How do you know when a teenage girl singer is now all grown up?
What are the tell-tale signs that she has left the foolishness of her immature girly days behind and become a real woman?
Her coming-of-age is easy to detect.
She will launch a sexy new look and a song that tells us how hot she is. She will tell us she is unique and different and breaking all the rules. In reality, she’s following the same script as others before her. It’s part of the music machine. Strip off, writhe around on the floor, do a photo shoot for a lad’s mag and tell the world: I’m a big girl now.
The music clip that goes with her metamorphosis usually involves one or all of the following elements:
Sex, poles, fetishised clothing, lingerie, some black leather and killer heels for good measure, lots of groping and grinding against men – and women of course, because ‘bi’ is just so in right now and our big girl doesn’t want to be locked in to any rigid form of sexuality. There will be intimations of group sex, including simulated oral and anal acts and her newly outed breasts (proving she’s a woman) will be groped.
Ah, our little girl is all grown up.
Gabriella Cilmi, 18, cast off her unique, authentic style for sexualised coming-of-age same old same old with her clip for ‘On a Mission’. She informs us: “I’m on fire, there’s no competition” and that she’s a woman and nothing can stop her, in various breast accentuating moves.
Nikki Webster, 22, tried desperately to cast off her pig tails and Olympic swings with a group grope fest for ‘Devilicious’, a video so cringe worthy I just can’t bring myself to host it here. This one image is bad enough [confession: artistic licence taken with speech bubble].
It all feels to try-hard: truckloads of makeup, bleach blond hair extensions and hotpants. No matter how hard she tries, she still looks like the under-age kid who snuck out the window to go the rave party with her big brother and his mates. I know she wants to grow up, but it is unbearable hearing her tell us she “tastes so delicious”.
Seventeen year old Disney star Miley Cyrus has gotten into the act now. Of course she did that photo shoot with the post-coital feel, flirted with poles at the Teen Choice Awards last August . But now, in a $US25,000 silver scale corset, she’s taking her new sexual personal to a new level with her latest video clip for her new song ‘Can’t Be Tamed’ released Tuesday on the E! Network.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjSG6z_13-Q[/youtube]
According to Celebrity Mania:
On her new sexy side of her in “Can’t Be Tamed” music video, Miley Cyrus said that it isn’t about the new her but more about putting a story to the track. “The video isn’t about being sexy or about who can wear less clothes. It’s about explaining the song and living the lyrics… I don’t want to be in a cage. I want to be free and do what I love,” she explained…
Miley further shared about what she expects from the clip, stating “The reason I loved doing this video is because I wanted it to be something different for a female artist.” She added, “It’s not a new Miley; it’s just a new part of me.”
I’m not sure how many female artists she’s seen lately, but if this is “different” I wonder how she defines “same”?
The lyrics to the Britneyesque song are so try-hard they are embarrassing. And the girl-in-cage-needs-to-get-out-and-be-herself-theme – this is original?
For those who don’t know me, I can get a bit crazy
Have to get my way, 24 hours a day
‘Cause I’m hot like that
Every guy everywhere just gives me mad attention
Like I’m under inspection, I always get the 10s
‘Cause I’m built like that—(Chorus)
I can’t be tamed, I can’t be saved
I can’t be blamed, I can’t, can’t
I can’t be tamed, I can’t be changed
I can’t be saved, I can’t be (can’t be)
I can’t be tamed—I wanna fly I wanna drive I wanna go
I wanna be a part of something I don’t know
And if you try to hold me back I might explode
Baby by now you should know
The real tragedy is that this conformity to the dictates and predetermined scripts of the music industry are presented as pushing boundaries and original. It seems girls who start out with a unique style are put in a giant homogenising machine where they come out looking and acting and singing the same. While making out they are just so different and empowered.
As one 14-year-old I know (I can neither confirm nor deny if this child belongs to me) said “as Miley gets older and more into the celeb life, she gets faker”.
Speaking of the death of originality, what’s with the Gagafication of Christina Aguilera?
My friend Tania has helpfully provided this post modern literary criticism:
I actually believe this is an entirely new form of media, transcending cultural, psychosocial and stereotypical sexual boundaries, invoking the spirit of post-feminist icons, subverting the ironic post-modernist dilemma of the liberated female versus the subjugated, boudoir-bound male and poking fun at the latent homo-erotic tendencies of nanny-state do-gooder fundamentalist agitators…
Yawn.
Hot cup of Milo, anyone?
14 Responses
Now Mel, but she *is* grown up now. I mean, she’s *almost* old enough for legal drinking age so she’s surely responsible enough to play up in a cages? She’s out of the nest, she’s amped up the sexy aggression surely what you propose is ‘tame’? You can’t tame her. ‘Don’t change me’ she says. I can totally see how the industry hasn’t changed her at all. At all. (sarcasm)
Unfortunately, spot on. The parade of this story is getting rather long – Kylie, Danii, Britney… I wish these girls had caring adults who didn’t suck in the celebrity lie and told them that the industry has certainly dealt with girls who grow into women before, and know how to use them, shove them aside once they outlive their usefulness and call out, ‘Next!’
The worst thing is that people call this ’success’.
