Growing up: Girls, Look Sexy Like Miley

Growing up. Instructions for girls: Take off most of your clothes. Look up through the hair falling in your face, wriggle and sway your hips, and writhe around on a bed, then in a club. Simple.

"Miley Cyrus: Too hot to handle?" asks the headline of a clip on Hulu.com. On YouTube, those frustrating people who think they need to capitalize everything yell, "YOU GO MILEY! MILEY IS ALL GROWN UP NOW AND DOING HER OWN THING!"

Miley is seventeen. She's reached that point in every girl's life when a deep desire to wrap her naked body in an enormous snake overpowers all other needs or considerations. Her new song/video is called "Who Owns My Heart," and the daring transformation of her image that everyone (all of the same people who said these things about Britney Spears) is talking about is most definitely not "her own thing." As people run around yelling, "Look at Miley! Isn't that crazy? Can you believe she's stripping in a cage while hundreds of men wearing black masks and spike armor pet her?" I keep thinking, "Um. Yeah." Because, for a young, innocent, adorable pop star, this is exactly what I expect.
What makes me angry is that the theme of the transition is so ubiquitous. OK, they're pop stars. They don't count. They aren't real people. They haven't eaten in years. They're made out of synthetic materials from distant planets that enable them to bend their bodies into impossible positions while lip-synching perfectly. And they can do this from the time they are twelve or so. But the thing is, tons of little girls believe that they're real. They scream and scream when they get anywhere within a mile of their idols. They emulate their fashion choices (or the fashion choices of the stars' managers and stylists). Little girls everywhere hurt their eyes, trying to look more like Lady Gaga with giant, terrifying contacts.

And so tons of little girls think (or believe subconsciously) that growing up means learning how to seductively dance, nearly naked, in heels so high you need a ladder to access them. And they're taught, repeatedly, painstakingly, that this type of nearly naked dancing is called "embracing your own sexuality," and "being bold and free," and "owning your look," and "being your own person." It's rebellious, even though everyone is doing it. It's daring, even though everyone is doing it. It's original, even though everyone is doing it.