‘Pole-arized’ discourse: An analysis of responses to Miley Cyrus ’ s Teen Choice Awards pole dance

Abstract

Sexualization of girlhood is a current issue in the US and around the world. Concerns that girls are asked to self-sexualize at younger and younger ages have led to an examination of the influence of media on girls. The current study attempts to explore public views on the ‘self-sexualization’ of a Disney pop star, Miley Cyrus, in what was called a ‘pole dance’ by the media. This performance at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards stirred considerable debate in the news and on public websites. The current analysis examines website responses of 13 websites through a qualitative, thematic analysis of over 500 individual responses. Analysis of internet comments revealed themes of agency and innocence in adolescent female sexuality as well as the function of these themes in US culture. The dominant themes are discussed in light of the largely absent gendered analysis of the performance and its significance.

Keywords

Sexualization of adolescence self-sexualization media

This paper examines online responses to an event during the Teen Choice Awards of 2009 in which, during a live musical performance, Miley Cyrus performed a dance move that reporters likened to a stripper’s ‘pole dance.’ We examined online responses to this event in order to explore public sentiments in light of celebrity culture, the sexualization of childhood and culture, and adolescent sexuality. In this paper, we review the context in which this act is controversial and also discuss relevant theories about sexualization. We present the themes that we found in a qualitative analysis and go on to analyze several ideological themes that ran through the online discussions in terms of how they relate to current constructions of adolescent sexuality. The first theme is about agency and to what extent adolescents, celebrities, and girls have choice with regard to how they represent themselves sexually. The contributors to this thread also focus on who is to blame for the choices girls make. We also examine narratives of girlhood innocence that intersect with ideas about race, gender, and class. A second theme relating to female agency and choice is one that connects choice and power specifically to Cyrus as an adolescent, and we explore public sentiment with regard to the morality of sexual acts in adolescence. We analyze these themes in terms of the interpretive repertoires available to the general public with regard to celebrities and sexualization, and explore a missing discourse that would recognize the performance as a performance aimed at boys and men. Finally, we make some suggestions with regard to why this discourse might be missing.

Context

In 2009, Miley Cyrus was a US ‘superstar’ who was the center of a multi-million dollar enterprise that went far beyond her Disney television show, Hannah Montana, in which she portrayed a teen who is a ‘normal’ high school girl during the day and a ‘rock star’ at night. The popularity of this show enabled Cyrus to launch a concert career and sell CDs, t-shirts, posters, themed products like school supplies, and a variety of products bought by children and especially pre-adolescent girls. Cyrus gained notoriety in her mid-teens via highly publicized, sexually provocative photographs featured in Vanity Fair. These photographs were shot by noted photographer Annie Leibowitz, and were criticized for featuring Cyrus wrapped in a bed sheet (ostensibly nude underneath). It has been noted that for many child stars, a career move or rebranding occurs around the age of 17 or 18 and that this transition involves an attempt to gain an adult male audience through sexualizing the star (Lamb and Brown, 2006); these photos could be read as Cyrus’s own rebranding. The press responded and a public discussion ensued in newspapers, magazines, and online spaces regarding the question of whether she was too young to be/act sexy, whether she was being exploited by her father/manager, Billy-Ray Cyrus, a country western music celebrity in his own right, whether she was old enough to make her own choices in these matters, and whether she was acting as a poor role model for her young fans. The conversation that ensued loosely followed the lines of the moral panics around sexualization described by Lumby and Funnell (2011), a panic that reifies girlhood innocence and suggests that sexuality for girls, in and of itself, is dangerous.

The research presented in this paper is about another incident that attracted significant media attention to Cyrus: her performance at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. The Teen Choice Awards show, established in the USA in 1999, serves as a venue to promote the shows and stars that teens and younger consumers watch. The awards, antics, and jokes are aimed at both a pre-teen and teenaged audience. In the 2009 awards show, Cyrus performed her then new song, ‘Party in the USA.’ In the performance, she emerged from a metal trailer (caravan) in boots, short shorts, and a cowboy hat. She proceeded to sing, dance, and then step on to a passing ice cream cart fitted with a barbershop-like striped pole. While singing and dancing atop the ice cream cart she dipped, spreading her legs apart as she descended. This was the ‘money shot’ that appeared in news stories around the world announcing that Cyrus did a ‘pole dance.’ (The performance can be viewed on YouTube.) A Salon magazine article noted that within 2 to 3 days there were over 2,750,000 Google entries for ‘Miley Cyrus + pole’ and over 1300 articles written on the subject (Williams, 2009). The Los Angeles Times criticized her for going ‘too far and too low’ and Fox News tellingly headlined, ‘Miley Cyrus Gets Raunchy with a Pole at the Teen Choice Awards, Wins Six Trophies,’ insinuating perhaps that the second clause had something to do with the first. Fox News wrote, ‘It was goodbye ‘Hannah Montana’ at Sunday’s Teen Choice Awards as the once squeaky clean star Miley Cyrus debuted a more adult image with a racy performance in hot pants on a stripper pole!’ (Fox News, 2010).

