It's Miley!

There was less outrage when Amanda Bynes almost set her dog on fire than there has been about this whole Miley Cyrus VMA performance. There's a line between a woman being sexually overt and being mentally ill/depraved/so sad, and it's not one of Robin Thicke's blurred ones, either.

The online universe erupted with critiques of Miley Cyrus twerkin' her tongue off with Robin Thicke.

"The performance clearly showed she was mentally ill! She's following in the footsteps of Britney and Amanda Bynes! The performance was racist! The reaction is anti-feminist! The reaction is sex negative!" - summarized from hundreds of post I was subjected to today.

First off, let me make one thing clear: I don't care about the performance at all. It wasn't very creative or amazing, and Miley should have sang Wrecking Ball instead of We Can't Stop because Wrecking Ball is a fantastic song, and I have it on repeat as I write this!

I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BAAAAALL!

Okay. So here are my thoughts.

I thought the performance was hilarious, and I think that was the point. The entire song is about doing whatever you want and not caring what people think. Here are some lyrics from the verse she didn't sing: "To my home girls here with the big butt / Shaking it like we at a strip club / Remember only God can judge ya / Forget the haters cause somebody loves ya."

Yes. She was very sexual. And typically, that is not socially acceptable, but stop comparing her to Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes. She isn't drinking and driving, throwing bongs out of windows, getting ridiculous plastic surgery, attacking cars with umbrellas, setting fires in driveways of assisted living complexes, or dousing her dog in gasoline.
Being extremely sexual on stage at the VMAs is not a symptom of mental illness. It is a symptom of performing at the VMAs. (Someone go back through the last ten years of VMA performances and count how many of them contained sexual innuendo or even overt sexuality. Or songs about sex.) For the record, I do happen to think there is some merit to the posts about how when a woman is sexual, people think something is wrong with her, but when a man is sexual, he's just a good dancer with great hair (looking at you, JT).

ALL I WANTED WAS TO BREAK YOUR WAAAAALLS!

If I had a daughter, would I want her to perform the way Miley performed? No. But I think that has a lot more to do with the fact that parents do not want to know about their children's sex lives (or vice versa, mom!). But if I did have a daughter who wanted to do what Miley did on a national stage, then I would hope that society would be decent enough not to call her a terrible human being for doing it. Or accuse her of being mentally ill.

Now, even if you insist that what she did was wrong and stupid, then I have one more thing to say: She's 20 years old, people. What stupid mistakes were you making at 20? Maybe you didn't have a TV broadcast and a microphone, but would you really want your 20-year-old self's mistakes to be the top story on CNN, Huffington Post, The Today Show . . . and have millions of people posting Facebook statuses and tweeting about how you're insane or morally reprehensible?
Yeah. Didn't think so.*

ALL YOU EVER DID WAS WRECK ME / YEAH, YOU WRECK ME!

Now. I don't want anyone to think I am making some crazy big statement about feminism, racism, or just plain sex-negativity. The whole point of this is to make sure that everyone knows how much I hate reading all of your statuses and tweets that you think are making statements about how society could be better.

*I totally think Miley wants this performance to be the top story on all those media outlets.