{"id":1052,"date":"2014-12-20T11:13:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-20T17:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2014\/12\/20\/141220-mileycyrus\/"},"modified":"2022-03-29T21:00:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T02:00:32","slug":"141220-mileycyrus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2014\/12\/20\/141220-mileycyrus\/","title":{"rendered":"Miley Cyrus Warned Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been going back through some old posts – articles that I had deleted when I thought I’d kicked the blogging addic…habit – and I ran across one that I wrote back in April of 2008. I wrote it as a reaction to a Vanity Fair<\/i> profile<\/a> of Miley Cyrus.<\/p>\n

The primary focus of that post was on the semi-nude photo of Miley by acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz, but not because of the sensationalist nature of said photo of a then fifteen-year-old Disney star. I was, frankly, hammering the photographer for “phoning it in,” which in turn led to a discussion of how one maintains a creative spark after years of doing the same thing over and over.<\/p>\n

However, the 20+ comments on that post took on a life of their own (one of the things I miss most about the “golden age” of blogging) and the discussion turned to what Miley’s future might be. My contribution to those musings was this gem:<\/p>\n

\n

I’ll admit that the track record of female teen idols isn’t very good in terms of a smooth transition to adulthood, but I’m not sure we should write off Miley for this one indiscretion.<\/p>\n

While it might prove to be the first public stumble in a long downward spiral, it’s equally possible that it’s a wake-up call that puts her back on track.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So, anybody want to hire me as their personal stock-picker? Yeah, neither would I.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, Miley told us everything we needed to know about her now-infamous career path, in response to the interviewer’s “dumb” question.<\/p>\n

I ask a dumb question–I’m sorry, it’s hard to interview a teenager; they’re intimidating–about whose career trajectory she’d like to follow. Her answer is a deft amalgam of showbiz savvy and girl-power mantra: “Before, I’d say like Hilary Duff”–the star of Disney’s Lizzie McGuire<\/i>–“or this person or that person. But there can’t be a thousand Hilary Duffs. Then that doesn’t make Hilary special. And there can’t be a thousand Miley Cyruses, or that doesn’t make me special. That’s what a star is: they’re different. A celebrity is different. So, no, mostly I want to make my own path.”<\/div>\n

Two years later, we saw the first signpost on her “path” to being “different” in what was then a shocking performance on Dancing With The Stars<\/i><\/a> (but which now seems positively quaint by comparison).<\/p>\n

There are many ways to make a path…one of which is apparently to ride a wrecking ball in one’s skivvies. But whatever we might think of Miley Cyrus today, we should never believe that it all came about by chance.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I’m still waiting for someone to explain to her the fundamental difference between “celebrity” and “train wreck,” in terms she might be able to internalize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been going back through some old posts – articles that I had deleted when I thought I’d kicked the blogging addic…habit – and I ran across one that I wrote back in April of 2008. I wrote it as a reaction to a Vanity Fair profile of Miley Cyrus. The primary focus of that… Continue reading Miley Cyrus Warned Us<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society-culture","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9268,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/9268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}