Cyrus and her promoters responded by arguing that she was ‘spoofing’ her Tennessee roots. The day after the awards news stories quoted Cyrus saying that ‘Miley explained with sincerity’ the following: ‘‘Party in the USA’ is an all-American song, and so I come out tonight and I'm literally in a trailer park. It’s a blinged-out trailer park.’ She went on to say her father and others planned the number which has a ‘deeper meaning to her’: ‘This is to represent where I am from. I’m so proud of it’ (Vena, 2009).

The ‘pole dance’ took place in a context of increasing attention to celebrities as well as the sexualization of adolescent celebrities. Sexualization is a word that has recently replaced objectification in feminist discourse, and refers not only to making women into objects for male viewing and the valuing of women primarily for their attractiveness and sexuality, but also the tendency to sexualize aspects of a person or an event that are not inherently sexual and to represent children and adolescents in increasingly sexual ways (American Psychological Association, 2007). Gill (2007a: 151) describes sexualization as ‘the extraordinary proliferation of discourses about sex and sexuality across all media forms … as well the increasingly frequent erotic presentation of girls’, women’s and (to a lesser extent) men’s bodies in public spaces.’ In this paper, we are interested in the latter aspect of both of these definitions.

This sexualization is purported to take place not only in the realm of everyday life of media viewing and consuming for girls, but also in celebrity culture, where female celebrities (and also athletes) are presented in heightened sexual form, having in many ways replaced fashion models in advertisements in all media due to their recognizability and preexisting narratives that can better sell products (Liaing, 2011; Shinkle, 2008; Shugart, 2003). McRobbie (2004: 258–259) argues that the media has become a dominant force in defining sexual norms in a way that ‘casts judgment and establishes the rules of play,’ and that frequently denigrates feminism. Girls are invited to participate in what researchers have termed ‘raunch culture,’ ‘pornographication,’ and ‘striptease culture’ (Levy, 2005; McNair, 1996, 2002), with the concomitant invitation is to consume, buy, and use products to ‘harness’ a post-feminist, agentic sexuality (Attwood, 2005; Evans et al., 2010; Gill, 2007b). In general, these media representations of sexuality and the offshoots of these representations (e.g. products) are more explicit, more commonplace, and a greater part of the lives of adolescent girls than they have previously been (Attwood, 2006; Lamb, 2010a).

Self-sexualization refers to the choice that girls and women make to conform to norms of sexiness in culture in order to get rewards (APA, 2007; Coy and Garner, 2010). Self-sexualization is a term that is coming to replace self-objectification (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997; McKinley and Hyde, 1996) because it points more directly to the sexual aspects of objectification. Unlike self-objectification, which suggests a passivity that is connected to older versions of female sexuality, self-sexualization describes a neo-liberal subject who is a more ‘active, confident and autoerotic’ (Evans et al., 2010: 115) sexual person in a presumed postfeminist world. Coy and Garner (2010) write about the discourse of empowerment via self-sexualization that is promoted through media and celebrity worship, a discourse that young female fans are exposed to and subsequently emulate. This discourse is associated with self-esteem and resembles a male heterosexual fantasy (Gill, 2007b).

The role of agency in self-sexualization is a source of concern among some feminist scholars. In her analysis of media representations of female sexual agency, Gill (2008) argues that in one sense, the shift to representations of empowerment of young women is positive in so far as it represents them as agents, but that these representations must also be read and experienced by younger women as a ‘new kind of tyranny, an obligation to be sexual in a highly specific kind of way’ (p. 53). Girls who mimic these kinds of performances that suggest empowerment may indeed feel more empowered (Lamb, 2010a, 2010b; Lamb and Peterson, 2011). And because of this, girls may buy into a discourse that describes them as reclaiming a femininity or sexuality that feminists have taken from them (McRobbie, 2008). However, as Gill (2007a, 2008) argues, there is an almost compulsory expectation that one sexualize oneself by embodying a fearless, ‘empowered,’ sexuality that is generally limited to those who are White, heterosexual, affluent, and able-bodied (Gill, 2007a, 2008). In response, Duits and van Zoonen (2007) argue that this interpretation represents girls as cultural dupes whose constricted choices are held in contrast to the presumed free choices of men. Within both postfeminist and some third-wave frameworks, empowerment derives from choosing to be sexy, no matter how stereotypical that sexiness might be, and performing that sexuality for either oneself or for males (Gill, 2007a).

Pole-dancing is one method of self-sexualization that has been under scrutiny as part of today’s sexual toolkit for young women. Initially a dance that was and still is performed by nude dancers and strippers, pole-dancing has gained popular appeal throughout the west, through classes offered at gyms as a way for women to get fit, feel liberated, and to display one’s body in a positive way (Bogle, 2008; Holland, 2010; Whitehead and Kurz, 2009). There was a controversy in 2006 in the UK about a ‘Peekaboo Pole Dancing’ kit that appeared on the toy section of retailer Tesco’s website (Durham, 2008). Reference to Cyrus’s dance as a ‘pole dance’ contextualizes it not only in the traditional realm of exotic dancing, but also in its more recent, more apparently agentic form.

Another concern about the sexualization of culture centers on the sexualization of childhood. Lumby and Albury (2008: 9) write that in public debate, child sexualization can mean that:

children are being depicted in ways that suggest they have an adult understanding of self and sexuality; that children are being encouraged to behave in an adult sexual manner; that popular images of children are fuelling child sexual abuse; and that children are being exposed to adult sexual material.

