Feminism & Psychology Choice Awards pole dance s Teen ' 'Pole-arized' discourse: An analysis of...

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DOI: 10.1177/0959353512472482 2013 23: 163 originally published online 10 January 2013Feminism & Psychology

Sharon Lamb, Kelly Graling and Emily E WheelerChoice Awards pole dance

s Teen''Pole-arized' discourse: An analysis of responses to Miley Cyrus

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eminism&

sychologyFP

Article

‘Pole-arized’ discourse: Ananalysis of responses toMiley Cyrus’s Teen ChoiceAwards pole dance

Sharon Lamb, Kelly Graling andEmily E WheelerUniversity of Massachusetts, USA

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 exam-

ination 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 Awardsof 2009 in which, during a live musical performance, Miley Cyrus performed adance move that reporters likened to a stripper’s ‘pole dance.’ We examined onlineresponses to this event in order to explore public sentiments in light of celebrityculture, the sexualization of childhood and culture, and adolescent sexuality. In thispaper, we review the context in which this act is controversial and also discussrelevant theories about sexualization. We present the themes that we found in a

Corresponding author:

Sharon Lamb, Department of Counseling and School Psychology, University of Massachusetts, 100 Morrissey

Blvd, Boston, MA 02125, USA.

Email: [email protected]

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qualitative analysis and go on to analyze several ideological themes that ranthrough the online discussions in terms of how they relate to current constructionsof adolescent sexuality. The first theme is about agency and to what extent ado-lescents, celebrities, and girls have choice with regard to how they represent them-selves sexually. The contributors to this thread also focus on who is to blame forthe choices girls make. We also examine narratives of girlhood innocence thatintersect with ideas about race, gender, and class. A second theme relating tofemale agency and choice is one that connects choice and power specifically toCyrus as an adolescent, and we explore public sentiment with regard to the mor-ality of sexual acts in adolescence. We analyze these themes in terms of the inter-pretive repertoires available to the general public with regard to celebrities andsexualization, and explore a missing discourse that would recognize the perform-ance as a performance aimed at boys and men. Finally, we make some suggestionswith regard to why this discourse might be missing.

Context

In 2009, Miley Cyrus was a US ‘superstar’ who was the center of a multi-milliondollar enterprise that went far beyond her Disney television show, HannahMontana, in which she portrayed a teen who is a ‘normal’ high school girlduring the day and a ‘rock star’ at night. The popularity of this show enabledCyrus to launch a concert career and sell CDs, t-shirts, posters, themed productslike school supplies, and a variety of products bought by children and especiallypre-adolescent girls. Cyrus gained notoriety in her mid-teens via highly publicized,sexually provocative photographs featured in Vanity Fair. These photographs wereshot by noted photographer Annie Leibowitz, and were criticized for featuringCyrus wrapped in a bed sheet (ostensibly nude underneath). It has been notedthat for many child stars, a career move or rebranding occurs around the age of17 or 18 and that this transition involves an attempt to gain an adult male audiencethrough sexualizing the star (Lamb and Brown, 2006); these photos could be readas Cyrus’s own rebranding. The press responded and a public discussion ensued innewspapers, magazines, and online spaces regarding the question of whether shewas too young to be/act sexy, whether she was being exploited by her father/man-ager, Billy-Ray Cyrus, a country western music celebrity in his own right, whethershe was old enough to make her own choices in these matters, and whether she wasacting as a poor role model for her young fans. The conversation that ensuedloosely followed the lines of the moral panics around sexualization described byLumby and Funnell (2011), a panic that reifies girlhood innocence and suggeststhat sexuality for girls, in and of itself, is dangerous.

