Hannah Montana and the Female Eunuch

(originally posted July 23, 2008)
Earlier this year a furore erupted in the media when fifteen year old entertainer Miley Cyrus posed for some fashion photos in Vanity Fair magazine. The photo that caused the stir was a classic “draped nude” portrait. Very little skin was actually visible, but the appearance of nudity beneath a cloth was apparently enough to throw self-appointed “morality” watchdogs into a panic.
And as usual, the media entered “feeding-frenzy” mode.
Widely reported was the fear that her photographs send a harmful message to young girls, making Cyrus an unfit role model for young women. Try as I might though, I can’t find many specific statements about what that “bad” message might be...except for Dr. Robyn Silverman’s Powerful Parent Blog, where she warns parents that their ‘tween daughters may “show up to playtime loosely wrapped in their Beauty and the Beast bedsheets...”
However, while the Cyrus photos appear to have raised more concern than they warrant, a question that hasn’t been asked is, what message does the alarm over the photos send to young girls?
It seems to me that the message being given to young girls everywhere is clear, specific and destructive: that in order to be considered good, acceptable, admirable, and worthy, a girl, a young woman, must remain completely sexless. That girls who, like Miley, even hint that a sexual being lies beneath the coverings has done something bad, unacceptable, and shameful.
A girl does not have to be very old, nor very sophisticated, to understand that her parents and the talking heads of alleged grown-ups on TV feel that Miley has been bad. And Miley’s widely publicized apology, her embarrassment, her tears, her reportedly feeling ill at a subsequent concert all reinforce the message: girls are not supposed to HAVE any sexuality. Not only must they not openly display it, they must never even hint at it. Bad things happen to those who do, and people will stop liking them.
Even her supporters urge others not to condemn this teenager for having “made a mistake.”
Hinting that you may be a sexual being is a mistake? Apparently it is in 2008.
The TV talking heads bristle in outrage over the fact that the person in these photos “is only 15.”
News flash: Human beings, males and females both, are sexual beings from before birth until the day they die.
As a sex therapist, I see many adult women, married, or in committed relationships, who are very conflicted about their sexuality. Is it any wonder?
The prescription is that a girl, a woman, should not be sexually active until marriage, that she should “save” herself for her husband. Then, all of a sudden, her husband (ideally a virgin himself) will “awaken” her sexuality, and she will suddenly go from a person who has denied even the possibility of having sexual feelings, who has been trained from toddlerhood to say “no, no, no”, to being a fully sexual being who moans “yes, yes, yes.”
Fairy tales like this keep my profession going and provide me and my colleagues with an income.
But the cost in human anguish and misery can be staggering.
Is it any wonder that women are conflicted about sexuality, when the media continually indulges in its insidious game of set ‘em up and knock ‘em down with young female celebrities? To be acceptable as celebrities, even the most timid or plain females are required to be sexualized, made-over, enhanced...their sexual appeal must be hyped to the max. But then, to be an
acceptable role model, they must be “pure.” And when young women who must be both “sexy” and “pure” make a personal decision regarding their own sexuality, be it starring in a film with “adult themes,” posing for pictures, or becoming sexually active, the media fall all over themselves to denounce her. She is now part of the morality play known as “fallen woman,” and is gleefully branded with today’s updated scarlet letter...no longer an “A” for adulteress, but an “S” for slut (or should that be an “H” for ho?).
We’ve seen that again and again. Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears publicly took virginity vows. They were then dressed by their handlers in the sexiest and most revealing outfits available. The Swift Report tells of rumours that her handlers may have pushed Britney Spears into marrying in order to boost her slumping record sales.
According to market research, CD choices are increasingly shaped by the morality of the female artists, with teenaged girls saying they prefer to buy music by female artists who put off sex until marriage. This is resulting in pressure on struggling record labels to keep young starlets chaste—or quickly marry them off.
Notice that these categories allow for no middle ground. A young woman cannot be a “little bit sexual.” Only two states for young women are recognized. More recently, some pictures of Cyrus at a sleep over with friends were posted on the internet. One photo shows Cyrus and a female friend in chaste cotton nightgowns leaning against each other while sitting on the floor, mugging for the camera. The person who posted the photo has superimposed the word “slut” on it.
And if even hinting at your sexuality makes you a “bad girl”, well why not go all the way? The notion that you may as well be hung for a sheep as a goat makes sense to many teenaged minds. Having been branded a “bad girl, dismissed as a “slut,” many of our “fallen” female celebrities spiral out of control.
I have to wonder how many young non-celebrities put themselves at risk using the same logic?
Back in 1970, when I was about to graduate high school, Germaine Greer published, The Female Eunuch, the book that changed the way the world looked at women’s sexuality and the way women looked at themselves. Greer wrote, "Women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality.”
38 years later, that situation persists. Rather than relenting, the focus has shifted to younger and younger women. Girls in many high schools today are subjected to pressure to take a “purity pledge,” a pledge to remain a virgin until she marries. As Marshall McLuhan noted, the medium is the message. What message does the very name of this phenomenon convey? Purity equals sexlessness. Therefore, any girl who is sexual is impure, flawed, dirty...a slut.
And, of course, there is the unspoken but ever-present expectation that the natural outcome of any young woman reaching adulthood is marriage, undoubtedly followed soon afterwards by motherhood. Nearly half a century after the emergence of second-wave feminism, the gender straightjacket is alive and well and invading your daughter’s bedroom!
There is, on the part of many adults, an unhealthy, unsavoury fascination with young women’s hymens. A question we need to ask ourselves as a society is this: should we allow their obsession to be passed onto our daughters as focus for anxiety, for self-loathing, for self-neutering?