The argument around child sexualization is that the culture is becoming so sexualized, and commodification of sexuality so rampant, that it spills downwards to younger and younger children who are not only commodified and sexualized but given the tools to self-sexualize at too young an age (American Psychological Association, 2007; Durham, 2011; Levin and Kilbourne, 2008; Rush and La Nauze, 2006).

Debates regarding the sexualization of children focus less on the agency of the child (because the younger the child, the greater the assumption that they exercise little choice) and more on the notion of childhood innocence. Giroux (2009) notes in his exploration of young girls in beauty pageants that they gain legitimacy due to ‘the myth of innocence’ in which children are thought to live in a simple, pure world that is untainted by the cultural influences of adults and broader society around them. However, the culture is much more unclear in its definition of when this childhood innocence ends and the presumed agency of self-sexualization of adulthood begins. This cultural tension is clearly captured in the dialogue surrounding Miley Cyrus at the Teen Choice Awards.

This study

Guided by feminist and sexualization theories, we examined public online sentiment about Cyrus’s dance for the purpose of looking at how the discourse captures concerns about adolescents. Feminist theory guided our application of discourse analysis to naturally occurring conversations in online sites (Hepburn and Wiggins, 2005). We also used Wetherell and Potter’s (1988) conception of ‘interpretive repertoires’ as culturally-situated, limited units of language that are available for use across individuals and ‘provided for them by history’ (p. 190, Wetherell et al., 2001). We examine these discourses in a way that acknowledges the paradox that people are both products and producers of discourse (Billig, 1991) and that discursive strategies position subjects within a conversation and a historical context. We sought to identify the interpretive repertoires used by commenters in online conversations. We also explored the various subject positions undertaken by fans and detractors with the understanding that subject positions are not exclusively drawn from discourses, although influenced by them, but that they are themselves constructed (Wetherell, 1998). From a feminist perspective, we use theories about sexualization to explore the relationship of power and agency to women’s positions as sexual beings that enact certain discourses, and we focus on discourses of innocence that are set against those of power and agency. Gill (2009) also advises an examination of the intersectionality of sexualization, which means understanding social positions such as gender, race, class, intrapsychic, and economic positions in relation to one another. Thus we read the fan texts about the pole dance (or dip) in ways that understand not only that Cyrus is young and female, but that she is white, a millionaire, famous, and a real person with some agency in the world.

Although some comments reflected the position that this performance was not an attempt at pole-dancing, for the purposes of our research we wished to interrogate responses that likened her dance to a stripper’s as well as those that argued against this reading. We begin from a feminist perspective that would argue that Cyrus’s dance move did in fact resemble a pole dance; however, we also acknowledge that this is a discursive position that influences our reading and analysis of the comments about Cyrus online. We do not claim that this is the one true interpretation of this act and in the analysis that follows explore many repertoires that work to construct agency or innocence independent of whether Cyrus’s act was indeed a pole dance. From a feminist and discourse analytic perspective, there is no one true interpretation, but those who conduct the research and analyses must also own the positions from which they enter the analysis (Willig, 2008).

In keeping with Wetherell’s (1998) conceptualization of subject positions as they relate to interpretive repertoires, we suggest that the responses analyzed below capture the myriad subject positions found within different discourses, the meanings of which are continually negotiated and are thus often contradictory. As Gill (2009) notes, the media are locations where both the representations of female sexuality can exist alongside analyses and criticisms of them. If we take seriously the analysis of commenters, we can see a variety of broad themes and anxieties about adolescent sexuality that move beyond simple negative responses to the dance to explore concepts of agency and innocence within the contexts of celebrity culture, Disney culture, and Southern US ‘white trash’ culture.

Tyler (2008: 18) writes that at ‘different historical and cultural moments specific bodies become over determined and are publicly imagined (are figured) in excessive, distorted, and caricatured ways’ that are ‘expressive of an underlying crisis or anxiety.’ With adolescent celebrities, the commodification of innocence meets the sexualization of culture. Adolescents are in a liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and presumably between innocence and sexuality. The dichotomization of these constructs leaves little space for transition and creates tension due to the lack of any shared understanding of who should be what when. We sought to explore how the public response to Cyrus’s dance captures this tension, using her persona as a platform.

Method

Website pages that contained reader comments were identified through Google.com searches (performed Feb 13, 2011). Specifically, we sought website articles and blog posts that reported on Cyrus’s Teen Choice Awards performance within three weeks of the event. We also restricted the search to articles and posts that focused on this event and the public reaction to it in particular. The search terms ‘Miley Cyrus,’ ‘pole dance,’ and ‘comment’ were entered. Additional search terms were added to identify sites for the following categories: mainstream news (‘news’), entertainment news (‘entertainment’), parent-oriented (‘parent’), and teen-oriented (‘fansite’). For each search, the three highest-rated sites that met our criteria were selected. We attempted to target sites with different readerships in order to gather a more rounded representation of the potentially varied opinions of these groups. In particular, we felt that the content and reader experience of the site may have influenced commentary in some ways and that particular discourses may appear more readily on some sites rather than others. While we acknowledge that targeting websites rather than other sources does limit the sample to those who have access to and interest in the internet, we also believe that websites offer a kind of freedom of expression that may be inhibited in other forums. That said, Internet research entails some unique ethical concerns (see e.g. Heilferty, 2011), particularly around boundaries of public and private space. The comments included in this analysis were taken from open-access sites where commenter pseudonyms were used; commenters are further de-identified by not using their pseudonyms in this paper.