The research presented in this paper is about another incident that attractedsignificant media attention to Cyrus: her performance at the 2009 Teen ChoiceAwards. The Teen Choice Awards show, established in the USA in 1999, servesas a venue to promote the shows and stars that teens and younger consumerswatch. The awards, antics, and jokes are aimed at both a pre-teen and teenagedaudience. In the 2009 awards show, Cyrus performed her then new song, ‘Party in

164 Feminism & Psychology 23(2)




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 apassing ice cream cart fitted with a barbershop-like striped pole. While singing anddancing atop the ice cream cart she dipped, spreading her legs apart as she des-cended. This was the ‘money shot’ that appeared in news stories around the worldannouncing that Cyrus did a ‘pole dance.’ (The performance can be viewed onYouTube.) A Salon magazine article noted that within 2 to 3 days there were over2,750,000 Google entries for ‘Miley Cyrus+pole’ and over 1300 articles written onthe subject (Williams, 2009). The Los Angeles Times criticized her for going ‘too farand too low’ and Fox News tellingly headlined, ‘Miley Cyrus Gets Raunchy with aPole at the Teen Choice Awards, Wins Six Trophies,’ insinuating perhaps that thesecond 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 cleanstar Miley Cyrus debuted a more adult image with a racy performance in hot pantson a stripper pole!’ (Fox News, 2010).

Cyrus and her promoters responded by arguing that she was ‘spoofing’ herTennessee 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’sa blinged-out trailer park.’ She went on to say her father and others planned thenumber 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 aswell as the sexualization of adolescent celebrities. Sexualization is a word that hasrecently replaced objectification in feminist discourse, and refers not only tomaking women into objects for male viewing and the valuing of women primarilyfor their attractiveness and sexuality, but also the tendency to sexualize aspects of aperson or an event that are not inherently sexual and to represent children andadolescents in increasingly sexual ways (American Psychological Association,2007). Gill (2007a: 151) describes sexualization as ‘the extraordinary proliferationof discourses about sex and sexuality across all media forms . . . as well the increas-ingly frequent erotic presentation of girls’, women’s and (to a lesser extent) men’sbodies in public spaces.’ In this paper, we are interested in the latter aspect of bothof these definitions.

This sexualization is purported to take place not only in the realm of everydaylife of media viewing and consuming for girls, but also in celebrity culture, wherefemale celebrities (and also athletes) are presented in heightened sexual form,having in many ways replaced fashion models in advertisements in all media dueto their recognizability and preexisting narratives that can better sell products(Liaing, 2011; Shinkle, 2008; Shugart, 2003). McRobbie (2004: 258–259) arguesthat the media has become a dominant force in defining sexual norms in a waythat ‘casts judgment and establishes the rules of play,’ and that frequently deni-grates 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

Lamb et al. 165




to ‘harness’ a post-feminist, agentic sexuality (Attwood, 2005; Evans et al., 2010;Gill, 2007b). In general, these media representations of sexuality and the offshootsof these representations (e.g. products) are more explicit, more commonplace, anda 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 tonorms 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 pointsmore directly to the sexual aspects of objectification. Unlike self-objectification,which suggests a passivity that is connected to older versions of female sexual-ity, self-sexualization describes a neo-liberal subject who is a more ‘active, confi-dent and autoerotic’ (Evans et al., 2010: 115) sexual person in a presumedpostfeminist world. Coy and Garner (2010) write about the discourse of empower-ment via self-sexualization that is promoted through media and celebrity worship,a discourse that young female fans are exposed to and subsequently emulate. Thisdiscourse 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 somefeminist scholars. In her analysis of media representations of female sexualagency, Gill (2008) argues that in one sense, the shift to representations ofempowerment of young women is positive in so far as it represents them asagents, but that these representations must also be read and experienced byyounger women as a ‘new kind of tyranny, an obligation to be sexual in a highlyspecific kind of way’ (p. 53). Girls who mimic these kinds of performances thatsuggest empowerment may indeed feel more empowered (Lamb, 2010a, 2010b;Lamb and Peterson, 2011). And because of this, girls may buy into a discoursethat describes them as reclaiming a femininity or sexuality that feminists have takenfrom them (McRobbie, 2008). However, as Gill (2007a, 2008) argues, there is analmost compulsory expectation that one sexualize oneself by embodying a fearless,‘empowered,’ sexuality that is generally limited to those who are White, heterosex-ual, affluent, and able-bodied (Gill, 2007a, 2008). In response, Duits and vanZoonen (2007) argue that this interpretation represents girls as cultural dupeswhose constricted choices are held in contrast to the presumed free choices ofmen. Within both postfeminist and some third-wave frameworks, empowermentderives from choosing to be sexy, no matter how stereotypical that sexiness mightbe, 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 aspart of today’s sexual toolkit for young women. Initially a dance that was and stillis performed by nude dancers and strippers, pole-dancing has gained popularappeal throughout the west, through classes offered at gyms as a way for womento 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 theUK about a ‘Peekaboo Pole Dancing’ kit that appeared on the toy section ofretailer 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 alsoin its more recent, more apparently agentic form.

