Miley Cyrus has caught media attention with her struggle to disassociate her newfound independence from her old Disney teenybopper star image. Her behavior, while continuously shocking to the public, seems like a cry for help rather than her true identity.
January 2011 marked the end of Disney’s hit show, “Hannah Montana,” in which Cyrus dealt with the pressures of being a celebrity while still living the normal life of a teenage girl. However, it seems Cyrus missed out on valuable lessons from her show, falling into the trap of celebrity teenage angst.
At the ripe old age of 21, Cyrus has erased her Disney innocence, becoming a symbol of rebellion with her iconic tongue-wagging facial expression and recently bleached eyebrows.
“Cyrus also posted a pic of herself alongside (photographer Mert) Alas with her blond eyebrows and wrote, ‘Lets burn in hell’ under the photo,” the New York Daily News reported, posting several of her latest Instagram photos.
Cyrus has also drastically changed her music inspiration. Her days of “Nobody’s Perfect” are long gone and are now replaced with lyrics referencing the dangerous street drug molly.
“Popped a molly and you know / You know you'll never stop / You think I'm turned up / Wait until my album drops,” Cyrus raps in a remix of “Ain’t Worried Bout Nothin'.” This adaption was developed shortly after her single “We Can’t Stop” released, which includes a line about “dancing with molly.”
In August, Cyrus shocked the public again at MTV’s annual Video Music Awards with her suggestive performance of a medley of “We Can’t Stop” and Robin Thicke’s ”Blurred Lines,” alongside Thicke himself.
She left the audience dumbfounded, as her skimpy outfit and foam finger prop became more progressively inappropriate as the performance continued.
Thicke later told the Huffington Post that he won’t perform with Cyrus again, adding: "No, no. Definitely no. Definitely not.”
Even with her large record of extreme behavior, this isn’t the first time Disney stars have struggled to break the mold of tween role model. Celebrities such as Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan battled addiction, went to rehab and had their poor decisions plastered on magazine covers for society to judge.
More recently, the press has slammed teenage heartthrob Justin Bieber for a number of ridiculous decisions and rumors. From “cut for Bieber” (a fake initiative to stop the star from using drugs) to getting kicked out of a hotel in Brazil, Bieber seems to be heading down the same road as Cyrus.
Bieber, Cyrus and a number of other young stars have been thrust into the spotlight for so long, beginning their careers at the peak of their teenage years. With cameras following their every move, the forgiveness for mistakes of their youth has shrunk significantly.
While Cyrus’ behavior has reached an extreme at this point, I can’t help but wonder if this wouldn’t have escalated so quickly if she hadn’t had the media breathing down her neck.
The trials of celebrities seem trivial to those not in the spotlight, but her youth — a time used for many to make mistakes and discover their true identities — was lost in the mix of fame, fortune and society’s expectations of perfection.
Reach the columnist at rsmouse@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @beccasmouse.