Sites used were categorized according to their intended purpose and readership, identified though advertisements and content. Twelve total sites were identified, three from each category. The highest ranked results were chosen if inclusion criteria were met. Site pages were excluded if there was no forum for readers to leave comments. Opinion pieces and blogs were also excluded from the mainstream news category. In addition, the website Youtube.com was searched for videos of the performance using the search terms ‘Miley Cyrus’ and ‘pole dance.’ The comments from the three videos with the highest number of views were included in the analysis.

A total of 13 websites were surveyed (Table 1). Once site pages were identified, up to 50 comments from each site were included, beginning from the first comment posted. The authors agreed by consensus that the 50 comment limit allowed enough space for a potential dialogue and diversity of commenters without so much temporal distance from the event that the commentary strayed from the event itself. We wanted to focus on more immediate reactions to the event. Comments were excluded from analysis if they were spam or uncodeable (i.e. could not be read by the coders due to being non-English or comments that do not provide enough content to be interpreted and categorized).

Table 1.

Description of comment sources.

Source website	Source code	Article title	Article date	Description of perceived readership	Number of comments used
Entertainment News
www.eonline.com	E1	‘Miley Cyrus pole dances at the Teen Choice Awards’	08/10/09	Predominantly female; mixed adolescents, emerging adults, and adults.	50
www.starpulse.com	E2	‘Miley Cyrus’s pole dance at Teen Choice Awards – too much?’	08/11/09	Predominantly female; mixed adolescents, emerging adults, and adults.	50
www.popwatch.ew.com	E3	‘Miley Cyrus pole dancing at the Teen Choice Awards: Rather unfortunate, yes?’	08/10/09	Predominantly female; mixed adolescents, emerging adults, and adults.	50
Parenting Sites
http://blog.timesunion.com/parenting/	P1	‘Parents upset over Miley Cyrus ‘pole dancing’’	08/12/09	Predominantly female adults with children.	30
http://www.nj.com/parenting/kate_krier/	P2	‘Miley Cyrus ‘pole dance’ at Teen Choice Awards: This mom isn’t happy’	08/11/09	Predominantly female adults with children.	8
http://stayathomemoms.about.com	P3	‘Miley Cyrus’s pole dancing a ‘my roots’ tribute’	08/11/09	Predominantly female adults with children.	10
Teen Sites
www.hannahmontanazone.com	T1	‘Miley Cyrus party in the USA pole dance’	08/30/09	Predominantly female preteens and early adolescents.	15
www.lastgonemovie.net	T2	‘Miley Cyrus provokes more controversy’	08/13/09	Predominantly female preteens and early adolescents.	2
www.disneydreaming.com	T3	‘Billy Ray Cyrus defends Miley Cyrus’s pole dancing’	08/21/09	Predominantly female preteens and early adolescents.	21
Mainstream News Sites
www.huffingtonpost.com	N1	‘Miley Cyrus’s Teen Choice pole dance’	08/10/09	Mixed male and female, predominantly adults.	50
www.washingtonpost.com	N2	‘Miley Cyrus, poles apart from her tween self’	08/13/09	Mixed male and female, predominantly adults.	10
www.nydailynews.com	N3	‘What would Mickey say? Miley Cyrus pole dances during performance at Teen Choice Awards’	08/10/09	Mixed male and female, predominantly adults.	17
YouTube Videos
www.youtube.com	Y1	‘Miley Cyrus – Party in the USA’	08/10/09	Mixed male and female, predominantly adolescents and young adults.	50
www.youtube.com	Y2	‘Miley Cyrus Teen Choice Awards 2009’	08/11/09	Mixed male and female, predominantly adolescents and young adults.	50
www.youtube.com	Y3	‘Miley Cyrus pole dancing CNN news’	08/11/09	Mixed male and female, predominantly adolescents and young adults.	50

Note: Sites are listed by their ranking from the Google search.

Analysis followed two paths. First inductive thematic analysis guided development of themes and subthemes (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Two authors independently developed a list of themes that they decided were representative of important features in the 439 comments, informed by feminist theory on sexualization as well as the literature on celebrities and sexualization and the issues of age and agency therein. The authors then merged these two sets of themes into dominant themes by consensus and categorized the comments accordingly. Initially 15 separate thematic categories were agreed upon and defined; categorized comments were re-read and discussed by the three authors in order to refine the categories into three major themes: childhood innocence and adult agency; agency, society, and sex; and contextualization of the performance.

Discourse analytic procedures as outlined in Willig (2008) and suggested in Potter and Wetherell (1994) were then used as the basis for an attempt to understand the coded texts as competing discourses and interpretive repertoires available with an eye towards contradictions and context. With the understanding that ‘every ‘social action’ and every ‘cultural product’ or ‘text’ has to be treated as a source or as an opportunity for creating multiple meanings’ (Durrheim, 1997: 181), and that discourse works to construct social practice within specific contexts (Potter and Wetherell, 1994), the three authors proposed to each other and then agreed upon available overarching positions that represented interpretive repertoires used by commenters to explain and reflect on the event.

