Miley Can’t and Shouldn’t Stop

By Katrina Uy
@katreenz

Love it or hate it, you have to recognize that everyone’s talking about it./PHOTO VIA Wikimedia Commons

Last weekend during her opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live”, she stated, “There are a few subjects I’m not going to get into tonight: I’m not going to do Hannah Montana, but I can give you an update. She was murdered.”

Well, then. That escalated quickly. How’s that for a break from the squeaky-clean image that was once beloved to pre-teen girls everywhere?

From her scandalous performance at the MTV Video Music Awards at the end of August, to her fourth studio album Bangerz, which was released just last week, 20-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus has been riding wave upon wave of controversy and success these past few months.

Miley’s career has been riddled with scandal ever since her Hannah Montana days on the Disney Channel. The controversies came in small doses – first it was leaked pictures of her almost kissing another girl at age 15, and then it was posing under a sheet without a bra for a Vanity Fair photoshoot by Annie Leibovitz later that same year.

Don’t worry, they said, she’s just acting like any other kid her age.

And maybe she was just being a normal kid, at least back then. But now, Miley knows what it takes to get noticed by the media and stay in the limelight. Be scantily clad in a music video or live performance? Check. Have a super hot on-again, off-again Australian boyfriend? Check. Oh, they called off their engagement last month? Even better – that just means more publicity to fuel the fires of her latest album, not to mention Liam Hemsworth is officially on the market again, ladies!

The scandals keep escalating, but in my opinion, Miley is the farthest from a train wreck by any means. She’s in total control of her career and unapologetically so. In an E! Online article, her most recent music video, “Wrecking Ball,” was the “fastest to reach 100 million views on Vevo.” Love her or hate her, she’s all anyone can talk about.

She’s got the looks, and she’s definitely got the talent. If you were to shield your eyes during any of her live performances and just listen to her sing, you wouldn’t be able to deny that she’s just as incredible live as she is in the studio. It’s a shame that she isn’t taking more advantage of her status as an A-list celeb by presenting herself as a role model for her fans but hey, priorities, am I right? Goodie-goodies don’t make headlines, Miley Cyrus 2.0 does.

And so I end on a conflicted note. On behalf of everyone with a sense of decency (think of the children!) I am begging you to please stop, Miley. But we all know that you can’t be tamed and probably won’t, and for the sake of your career you probably shouldn’t stop, either.

After all, there’s no such thing as bad press.

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