Another concern about the sexualization of culture centers on the sexualizationof childhood. Lumby and Albury (2008: 9) write that in public debate, child sexu-alization 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 sosexualized, and commodification of sexuality so rampant, that it spills downwardsto younger and younger children who are not only commodified and sexualized butgiven the tools to self-sexualize at too young an age (American PsychologicalAssociation, 2007; Durham, 2011; Levin and Kilbourne, 2008; Rush andLa Nauze, 2006).

Debates regarding the sexualization of children focus less on the agency of thechild (because the younger the child, the greater the assumption that they exerciselittle choice) and more on the notion of childhood innocence. Giroux (2009) notesin 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, pureworld that is untainted by the cultural influences of adults and broader societyaround them. However, the culture is much more unclear in its definition of whenthis childhood innocence ends and the presumed agency of self-sexualizationof adulthood begins. This cultural tension is clearly captured in the dialogue sur-rounding Miley Cyrus at the Teen Choice Awards.

This study

Guided by feminist and sexualization theories, we examined public online senti-ment about Cyrus’s dance for the purpose of looking at how the discourse capturesconcerns about adolescents. Feminist theory guided our application of discourseanalysis to naturally occurring conversations in online sites (Hepburn and Wiggins,2005). We also used Wetherell and Potter’s (1988) conception of ‘interpretive rep-ertoires’ as culturally-situated, limited units of language that are available for useacross individuals and ‘provided for them by history’ (p. 190, Wetherell et al.,2001). We examine these discourses in a way that acknowledges the paradox thatpeople are both products and producers of discourse (Billig, 1991) and that dis-cursive strategies position subjects within a conversation and a historical context.We sought to identify the interpretive repertoires used by commenters in onlineconversations. We also explored the various subject positions undertaken by fansand detractors with the understanding that subject positions are not exclusivelydrawn from discourses, although influenced by them, but that they are themselvesconstructed (Wetherell, 1998). From a feminist perspective, we use theories about

Lamb et al. 167




sexualization to explore the relationship of power and agency to women’s positionsas sexual beings that enact certain discourses, and we focus on discourses of inno-cence that are set against those of power and agency. Gill (2009) also advises anexamination of the intersectionality of sexualization, which means understandingsocial positions such as gender, race, class, intrapsychic, and economic positions inrelation to one another. Thus we read the fan texts about the pole dance (or dip) inways that understand not only that Cyrus is young and female, but that she iswhite, a millionaire, famous, and a real person with some agency in the world.

Although some comments reflected the position that this performance was notan attempt at pole-dancing, for the purposes of our research we wished to inter-rogate responses that likened her dance to a stripper’s as well as those that arguedagainst this reading. We begin from a feminist perspective that would argue thatCyrus’s dance move did in fact resemble a pole dance; however, we also acknow-ledge that this is a discursive position that influences our reading and analysis ofthe comments about Cyrus online. We do not claim that this is the one true inter-pretation of this act and in the analysis that follows explore many repertoires thatwork to construct agency or innocence independent of whether Cyrus’s act wasindeed a pole dance. From a feminist and discourse analytic perspective, there is noone true interpretation, but those who conduct the research and analyses must alsoown the positions from which they enter the analysis (Willig, 2008).

In keeping with Wetherell’s (1998) conceptualization of subject positions as theyrelate to interpretive repertoires, we suggest that the responses analyzed belowcapture the myriad subject positions found within different discourses, the mean-ings of which are continually negotiated and are thus often contradictory. As Gill(2009) notes, the media are locations where both the representations of femalesexuality can exist alongside analyses and criticisms of them. If we take seriouslythe analysis of commenters, we can see a variety of broad themes and anxietiesabout adolescent sexuality that move beyond simple negative responses to thedance to explore concepts of agency and innocence within the contexts of celebrityculture, Disney culture, and Southern US ‘white trash’ culture.