Analysis

Childhood innocence and adult agency

Agency was an overarching theme we found in a variety of responses. With regard to agency, comments positioned Cyrus in ways that conferred varying degrees of it, often using her age a gauge for measurement. When positioning her with less agency, comments reflected Cyrus as a child, as handled by Disney, as handled by her father, and as a product of a growingly sexualized culture. In contrast, other comments positioned her as an independent agent, responsible for choices that could either be empowering or problematic. These subject positions suggested more and less agency and linked blame for the act accordingly. Below we take a closer look at these positions in turn.

Before analyzing the comments of others, we wanted to note that the theme of childhood innocence runs through most discussions about the sexualization of girls and that Cyrus’s handlers may have been well aware that she, as an adolescent, represented a position between childhood and adult sexuality. The use of the ice cream cart might have been a way to contextualize the pole dance in a set that positioned her as a kid just having fun rather than a sexual woman dancing to attract male attention. In this way, the ice cream cart references the innocence of childhood, therefore disqualifying Cyrus’s act as truly sexual. Shugart et al. (2001) write of the use of juxtaposed images to recontextualize acts, and the placement of the ice cream cart in a dance set that involved arguably pornographic moves is an example of such a juxtaposition. This decontextualization may in fact be motivated by what Giroux (2009) characterizes as adults’ desire to simplify childhood via the refusal to acknowledge the existence of something as complicated as sexuality within its innocence, such that they may avoid responsibility for it. This discourse of innocence, Giroux writes, allows the cultural valuing of protecting children’s innocence to exist alongside their sexualization and commodification. Comments that grapple with Cyrus’s sexualization hint at this uneasy coexistence.

The first repertoire identified in the analysis positioned Cyrus as naïve, innocent, and dependent and depicted her performance as the machination of adults who are greedy and crass rather than looking out for her interests as a child. Comments that reflected this interpretive repertoire remarked that her dance move was most likely a decision based on business and made by her father as manager, her handlers, and Disney, thus positioning Cyrus as not an agent and therefore not a contributor to her own sexualization:

You guys are all dumb she doesn’t do her own choreography so she was told to use that pole she wasnt pole dancing just for the hell of it. and she probably had that wardrobe chosen for her 2. Idiots. (Y1)

So the 150 adults that put on the show had nothing to do with what she did. The director didn't know they needed a portable pole to be wheeled out. You guys really need to grow up. Yes she is young and all the adults around her are pushing the sex. (E1)

Her parents have let her get out of hand. Truly sad. (E1)

She dosen’t wanna dress like this im sure they just lay out the outfit for her and if she dosen’t do it they get mad. being a star isnt that good im pretty sure if miley could go back she would have lived a normal life. (E1)

These comments and others like them reference the orchestration and marketing involved in the creation and maintenance of a star and brand like Cyrus. The discourse positions her as a pawn and places her performance in a larger context of capitalist economic forces of Disney into which her parents buy as a result of greed. Specifically, some comments referenced the exploitation of her sexuality by others for material gain. Another set of comments revealed a discourse that avoided analysis of sexuality in the act, or that Cyrus’s sexuality was not an inherent aspect of the performance. These comments invoked a repertoire of Cyrus’s innocence:

Even though i havent met miley i know she would never do such a thing (E3)

It is just dancing and nothing more. (N1)

I think that labeling this as a “pole dance” is an exaggeration and an attempt at getting people more worked up then they really should be. (N1)

Miley you are awesome and you rock forget about all the haters. you were doing a job which was not pole dancing. (E1)

These comments were largely protective of Cyrus and reflected a criticism of a culture that is not inherently sexualized but one that intentionally sexualizes otherwise innocent acts such as Cyrus’s performance. Here, Cyrus was positioned at times as innocent of the intention to portray herself as sexual or of being sexual herself. At other times she was positioned as a sexual agent who was ‘just dancing’ and not intending to be provocative.

Another discourse emerged that granted Cyrus more agency with regards to the performance. Within this discourse, important adults in her life held some responsibility for it, but Cyrus was ultimately the one who chose this act and is old enough to ‘know better’:

I'd understand if she was 20 or older for that to be okay, but it's not at her age. I feel that she made a very bad choice here. (N1)

With all the poor decisions she's been making, clearly the parents gained a spot on her payroll and lost all parental objectivity and authority. (E2)

She’s only 16 and for her father to be ok with her parading around that way is such a shame. They are both just after headlines and money. (P3)

Rather than blaming adults around her alone, these comments also blame Cyrus for self-sexualizing at too young of an age and in some cases for using her sexuality for secondary gains. The position here is not that the self-sexualization is in itself the problem but rather Cyrus’s choice to do so at the wrong age or for the wrong reasons. Within this same discourse, Cyrus was alternatively positioned as an independent agent with regard to the dance and portrayed it in a positive light:

Miley is living her life. She is living her life of stardom. She has a sense of style. She can shake her hips when she wants. (E2)

she needs to have a new adult image to be successful in life. so … RIGHT ON MILEY! (E3)

These comments draw on a discourse of empowerment about Cyrus as an adolescent and as a celebrity, giving Cyrus credit for her choice to grow up and be successful, and also constructing growing up not only as making one’s own choices but as showing one’s sexuality. As one, commenter puts it, ‘i think shes just growing up and wants to be seen like one’ (T3). In this comment, being seen as a grown-up means being seen as sexual.

