Semi-Nude 15-Year-Olds

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Hey, maybe I can become a world famous photographer, too. All I need is some jailbait and a sheet. I’ll have the girl take off her clothes, mess up her hair like she just had a wild night of … whatever. Then I’ll have her smile over her shoulder and start snapping away and —

Wait! Officer! This isn’t kiddie porn — it’s totally legit! It’s Hannah Montana! It’s Vanity Fair!

That’s why it’s so great to be Annie “Here’s A Schmatte — Say Cheese” Leibovitz. The pictures you take, even of a 15-year-old girl, are automatically art. Everyone agrees. They are so “natural.” Because, of course, it’s so natural for a 15-year-old girl to take nudie pics.

According to press reports, that’s exactly what the room full of handlers was saying at Ms. Leibovitz’s photo shoot of the star of the Disney show, “Hannah Montana.” Even the subject herself, Miley Cyrus, initially liked the pictures, which are all over the Internet at the moment, and in Vanity Fair, and were the subject of a full six minutes of air time on “The Today Show” yesterday.

Upon reconsidering, however, Ms. Cyrus issued a statement saying she regretted the photos and was embarrassed by them.

Me too. I’m embarrassed for her, and for us, a country that seems to demand either squeaky clean, corporate-approved, cryonically cute kids or smoldering vixens with raging drug problems when we choose our youthful entertainers.

Look how little space we allow between the two extremes. Until yesterday, Ms. Cyrus’s main claim to bad girl status were some juvenile MySpace-type photos, and the fact she was once filmed not wearing a seat belt.

Once the Vanity Fair photos hit the press — bam! Some of the blogs are actually calling her a … rhymes with “smut.”

Now Disney is stuck with a problem of its own approving. Since when does an Annie Leibovitz shoot of any woman (other than maybe Jessica Tandy) not end up sexy? But the rest of us are stuck, too. We’re stuck looking at these pictures, trying to figure out why they’re making our stomachs feel like we just ate a plate of bad oysters.

Is it that the girl was exploited — possibly even by her parents? Or that the second you sprout breasts in America, pop culture from Facebook to Vanity Fair demands you flaunt them or risk being branded un-fun? Or is it simply collective chagrin as we watch a seemingly nice young woman place her toe on the Britney banana peel?

Or all of the above?

“It’s the continuing, thoughtless sexualization of children that’s so disturbing,” the author of “The Prodigal Brother,” Sue Thompson, said. “In our culture, a child entertainer is either adorably cute or she must play Lolita.” Ms. Thompson particularly blames Ms. Cyrus’s dad, country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus. He’s supposed to be watching out for her, right? He even plays the dad on her show.

And yet, the photo that is possibly more disturbing than the bedsheet one shows a bare-tummied Ms. Cyrus leaning against her hirsute pop with, well, “Her elbow in his crotch.”

That’s how my friend, Marcia Clark, described it — accurately. “Major ‘ew’ factor,” she added. “I thought they looked like a couple, or an ad for Jordache jeans. When was the last time you snuggled up like that with your dad?”

Okay. Ew. So we’ve got the underage sex thing going on, and the daddy-daughter thing going on, and then we’ve got the whole, “What to tell the kids?” thing, too.

The show “Hannah Montana” is second only to “American Idol” among child-age viewers in America. Between tours, licensing, music sales, movies and everything else, it’s becoming a billion dollar brand. Humongous. And, until now, it was pretty palatable to parents.

“But how do parents explain this?” the New York bureau chief at Variety and author of “Anytime Playdates: Inside the Preschool Entertainment Boom,” Dade Hayes, asked. Just a few months back parents had to explain how Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101,” got knocked up. “We have enough to teach our kids,” Mr. Hayes said. “We don’t need anything more.”

And the last thing any of us need — especially Ms. Cyrus — is another girl heading over the Niagara Falls of fame.

“Disney has no compunctions about what’s going to happen to this young woman in the rest of her life,” the author of “Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age,” Kathleen Sweeney, said. Perhaps the Mickey Mouse machine even pushed the idea of tarting up their star, to appeal to the valuable lecher demographic. And afterward, if she goes the route of other cuties-turned-floozies? Well, that will be her problem.

Let’s hope this was just a stupid step that does not derail the girl or her career. But if it derails the business of photographing semi-nude 15-year-olds and calling it art, that’s fine by me.

lskenazy@yahoo.com


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