Tyler (2008: 18) writes that at ‘different historical and cultural moments specificbodies become over determined and are publicly imagined (are figured) in exces-sive, distorted, and caricatured ways’ that are ‘expressive of an underlying crisis oranxiety.’ With adolescent celebrities, the commodification of innocence meets thesexualization of culture. Adolescents are in a liminal space between childhood andadulthood, and presumably between innocence and sexuality. The dichotomizationof these constructs leaves little space for transition and creates tension due to thelack of any shared understanding of who should be what when. We sought toexplore how the public response to Cyrus’s dance captures this tension, using herpersona as a platform.

Method

Website pages that contained reader comments were identified throughGoogle.com searches (performed Feb 13, 2011). Specifically, we sought website





articles and blog posts that reported on Cyrus’s Teen Choice Awards performancewithin three weeks of the event. We also restricted the search to articles and poststhat focused on this event and the public reaction to it in particular. The searchterms ‘Miley Cyrus,’ ‘pole dance,’ and ‘comment’ were entered. Additional searchterms 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 ourcriteria were selected. We attempted to target sites with different readerships inorder to gather a more rounded representation of the potentially varied opinions ofthese groups. In particular, we felt that the content and reader experience of the sitemay have influenced commentary in some ways and that particular discourses mayappear more readily on some sites rather than others. While we acknowledge thattargeting websites rather than other sources does limit the sample to those whohave access to and interest in the internet, we also believe that websites offer a kindof freedom of expression that may be inhibited in other forums. That said, Internetresearch entails some unique ethical concerns (see e.g. Heilferty, 2011), particularlyaround boundaries of public and private space. The comments included in thisanalysis were taken from open-access sites where commenter pseudonyms wereused; commenters are further de-identified by not using their pseudonyms in thispaper.

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 inclusioncriteria were met. Site pages were excluded if there was no forum for readers toleave comments. Opinion pieces and blogs were also excluded from the mainstreamnews category. In addition, the website Youtube.com was searched for videos ofthe performance using the search terms ‘Miley Cyrus’ and ‘pole dance.’ The com-ments from the three videos with the highest number of views were included in theanalysis.

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 commentposted. The authors agreed by consensus that the 50 comment limit allowedenough space for a potential dialogue and diversity of commenters without somuch temporal distance from the event that the commentary strayed from theevent 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 donot provide enough content to be interpreted and categorized).

Analysis followed two paths. First inductive thematic analysis guided develop-ment of themes and subthemes (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Two authors independ-ently developed a list of themes that they decided were representative of importantfeatures in the 439 comments, informed by feminist theory on sexualization as wellas the literature on celebrities and sexualization and the issues of age and agencytherein. The authors then merged these two sets of themes into dominant themes byconsensus and categorized the comments accordingly. Initially 15 separate thematic

Lamb et al. 169




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.





categories were agreed upon and defined; categorized comments were re-read anddiscussed by the three authors in order to refine the categories into three majorthemes: childhood innocence and adult agency; agency, society, and sex; and con-textualization of the performance.

Discourse analytic procedures as outlined in Willig (2008) and suggested inPotter and Wetherell (1994) were then used as the basis for an attempt to under-stand the coded texts as competing discourses and interpretive repertoires availablewith 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 oras an opportunity for creating multiple meanings’ (Durrheim, 1997: 181), and thatdiscourse works to construct social practice within specific contexts (Potter andWetherell, 1994), the three authors proposed to each other and then agreed uponavailable overarching positions that represented interpretive repertoires used bycommenters 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 regardto agency, comments positioned Cyrus in ways that conferred varying degrees of it,often using her age a gauge for measurement. When positioning her with lessagency, comments reflected Cyrus as a child, as handled by Disney, as handledby her father, and as a product of a growingly sexualized culture. In contrast, othercomments positioned her as an independent agent, responsible for choices thatcould either be empowering or problematic. These subject positions suggestedmore and less agency and linked blame for the act accordingly. Below we take acloser look at these positions in turn.