Prevailing discourse about adolescence is that it is both a time of transition and a time of rebellion. If Cyrus is rebelling, then she is in need of parents to rein her in, and ‘give her good boundaries.’ Thus Cyrus, like many adolescents, was positioned as in need of parents to protect her from herself. This discourse constructs adolescence as a period of transition that gives adolescents time to make mistakes and develop autonomy as well as responsibility; however, it also constructs adolescents as neo-liberal, choosing subjects decontextualized from the industries and mainstream media that shape their choices and undermines their autonomy.

To summarize, this set of discourses focused on the power of those around Cyrus who packaged her as a commodity, including her parents, Disney, and her handlers, and how they relate to her own agency. Importantly, these discourses tended to appear in the context of a discussion or conversation between commmenters that in many ways reflected the three interpretations of sexualization identified by Gill (2009) as they related to Cyrus’s performance: (a) that it reflects a culture that is morally corrupt and over-sexualized, (b) that is reflects a culture that is progressive, and (c) that it reflects sexual objectification as empowerment. These three interpretations often appeared in alternation, and the interpretive repertoires and subject positions invoked within the comments must be understood within the context of the other repertoires and positions found in other comments. Some of the comments describe these influences in a way that points to Cyrus’s innocence as a child, some point to her as a celebrity who colludes with these marketing strategies, and some draw on discourses of adolescence and rebellion.

There was another set of responses that seemed to depend less on figuring out to what extent Cyrus was to blame and more on what has become of society lately. These responses, discussed below, do include comments on Cyrus’s agency and responsibility, but these occur in the context of a broader discussion regarding US society and its attitudes towards sex, sexuality, and teens. In this way, these comments reflect a generalized representation of the interpretations of sexualization identified by Gill (2009) and described above.

Agency, society, and sex

A range of comments focused on Cyrus as a symbol of broader cultural trends, not specifically on Cyrus and her status as a child, adolescent, or adult, but on society at large. In one discourse, Cyrus’s dance reflected a repressed society while in another the dance represented a culture of sexualization. These comments were positioned at a greater distance from the event, focusing on ‘us’ rather than Cyrus and her handlers, and the reaction to the performance rather than the performance itself.

First, comments reflected a discourse of liberality and sex positivity and also criticism of the competing discourse of conservatism:

I read these comments and begin to think there are a lot of repressed preachers on the loose that think everyone should think the way they do. (N1)

C’mon, are we all so innocent ourselves that we’re commenting on this … Yeah if I squint my eyes really good I think I can see her “provocative” gyrations … everyone’s a critic from behind the keyboard! (P1)

In the reverse scenario, some comments evoked a discourse that portrayed Cyrus’s self-sexualization or her handlers’sexualization of her as a sad outcome of the culture of sexualization, with celebrity self-sexualization representing a heightened version of such:

We live in a culture where Madonna long ago made it acceptable to equate growing up with tarting up. (N2)

They are trying to sexualize girls younger and younger in this country... It’s all about making money they don’t care about your kids or the kids on Nick/Disney. (P1)

The affective tone of these comments ranges from sadness – the world is going to hell in a hand basket – to outrage. While few provide examples of how growing up too fast is harmful, the underlying message is that ‘this country’ has a problem and it is harming girls. These comments represent a kind of conversation between two positions that reflect a pervasive dichotomy with regard to sexuality. This dichotomy appears in politically or socially conservative versus liberal positions, the agency pendulum that Gill (2007a, 2007b) has identified, and even the pro-sex/anti-sex debate within feminism as well as more recent debates about adolescent agency (Bay-Cheng, 2011; Duits and van Zoonen, 2007; Gavey, 2011; Gill, 2007a, 2012: Lamb, 2010a; Lamb and Peterson, 2011; Peterson and Lamb, 2012). The continued conversation revolves around to what extent adolescents who believe they are empowered in their so-called self-sexualization are actually empowered, to what extent they are agents making choices or dupes of the media and marketers, and to what extent researchers need to trust the perspectives of girls on this subject.

Within this second discourse, Cyrus was positioned as a representation, or a discursive subject, of an inappropriate sexuality that is omnipresent:

Pre-pubescent girls shouldn't be getting ideas about exploiting their sexuality and putting it on display before they've even discovered it for themselves. (N3)

People today wonder why young teenage girls want to dress like strippers and sluts. The thanks for that desire goes to girls like Miley Cyrus. (N1)

This discourse also positioned her as having a social responsibility to other girls. The problem is girls today, and Cyrus contributes to it. Thus, Cyrus’s responsibility for the performance was viewed less in terms of its consequences for her career and more about how the performance contributes to cultural discourses of sexuality, and represents the societal tensions between agency and sexualization. While Cyrus was criticized for enacting a position that is irresponsible because of the sexuality it perpetuates or encourages in other girls or adolescents, the focus of this discourse is on the problem of adolescent female sexuality. By positioning Cyrus as having such power over girls, the discourse at the same time demoted girls to dupes whose celebrity worship leads them down problematic pathways to sexuality. Thus, even when Cyrus was given agency, the lack of agency in adolescent girls in general is supported through these comments.

