Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Daddy's Little Girl

The news is abuzz with stories of the Miley Cyrus photo shoot for Vanity Fair. Fifteen year old girl, wrapped in nothing but a sheet, pouting for the camera (she should have thought of that pose for her MySpace page), looking every bit the Lolita. Maybe Anne Leibovitz wanted to show what Miley looks like right after the alarm goes off in the morning. Doubt it, though.

But, that is not the picture that I have an issue with. It's the one of Miley lounging across her daddy, leaning protectively (or is that provocatively) against him.


Okay, Miley is cute and photogenic. Billy Ray is...okay, he looks good for an aging good-ol'-boy. But this father-daughter portrait looks more like one taken of a couple, one that maybe a engaged couple might have taken at Glamor Shots. I showed a video news clip of the photo shoot to my 15 year old daughter and asked her take on the daughter-daddy pic. She looked and then so eloquently said, "Now, that just ain't right." No way would she want to be pose with her daddy like that. I think many 15 year old girls would feel the same way. Too much of a "Yuck" factor there.

But hey, this is Vanity Fair, and you just don't say "No" to Anne Leibovitz. Or so said Miley Cyrus. Of course she is back-peddling in a big way now. Have fun getting the toothpaste back in the tube there, 'kay?

I was thinking also that people in "The Industry" seem to become as much of a character as the characters they play, although I can't imagine Hannah Montana having photos taken like these, posing with the come-hither glare. But, then, Miley Cyrus is not Hannah Montana, just like the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were not whomever those cute little twins were on "Full House" were. Maybe it's the viewer's inability to separate the two...which becomes harder when the lines blur like the horizon on a hot, humid day as in the case of Miley Cyrus.

But Miley Cyrus isn't going to be Hannah Montana forever. Characters have only so long of a shelf life as its target audience grows up. I'm sure there was timing to this all. The photo shoot is ushering in the next stage of an ingenue. So, all the kicking and screaming about embarrassment really falls flat for me.

2 comments:

  1. Ugh. That pic has a definite squick factor. Especially where Billy Ray's hand almost is...

    Now, I don't mind provocative pics. I think Demi's pregnancy pic was great, and I loved Natassha Kinski (sp?) and the snake. But Liebowicz blew it here -- EWW.

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  2. PS: The fact that we're talking about country music singers here raises the squick factor -- reminding me of one too many redneck jokes. "If she ain't good enough for her daddy, then she ain't good enough for me!"

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