Before analyzing the comments of others, we wanted to note that the theme ofchildhood innocence runs through most discussions about the sexualization of girlsand 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 icecream cart might have been a way to contextualize the pole dance in a set thatpositioned her as a kid just having fun rather than a sexual woman dancing toattract male attention. In this way, the ice cream cart references the innocence ofchildhood, 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 ofthe ice cream cart in a dance set that involved arguably pornographic moves is anexample of such a juxtaposition. This decontextualization may in fact be motivatedby what Giroux (2009) characterizes as adults’ desire to simplify childhood via therefusal to acknowledge the existence of something as complicated as sexualitywithin its innocence, such that they may avoid responsibility for it. This discourseof innocence, Giroux writes, allows the cultural valuing of protecting children’sinnocence to exist alongside their sexualization and commodification. Commentsthat grapple with Cyrus’s sexualization hint at this uneasy coexistence.

Lamb et al. 171




The first repertoire identified in the analysis positioned Cyrus as naı̈ve, innocent,and dependent and depicted her performance as the machination of adults who aregreedy and crass rather than looking out for her interests as a child. Comments thatreflected this interpretive repertoire remarked that her dance move was most likelya decision based on business and made by her father as manager, her handlers, andDisney, thus positioning Cyrus as not an agent and therefore not a contributor toher 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 marketinginvolved in the creation and maintenance of a star and brand like Cyrus. Thediscourse positions her as a pawn and places her performance in a larger contextof capitalist economic forces of Disney into which her parents buy as a result ofgreed. Specifically, some comments referenced the exploitation of her sexuality byothers for material gain. Another set of comments revealed a discourse thatavoided analysis of sexuality in the act, or that Cyrus’s sexuality was not an inher-ent aspect of the performance. These comments invoked a repertoire of Cyrus’sinnocence:

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 aculture that is not inherently sexualized but one that intentionally sexualizes





otherwise innocent acts such as Cyrus’s performance. Here, Cyrus was positionedat times as innocent of the intention to portray herself as sexual or of being sexualherself. 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 theperformance. Within this discourse, important adults in her life held some respon-sibility for it, but Cyrus was ultimately the one who chose this act and is old enoughto ‘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 Cyrusfor self-sexualizing at too young of an age and in some cases for using her sexualityfor secondary gains. The position here is not that the self-sexualization is in itselfthe problem but rather Cyrus’s choice to do so at the wrong age or for the wrongreasons. Within this same discourse, Cyrus was alternatively positioned as an inde-pendent 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 ado-lescent and as a celebrity, giving Cyrus credit for her choice to grow up and besuccessful, and also constructing growing up not only as making one’s own choicesbut as showing one’s sexuality. As one, commenter puts it, ‘i think shes just grow-ing 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 anda 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 positionedas in need of parents to protect her from herself. This discourse constructs adoles-cence as a period of transition that gives adolescents time to make mistakes anddevelop autonomy as well as responsibility; however, it also constructs adolescentsas neo-liberal, choosing subjects decontextualized from the industries and main-stream media that shape their choices and undermines their autonomy.

Lamb et al. 173




To summarize, this set of discourses focused on the power of those aroundCyrus who packaged her as a commodity, including her parents, Disney, and herhandlers, and how they relate to her own agency. Importantly, these discoursestended to appear in the context of a discussion or conversation between comm-menters that in many ways reflected the three interpretations of sexualizationidentified by Gill (2009) as they related to Cyrus’s performance: (a) that itreflects a culture that is morally corrupt and over-sexualized, (b) that is reflects aculture that is progressive, and (c) that it reflects sexual objectification as empower-ment. These three interpretations often appeared in alternation, and the interpret-ive repertoires and subject positions invoked within the comments must beunderstood within the context of the other repertoires and positions found inother comments. Some of the comments describe these influences in a way thatpoints to Cyrus’s innocence as a child, some point to her as a celebrity who colludeswith these marketing strategies, and some draw on discourses of adolescence andrebellion.

There was another set of responses that seemed to depend less on figuring out towhat 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 andresponsibility, but these occur in the context of a broader discussion regardingUS society and its attitudes towards sex, sexuality, and teens. In this way, thesecomments reflect a generalized representation of the interpretations of sexualiza-tion 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, notspecifically on Cyrus and her status as a child, adolescent, or adult, but on societyat large. In one discourse, Cyrus’s dance reflected a repressed society while inanother the dance represented a culture of sexualization. These comments werepositioned at a greater distance from the event, focusing on ‘us’ rather than Cyrusand her handlers, and the reaction to the performance rather than the performanceitself.