Contextualizing the dance

One set of comments appeared to situate Cyrus in discourses about gender, race, and class as well as in controversies about such. One commenter suggested bias: ‘Certain celebs get villified for suggestive lyrics or dancing, while others are given a free pass’ (P1). Another quite explicitly named her sexualized performance as ‘ghetto’: ‘You can take Miley out of the ghetto, but you cannot take the ghetto out of Miley’ (N3). Others called it ‘trashy’: ‘I knew the performance would be trash the minute she stepped out of a trailer in the beginning’ (P2). The use of a word like ‘ghetto’ suggests she demeaned herself by acting lower class and ‘black’; the use of trashy suggests lower class, southern and white, conveying a different set of stereotypes. Similarly, comments about the South position her as a representative of Southern culture which is situated as lower class in much of this discourse and more generally in the US. Other discourses about the South (MacPherson, 2003) could have privileged her as a White ‘Southern belle’ or as a ‘lady’. Her ‘roots,’ conceptualized in this set of remarks in the Southern lower classes, were not only used to demean her as trashy, but were also discussed as a source of resilience against the Hollywood sexuality she was purportedly displaying: ‘I'm a fan but how do i even defend her on this she just needs a break from the famous life and go back to her roots cause she keeps falling’ (Y2). The word ‘falling’ evokes the Christian religious language of the South.

It seems important to also note that the phrase ‘white trash’ is typically used to describe girls, often Southern girls, but perhaps not boys, who might be called ‘rednecks’ instead (Bettie, 2000). Within white American culture, this may work similarly to the word ‘slut,’ which is used to police girls in high schools and middle schools into a presumed more innocent and less sexual behavior (Brown, 2004; Tanenbaum, 1999), although slut a does not typically intersect with race and class. A discourse of caution gave ample warnings to Cyrus with regard to walking the line between sexy and slutty:

A self-respecting girl knows the difference between looking good and looking like a slut (and they don’t want to look the latter, because they might begin carrying the reputation as one). … Sex appeal is fine, but when you hold on to a pole, get down low so a quarter of the audience can see up your skirt, thats not right, not if you are trying to put yourself out as a real performer (over a ‘performer’ in a strip club). (E3)

Cyrus herself, in news reports after the performance (which of course may not be from Cyrus herself at all), attempted to position herself as a Southern lower class girl who owns these identities. The news story reports her saying ‘I'm like,‘This is to represent where I am from. I'm so proud of it.’ … It's about my roots’ (Carroll, 2009), and thereby creates a Cyrus who is proud of where she came from, even patriotic. Rather than seeing her as a rebellious sexualized teen, she is a rebellious representative of working or lower class Southern girls who will not be put down by ‘snobbish’ Northerners. Cyrus is proud of her success as a Southerner. Her embrace of her Southern roots can be read as her legitimization of her social position as a rich white girl who is thus protected from being condemned as ‘trailer trash’ (Attwood, 2006; Hartigan, 1997).

This turn also undermined the focus on Disney or her parents promoting her sexualized image, in that ‘down home’ contrasts to Hollywood and returns ownership to Cyrus herself. If she is just a Southern girl, audiences are thrown off the track of her Hollywood-earned millions. She is not rich and privileged, but one of the people. However, not everyone can reclaim ‘slut’ or evoke ‘white trash’ and not be damaged by such performances. As pole dancing in gyms permits middle class white women to perform a sexual dance for fitness’s sake (Whitehead and Kurz, 2009), Cyrus’s whiteness and richness (and, although not included in the discourses, her, able-bodiedness) permit her to perform white trash without risk of damage to her reputation. Her ‘trailer’ performance was met with critique by some commenters:

It’s kind of demeaning the way she’s acting like coming out of a trailer is soo radical and she’s making some kind of statement. A lot of the United State’s population actually live in trailers and she needs to stop exoticizing it and putting it on display as if it’s something wierd. (E2)

Others seemed to buy into the idea that she was proud of her roots:

Miley stated that she thought her performance was ‘funny’ and it was showing she was proud of where she came from. Nothing wrong with that, I’m proud of my Louisiana roots, but it seems insulting and degrading when she comes out of a trailer, acting like trailer trash. (E2).

This commenter positions herself as a defender of the South and still critical of Cyrus, thus opening up the possibility for other commenters that one is not disloyal if one critiques the sexualizing aspect of the dance.

The slut (in some comments rewritten as ‘trash’) discussion deserves further mention. One of the feminist issues with regard to the debate on sexualization is how and in what manner adolescent girls can express their sexuality without it being dubbed sexualization or self-sexualization (Lamb, 2010a; Lamb and Peterson, 2011). To this end, many commenters did not buy into characterizing Cyrus as slutty and remarked that Cyrus is an adolescent and that adolescents are supposed to be developing sexually. They framed Cyrus’s act as an example of developing sexuality rather than promiscuity, thus reinforcing the idea that an adolescent can get ‘too slutty,’ but that this wasn’t the case with Cyrus’s dance:

So you people are saying that ANYONE that does pole dancing is a slut. You all are wrong … Relax and focus on things that matter. (Y2)

People who think this is stripping should actually go to a strip club. I've never seen a dancer do that! It also needs to be said that being 16 years old makes Miley older than a ‘little girl’ and legally capable of actually *gasp* having sex in most states. (N1)

You people r over doin it. Come on at least she's not a 13 year old pregnant girl. (E2)

Many of these comments reflect a ‘get with it’ attitude and convey the message that if commenters think Cyrus is pushing a boundary, they should gain perspective by comparing her to others.

