I have been hearing all the pundits and dj’s on the radio talking about the “explicit” Miley Cyrus photos in Vanity Fair.  On and on and on.  One woman on NPR just would not shut up about how horrible it was, how sexualized she was, how taken advantage of, what a wretched human Annie Lebowitz was, how Miley was being exploited, how her parents were to blame for this travesty.  Just listening to her was enough to make me want to punch the radio.

I get Vanity Fair.  It arrived in the mail.  Curious what all the fuss was about, I opened to the photos.  What the fuck? I heard from one radio commentator how the photos with her dad were incestuous.  What a load of crap.  What kind of culture do we live in that a father sitting as this man is with his daughter is considered incestuous?  It says more about the people who automatically assume sexuality between two people of opposite sex than it does about the objects of this photo.  There is nothing incestuous about it.  It is intimate, yes, but that does not make it sexual. And why shouldn’t a father and daughter be intimate?  It is healthy; it doesn’t mean they are going to fuck.

Regarding the photo of Miley’s back, it depicts her as the woman she is becoming.  There is nothing pornographic about it.  Again it says so much more about the people who find a photo like that disturbing and their own twisted views on sexuality than it does about Miley.  The photo is sensual.  Her back is beautiful.  She is lovely and growing into a woman.  Why is it Americans find it so disturbing that a young woman of 15 could possibly have a sensuous body?  Why does sensuality automatically equal sex?  And why is it wrong for someone to view this photo and want sex with this woman just because of her age?  Our sexuality doesn’t magically turn on at age 16 or 18 when we can suddenly legally “consent” to certain activities.  We are born sexual beings.  The fact that our culture finds sexuality abhorrent is a problem with our culture, not the peoples’ bodies in the culture.

This country is so puritanical, I can hardly stand it.  Grow up people.  Humans are sexual beings.  How do you think we procreate?  I believe so much of the sexual vioence in this country comes from repressed rage at unexpressed and disallowed sexuality.  There is also the assumption that anything without clothes is automatically ready to fuck.  Put a male and female together, even a parent and child, and if they are touching or in any way intimate, they are automatically ready to fuck.  Take a sensual photo of a young woman’s body and she is being exploited to fuck.  It’s crazy.

I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind.  America is such a mess, any voice of reason is lost in the din.  I can say this though, Miley Cyrus’s photos were beautiful, intimate, sensual, and in no way incestuous or pornographic.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is the one with the problem.  Those people should head into therapy and try to figure out what that problem is.