First, comments reflected a discourse of liberality and sex positivity and alsocriticism 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 portrayedCyrus’s self-sexualization or her handlers’sexualization of her as a sad outcome





of the culture of sexualization, with celebrity self-sexualization representing aheightened 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 tohell in a hand basket – to outrage. While few provide examples of how growing uptoo fast is harmful, the underlying message is that ‘this country’ has a problem andit is harming girls. These comments represent a kind of conversation between twopositions that reflect a pervasive dichotomy with regard to sexuality. This dichot-omy appears in politically or socially conservative versus liberal positions, theagency pendulum that Gill (2007a, 2007b) has identified, and even the pro-sex/anti-sex debate within feminism as well as more recent debates about adolescentagency (Bay-Cheng, 2011; Duits and van Zoonen, 2007; Gavey, 2011; Gill, 2007a,2012: Lamb, 2010a; Lamb and Peterson, 2011; Peterson and Lamb, 2012). Thecontinued conversation revolves around to what extent adolescents who believethey are empowered in their so-called self-sexualization are actually empowered, towhat 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 adiscursive 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 responsibilityfor the performance was viewed less in terms of its consequences for her career andmore about how the performance contributes to cultural discourses of sexuality,and represents the societal tensions between agency and sexualization. While Cyruswas criticized for enacting a position that is irresponsible because of the sexuality itperpetuates or encourages in other girls or adolescents, the focus of this discourse ison the problem of adolescent female sexuality. By positioning Cyrus as having suchpower over girls, the discourse at the same time demoted girls to dupes whosecelebrity worship leads them down problematic pathways to sexuality. Thus,even when Cyrus was given agency, the lack of agency in adolescent girls in generalis supported through these comments.

Lamb et al. 175




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 afree pass’ (P1). Another quite explicitly named her sexualized performance as‘ghetto’: ‘You can take Miley out of the ghetto, but you cannot take the ghettoout of Miley’ (N3). Others called it ‘trashy’: ‘I knew the performance would betrash the minute she stepped out of a trailer in the beginning’ (P2). The use of aword 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 setof stereotypes. Similarly, comments about the South position her as a representa-tive of Southern culture which is situated as lower class in much of this discourseand 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 notonly used to demean her as trashy, but were also discussed as a source of resilienceagainst the Hollywood sexuality she was purportedly displaying: ‘I’m a fan but howdo i even defend her on this she just needs a break from the famous life and go backto her roots cause she keeps falling’ (Y2). The word ‘falling’ evokes the Christianreligious language of the South.

It seems important to also note that the phrase ‘white trash’ is typically used todescribe girls, often Southern girls, but perhaps not boys, who might be called‘rednecks’ instead (Bettie, 2000). Within white American culture, this may worksimilarly to the word ‘slut,’ which is used to police girls in high schools and middleschools 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 theline 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 befrom Cyrus herself at all), attempted to position herself as a Southern lower classgirl who owns these identities. The news story reports her saying ‘I’m like,‘This is torepresent 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, evenpatriotic. Rather than seeing her as a rebellious sexualized teen, she is a rebelliousrepresentative of working or lower class Southern girls who will not be put downby ‘snobbish’ Northerners. Cyrus is proud of her success as a Southerner. Herembrace 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 ‘trailertrash’ (Attwood, 2006; Hartigan, 1997).

This turn also undermined the focus on Disney or her parents promoting hersexualized image, in that ‘down home’ contrasts to Hollywood and returns own-ership to Cyrus herself. If she is just a Southern girl, audiences are thrown off thetrack of her Hollywood-earned millions. She is not rich and privileged, but one ofthe people. However, not everyone can reclaim ‘slut’ or evoke ‘white trash’ and notbe damaged by such performances. As pole dancing in gyms permits middle classwhite 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 dis-courses, her, able-bodiedness) permit her to perform white trash without risk ofdamage to her reputation. Her ‘trailer’ performance was met with critique by somecommenters:

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 ofCyrus, thus opening up the possibility for other commenters that one is not disloyalif one critiques the sexualizing aspect of the dance.