Others countered by questioning the appropriate level of sexual expression for developing teenagers and, as noted earlier in the last section, decried the sexualization of society:

She’s really fucking up her reputation she knows girls look up to her. Shes humped thing, kissed things, and even had sex already. this isnt rite of her. (Y3)

Why is she in such a hurry to be an adult. She should be a normal 17 year old and not putting on an image for the teen-agers of a girl going downhill at a rapid pace. (E2)

This is indeed a confusing concern in current sexualization research, including the American Psychological Association Task Force Report on the Sexualization of Girls (American Psychological Association, 2007). Some argued that there does exist a positive sexuality for adolescence that is less of a performance of sexiness and more about experiencing oneself as an embodied sexual person in relation to another (Tolman, 2002, 2012). Others posited that a performance of being sexy is not always regressive: that presenting one’s body for viewing is part of wanting to look sexy and is not only objectifying (Peterson, 2010).

The discourse around Cyrus’s exhibition of her sexuality is similar to this conflict within feminism, exemplified by these two comments:

Empowering women, which is a goal of true feminism, is about allowing every women to choose the life she wants, and to not be told what to do by a man or group of men in power. Want to be a stripper? President? doctor? etc? You have the right to do so. … I think it's fine for Miley to dress that way, too. She's putting on a show, she's onstage. (E2)

Mileys performance only proves one thing, as woman we haven’t come as far as we think we have. There's a difference between being secure in our sexuality as a woman and just being trashy and sleezy. As per usual, Miley, along with the majority of famous female stars, are proving that a woman can't be successful unless she's hanging out of her clothes, or dancing on a pole. (E2)

Within this discourse of teens growing up is the acknowledgement that in US culture, late adolescence is a time when adolescents are permitted or even encouraged to be sexual and that this is normative:

She's turning 17 this year and she's not a child anymore. (E1)

what miley does is not being a slut, but its called being a teenager. (Y2)

These sets of comments reflect a discourse in feminism today, one that acknowledges that adolescents are sexual beings, but that appears to critique any form of expression of it (Lamb, 2010a; Lamb and Peterson, 2011). Because it has been so difficult for feminists to define a healthy sexuality for adolescent girls, they unwittingly, in the fight against sexualization, may be supporting the age-old discourse that names sexualized adolescents as sluts.

Conclusion

The analysis of online comments regarding Cyrus’s performance yielded three dominant themes. Each theme, in turn, captured discourses commenters used that positioned Cyrus as more or less agentic, as a product of several varying cultures, and which described problems of sexualization in society at large. One extremely interesting aspect of these 400+ comments was the way very few claimed that her pole-dance might be seen as a sexualized dance for men. As even the discourse that positioned her as branding herself as an adult did not reference men, a gendered analysis was largely absent in the commentaries. What does it mean that the gender/power dimension of that act was left undebated? It speaks to Bartky’s (1990) idea that while objectification must have begun with acts performed to please men, the internalization of the male gaze and the self-scrutiny that follows obscures who has the power and what kind of power that is. Women begin to see self-objectification as a form of pleasing themselves (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997). If the world can judge Cyrus as slut or not slut without ever mentioning male viewers, then the male gaze is internalized. At the very least it is notable that this media firestorm centered around gendered comments about a young woman. No male equivalent would have likely garnered as much attention. What’s also interesting is that without an examination of the sexism inherent in this view, the anti-sexualization arguments are more likely to sound like arguments about sex, and thus evoke counter-arguments about conservative sexuality. The original point about objectification, that it maintains and enhances an unequal status between men and women that correlates to other inequalities, is lost, and sexualization gets reduced to an argument about ‘too sexy too soon’ rather than too sexy for whom. Clearly the comments are greatly influenced by gender perceptions, and these comments are not about sexualization in a non-gendered sense.

Miley Cyrus’s pole dance commenters reproduce a superficial public discourse about sex leaving aspects of male power, race, and class unexplored. The discourse produced centers on what sex is appropriate and what sex is ‘shameful.’ Indeed, the words ‘shame on you’ appeared frequently and were directed towards a myriad of people – Cyrus, her father, Disney, and other commenters. When such discussions appear outside of discussions of inequalities and oppression, they reproduce an old debate about sexual freedom and one concerned with shaming.

It has been several years since Cyrus’s dance at the awards ceremony and her career has certainly survived the controversy around this act if not flourished because of it. Some celebrities are able to move in and out of spaces that are controversial and, in this case, to walk the line between adolescence and adulthood, innocence and sluttiness, and poor Southerner and rich Hollywood star. The discourse around adolescent female agency, empowerment, choice, and voice continue in the problematic ways Gill (2008) initially described. Still, it is heartening to hear an interpretive repertoire that focuses on the manufacturing of image and sexuality, even if at the same time very old positions regarding shame and female sexuality continue with no reference to patriarchy and male power.

Footnotes

Author Biographies

Sharon Lamb is a Professor and chair in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her current work is in the areas of adolescent female sexuality, sexualization of girls, and sex education as moral education.

Kelly Graling is a doctoral candidate in the Clinical Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Emily E Wheeler is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

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