Now that I am part of the real world again, I have to take issue with this whole Miley Cyrus photo issue.  Is the photo sexual?  Okay, I have to say yeah it is.  It is a grown-up photo–for a grown-up magazine.  The photo wasn’t taken for People or CosmoGirl or Glamour it was taken for Vanity Fair.  It wasn’t a cover photo and Vanity Fair didn’t release the photo online for publicity.  The mass media got a hold of the pictures and made them an issue.  Most tween and teen girls, for whom Hannah Montana is a role model, do not read Vanity Fair and therefore, would most likely not be influenced to have sex and show their bodies if Miley hadn’t.  But wait, they do that already. 

The bigger issue is that of the media creating news where there really is none to increase add revenue, exposure, etc.  I have to defend Annie Leibovitz.  The picture is a beautiful classic portrait and no one would have had an issue if the photo wasn’t published in a major magazine.  She is a teen girl playing dress-up (or dress down in this instance).  She is a young girl, but no one is making an issue with how much she works–or how exploited she is by Disney at her young age, but she takes a photo that she wants to and she is being taken advantage of.  We don’t worry that Disney or even her family is taking advantage of her talent for the $$$$$$$$$$$$$, but Vanity Fair and Leibovitz are taking advantage of her youth and innocence with this photo.  It irritates me to no end that we think its okay to use someone to make you a buck as long as someone else’s use of them doesn’t infringe on our own ability to cash in. 

Miley is a person–a real person.  Hannah Montana is a fictional character and the two should be seen and treated as separate individuals.  Hannah Montana as a fictional character should not been anyone’s role model.  Those should be found closer to home.  Maybe that is what we need to start looking at.