The slut (in some comments rewritten as ‘trash’) discussion deserves furthermention. One of the feminist issues with regard to the debate on sexualization ishow and in what manner adolescent girls can express their sexuality without itbeing dubbed sexualization or self-sexualization (Lamb, 2010a; Lamb andPeterson, 2011). To this end, many commenters did not buy into characterizingCyrus as slutty and remarked that Cyrus is an adolescent and that adolescents aresupposed to be developing sexually. They framed Cyrus’s act as an example ofdeveloping sexuality rather than promiscuity, thus reinforcing the idea that anadolescent 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)

Lamb et al. 177




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 messagethat if commenters think Cyrus is pushing a boundary, they should gain perspectiveby comparing her to others.

Others countered by questioning the appropriate level of sexual expression fordeveloping teenagers and, as noted earlier in the last section, decried the sexual-ization 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, includingthe American Psychological Association Task Force Report on the Sexualization ofGirls (American Psychological Association, 2007). Some argued that there doesexist a positive sexuality for adolescence that is less of a performance of sexinessand more about experiencing oneself as an embodied sexual person in relation toanother (Tolman, 2002, 2012). Others posited that a performance of being sexy isnot always regressive: that presenting one’s body for viewing is part of wanting tolook sexy and is not only objectifying (Peterson, 2010).

The discourse around Cyrus’s exhibition of her sexuality is similar to this con-flict 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 hang-

ing out of her clothes, or dancing on a pole. (E2)

Within this discourse of teens growing up is the acknowledgement that in USculture, late adolescence is a time when adolescents are permitted or even encour-aged 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 acknow-ledges that adolescents are sexual beings, but that appears to critique any form ofexpression of it (Lamb, 2010a; Lamb and Peterson, 2011). Because it has been sodifficult for feminists to define a healthy sexuality for adolescent girls, they unwit-tingly, in the fight against sexualization, may be supporting the age-old discoursethat names sexualized adolescents as sluts.

Conclusion

The analysis of online comments regarding Cyrus’s performance yielded threedominant themes. Each theme, in turn, captured discourses commenters usedthat positioned Cyrus as more or less agentic, as a product of several varyingcultures, and which described problems of sexualization in society at large. Oneextremely interesting aspect of these 400+ comments was the way very few claimedthat her pole-dance might be seen as a sexualized dance for men. As even thediscourse that positioned her as branding herself as an adult did not referencemen, a gendered analysis was largely absent in the commentaries. What does itmean that the gender/power dimension of that act was left undebated? It speaks toBartky’s (1990) idea that while objectification must have begun with acts performedto please men, the internalization of the male gaze and the self-scrutiny that followsobscures who has the power and what kind of power that is. Women begin to seeself-objectification as a form of pleasing themselves (Fredrickson and Roberts,1997). If the world can judge Cyrus as slut or not slut without ever mentioningmale viewers, then the male gaze is internalized. At the very least it is notable thatthis media firestorm centered around gendered comments about a young woman.No male equivalent would have likely garnered as much attention. What’s alsointeresting is that without an examination of the sexism inherent in this view, theanti-sexualization arguments are more likely to sound like arguments about sex,and thus evoke counter-arguments about conservative sexuality. The original pointabout objectification, that it maintains and enhances an unequal status betweenmen and women that correlates to other inequalities, is lost, and sexualization getsreduced 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 com-ments are not about sexualization in a non-gendered sense.

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

It has been several years since Cyrus’s dance at the awards ceremony and hercareer has certainly survived the controversy around this act if not flourishedbecause of it. Some celebrities are able to move in and out of spaces that arecontroversial and, in this case, to walk the line between adolescence and adulthood,

Lamb et al. 179




innocence and sluttiness, and poor Southerner and rich Hollywood star. The dis-course around adolescent female agency, empowerment, choice, and voice continuein the problematic ways Gill (2008) initially described. Still, it is heartening to hearan interpretive repertoire that focuses on the manufacturing of image and sexuality,even if at the same time very old positions regarding shame and female sexualitycontinue with no reference to patriarchy and male power.

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Author Biographies

Sharon Lamb is a Professor and chair in the Department of Counseling and SchoolPsychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her current work is in theareas of adolescent female sexuality, sexualization of girls, and sex education asmoral education.

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

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

Lamb et al. 183




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