picture and description this week from Rachel Dickerson:
"Just finished an extremely entertaining and HILARIOUS short novel by an amazing new author. Congrats Allison I look forward to your next book."
Thank you Rachel! And thank you to all of you who have read and provided me with feedback on Life is a Circus Run by a Platypus! Your wonderful words have been so encouraging!
So this past week one of the biggest new stories of the year broke. Syria... oh wait, sorry, never mind, wrong one. The biggest story of modern memory, according to the media, is that Miley Cyrus was caught on stage at the MTV Music Video Awards dancing provocatively along with
Robin Thicke.
Ok, first I would like to state that "provocatively" might be a strong term. I'm not sure who found Miley's tongue being stuck out of the side of her mouth for a majority of the performance "sexy." She looked like a giraffe.
No seriously, how can this:
Not remind you a bit of this:
Miley, I realize that you desperately want everyone to know that you are not a little girl anymore, and that you've become an adult. However this look:
Doesn't so much scream, "I'm an adult!"
Instead it really screams, "You're not the boss of me anymore! I can do what I want! I don't have a bedtime anymore! <insert other almost meaningless rebellious statements here>"
Miley, if you want to be taken seriously as an "adult" performer, dressing up as a teddy bear and running around displaying less class than a backwoods Arkansas trailer park is not going to get you there.
Also, please don't promote this kind of behavior, you have thousands of young teenage fans whose tongues I really don't want to see hanging out of their mouths.
And that is all I have to say about Miley, but not all I have to say about this "media sensation."
My actual first thought upon seeing the video clip, that I could not have avoided unless I poked my eyes out with a spork, was not, "Wow, Miley is being super provocative."
My first blush response was, "Wow, Robin Thicke is something that rhymes with is last name (you have a couple of options there, choose the one you find most useful)."
So far the harshest mass media criticism has been on what he chose to wear:
Granted his outfit made him an easy choice to star in any "Beetlejuice" sequels that might be in the future, but that isn't his only similarity to Beetlejuice's character.
Robin Thicke's behavior was downright creepy.
Yes, I said creepy.
Standing up in front of a live crowd of thousands, as a married 36 year old man, and dancing "provocatively" with a 20 year old, who is dressed in a little girl-esque teddy bear outfit (followed by flesh tone underwear), while singing a song that promotes the acceptance of rape culture is CREEPY!"
And yes, that song is garbage. I don't care what you say to defend the tonal atrocity, it promotes disrespecting women. If the lyrics included, "And then I asked her, politely, if she wanted to dance," or "I told her that I would like to take her out to a nice dinner," and the song wasn't titled "Blurred Lines," then I might be willing to hear arguments to the contrary.
Just because it is kind of catchy (in that heard-this-beat-a-million-times-before kind of way) does not make it a good song.
The fact that all the headlines are screaming, "Miley Cyrus Did XYZ!" and not "Robin Thicke Did XYZ," scares me. The media acts shocked that a woman would be acting this way (even though we know they are not in the slightest) but it gives no such, albeit fake, surprised response to Thicke's performance.
It deeply concerns me that a father being an absolute cad on stage while singing, "That's why I'm goin' to take a good girl, I know you want it," is considered so normal that it barely receives any mention.
Also, what a great example to be setting for your son, Robin! He's not being influenced to grow up and treat women like objects at all. (There is enough sarcasm dripping from that statement that you could wring it out and fill a bucket, just in case you didn't catch that.)
Well thank you Robin Thicke, now the next time someone asks me why I still believe that feminism has a place in America, I now can point to you emphatically as my example A.
What was your reaction to the "media sensation" that has been, oh so subtly, shoved down your throat for the past week?
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