Melinda, excellent article. I have been talking about this for ages especially with Jessica Maubouy, Gabriella Cilmi. What’s more confusing is that Miley claims to be a virgin waiting till marrige what type of conflicting message is she presenting! Keep writing your work is fantastic.
Errggh – there goes one of the last teenage singers I didn’t mind my daughters listening to. Taylor Swift…pleease don’t go the same way!
Another great article Melinda. Yes, unfortunately it’s all become tediously predictable. The trajectory of the young female singing sensation…. puppets for the $$ machine.
As a Mum of two daughters I just despair at the constant bombardment of images they are confronted with, My 10 year adores Miley Cyrus and is a member of Miley World, the website. What do you say to a 10 year old about this? Just waiting for Justin Bieber to do a photo shoot wearing next to nothing and all sexed up…..yeah…..as if. ….
Was up at Southland shopping centre today and so many shop windows have mannequins dressed in clothes more suited to a prostitute. I might be wrong but i think the majority of parents seem to be blissfully unaware or blindly ignorant about what’s going on. We talk about the health of our children in terms of the obesity problem and what they’re being fed, well, what about what they’re being fed in terms of the sexual images they’r e confronted with. And why is it ok for a radio station (Nova FM) to play a Lily Allen song at any hour of the day with the lyrics ” lying in the wet patch and spending ages giving head” . What the hell is going on?
Yet again I am insensed at the ignorance and stupidity of this society we live in! I am concerned of how MIley Cyrus wearing a few plucked feathers and barely much else, gyrating in a huge nest is going to affect my already very fragile and unwell little girl. She has always loved the Hannah Montana series and has often escaped into them. So again I have to be more vigilant, hoping that somehow she does not come across this video clip.
All I hear and see is that at a certain age little girls have to take their clothes of to become big girls and talent only sells if it comes with sex. Of course Cyrus’s fan base will increase with more flipping males, not to mention the occasional pedophile!!
I am so pissed off, it is hard enough for any parent to raise a child in this dysfunctional consumeristic sex driven world, but it is so much harder when your child is unwell.
I don’t understand the complaints on this issue. Shouldn’t it be a case of ‘her body, her choice’? Is there evidence of coercion? Are you really comfortable with anyone dictating how you should dress and live your life? How did you feel about Boobquake, or the moves to ban the Burqa and Hijab?
Isn’t the real issue how some segments of society respond to women? For me, I think the sign of a truly equal society will be when a women (or man, or transgendered, etc) could walk around naked and not be in any fear of rape or someone idiot shouting ’show us your tits’.
I just checked out Nikki’s clip… HAHAHAHAHHA…. ok and yes it’s also quite sad.
The real issue is not how SOME segments RESPOND but how the majority of brainwashed sex saturated, bombarded with the constant objectification of the female body and the ideal of this ‘perfect’ shape, respond. The dream of us all walking around innocently naked with no fear of abuse or inappropriate sexual innuendo is even further removed as a result of this ridiculous ‘rite of passage’ (purely a cover up for an industry in which sex sells)
this was bought home to me recently after chatting with young girls who are sick of catcalls, the comments, the come ons from men when they are seriously underage. Not only is this a shame for poor miley who is selling herself short and turning into a carbon copy, music industry big dollar puppet but also for the men who are bombarded with images of young girls portrayed as sexually alluring and available which then promotes this type of interest in underage girls…
Oh dear Miley. If it “isn’t about being sexy”, then PUT SOME PANTS ON!
Arved,
You asked about coersion and I think there definitely is a case of coersion here:
These girls are working within an industry which is forcing them to grow up fast primarily because sex sells. Once a singer like Miley or Britany or Nikki Webster can be represented as “sexy” then the market for their music moved beyond pre-teens and crosses over into the mainstream. I can’t imagine how much pressure there must be on these girls to market themselves in this way.
The coersion is coming from the producers, the music execs, the film clip directors, the photographers at their photoshoots, but most of all, it’s coming from their parents and guardians who should know better than to subject their daughters to this kind of abuse for profit, but, I fear, are blinded by the almighty dollar.
That’s not an unreasonable point, but Miley is 17 and Nikki is 22. Britney had a remarkably similar career to Miley, but was also 17 at the time her music career took a ‘sexy’ turn. For context, at 17 you are considered old enough to join the Defence Force and learn how to kill people.
At what age then, should entertainers be responsible for their own decisions and career? Is any parent that pushed their child into acting / singing / whatever guilty of coercion and child abuse? Should there just be a blanked ban on children acting, singing or otherwise expressing themselves? I agree there is a line here somewhere, but by 17, I think we’re well and truly on the safe side of it.
In my opinion, if there is to be any coercion here, it started well before her single “Can’t Be Tamed”, when she was still well and truly Hannah Montana. She has been acting since she was 12, last year she published an autobiography and she has earned over US$25 million per year for at least the last 2 years. And she can’t even vote yet.
Yet only now, when she is old enough to kill people for her country, and she decides to write, sing and perform in such a music video is it coercion? There’s seems to be some cognitive dissonance in this claim.
If the things she has achieved so far are the result of her strength of character, then she also must take responsibility for her music. If this particular song and music video is the result of coercion, then how is everything prior not also coercion, with the proviso that those doing the coercion knew there was more money to be made in having a ‘good girl’ image?