On Miley Cyrus, Open Letters, and Sinead O'Connor's Butthole

I wanted to comment on a couple of links a friend posted on Facebook to the Sinead O'Connor open letter to Miley Cyrus regarding her video for "Wrecking Ball", which continued on Miley's twitter responses, another open, angrier letter from Sinead, more tweets from Miley, and finally another open letter from Amanda Palmer to Sinead O'Connor commenting on the whole situation. I'm sure it has continued on beyond this point, as more minor celebrities try to jump on the opportunity for self-promotion, and professional commenters fill pages. Fortunately I am above all that, since my pageviews confirm nobody's actually reading this but Russian spammers.

For the benefit of my two friends who might read this, neither of whom is quick to follow pop-culture twitter controversy, here's a brief recap. Sinead O'Connor wrote an open letter to Miley Cyrus which I will paraphrase as, "Not to sound like your mom, but I watched your Wrecking Ball video, and please don't be such a whore," which prompted Miley's twitter response along the lines of, "Oh look, it's the crazy lady who tore up the pope's picture on SNL twenty years ago." And it went downhill from there, to lines like: "Unless you're not too busy getting your tits out." That last one I think is a direct quote. In print is it "tits" or "teats"? I think the late Robert Heinlen has me confused on that point.

A few questions ran through my head reading through everything, and the immediate comments afterwards, so I wasn't sure where to begin, but I suppose the fair thing to do is look at the point Sinead O'Connor was trying to make: don't be a whore. Don't dress like one, don't encourage young girls to do it either, but most of all, don't let men make money off of your body. This gets to a recurring theme of Sinead's comments, her belief that other people, specifically men, are telling Miley to do this. (Note: I thought about how formal to be with these women's names, whether Ms. O'Connor was preferable, whether Miley was too patronizing, and ultimately was swayed by the fact that Miley and Sinead just have such fun first names to say.) It was terribly important that Miley Cyrus not let these men take advantage of her, chew her up and spit her out like they do so many young women, because she's too talented. Personally, I would never question Sinead O'Connor's conviction from first-hand experience that the record industry is a bunch of exploitive jackasses who use the lure of fame to elicit the sexuality of young women. As part of this discussion, somebody just reminded me the casting couch has hardly been gathering dust.

This concern that Miley is being manipulated by others came to the forefront again in Sinead's follow-up letters. Expressing something akin to horror at Miley Cyrus's vapid attempts at a comeback, she asks repeatedly, "Who is advising you?" Initially I wasn't sure how much agency she was willing to ascribe to Miley in this whole situation, nor was I completely sure I understood what "ascribe" meant well enough to use it in a sentence. But young Miley does get the benefit of the doubt of youth, where she can own all her successes, and for all her missteps, well, someone should have talked her out of it. There are two problems with this, the first being that she would have to find an advisor who is both female and not in the record business (so going to dad is right out) since Sinead has assumed it's the men in her life who are advising Miley to push her sexuality. And given that we're talking about a couple of tweets that Sinead feels should have been written with or at least vetted by this trusted advisor, this requires a non-professional person who is available all the time. Usually that means family members, and that just makes me cringe since there are so many horror stories of young celebrities whose family are trying to run their careers or live off of them, I don't know who Sinead would have her turn to.

The image Sinead paints of Miley though is of a young girl who did not choose to sexualize herself (that was the prodding of the suits) and certainly should not be given unsupervised access to Twitter, but yet she has the agency to take her career in a different direction and be a role model for young girls? After all, this wasn't an open letter to Miley's handlers. Maybe it's not that much of a contradiction. But to question the quality of "advisors" was condescending. This is not Lebron James crafting a one-hour TV special with the advice of his buddies from Akron (there were many places where that train wreck could have been stopped), this was the immediate response of a 20-year old under attack, on Twitter of all places.

Which led to a whole series of defensive responses from Sinead O'Connor, who then invoked a lot of allies. If I understand correctly, Miley's responses amounted to, "I'm busy with SNL this week, which is where you once had a crazy freak-out that was bigger than Amanda Bynes." (In the interest of full disclosure, I did pass part of an overnight transatlantic flight watching that stupid movie Amanda Bynes did with Colin Firth, although I deny any resulting bias. At least not against Colin Firth.) I was not aware of Amanda Bynes' flirtation with drugs, arson and institutionalization, but I really hope that's working out for her. These responses by Miley allowed Sinead O'Connor to invoke on her side all the victims of the Catholic Church's complicity in the sexual abuse of children, and anyone who's ever suffered from mental illness, and to further admonish Miley to educate herself about these issues before daring to make fun of anyone.

Which was interesting, because I didn't realize until reading her letter why Sinead O'Connor had ever ripped up that picture of Pope John Paul II twenty-one years ago on Saturday Night Live. She has had a number of issues with the Catholic Church, to the point where she made a movie about the lack of availability of abortion or meaningful sex education in Ireland. It's freaky, a statue of the Virgin Mary keeps coming alive and terrorizing a young, pregnant Irish girl in her dreams, wearing a crappy red and brown striped sweater. (Everything but the sweater really happens.) So I was as ignorant as Miley, I didn't know what Sinead's specific message was in that moment or that it involved the legion of children who were let down by people and an institution they should have been able to trust. All I knew at the time was that she was angry. And even now, I only found out because she needed to publicly slap down somebody (Miley) that Sinead doesn't think capable of making her own decisions. It seemed cheap to bring that in, making Miley Cyrus into a villain with cruel disregard for what seems like from Sinead's words: all victims everywhere.

And yet it's something I might write, in a hyperbolic moment, writing about pop culture. (I can be an asshole.) I can hide behind the fact that nobody cares what I think, and certainly none of the public figures involved will read this. But I think there is something deeper going on here that seems strange, in that Sinead started a dialogue that was presumptive, personal, and yet public. She didn't write her a personal letter, or comment broadly on what she sees young women doing. She starts out talking to Miley Cyrus from this self-stated maternal perspective, which is deeply presumptive, and something I think only women still think they should get away with. I've seen men who think they have a personal relationship with a woman (one close enough to sit down and paternalistically tell her she can't lick a sledgehammer anymore) and I've seen these men blow up as badly as Sinead O'Connor when their concern is rebuffed and the relationship is revealed as imaginary. It's actually pretty scary. And yet in some women's minds, being female makes them a sister, being older makes them a mother. One of Miley's responses was to ask when Sinead O'Connor wanted to sit down in person, and I don't know if that was ironic, but it did make me wonder why this personal advice, one woman to another, had to play out in public in the first place. Should an argument about being an attention whore be shared on a celebrity's blog for everyone to read it?

However, there are a couple of reasons why I'm glad Sinead O'Connor spoke up. I have not addressed the fundamental point Sinead O'Connor thought important enough to communicate to Miley Cyrus and to the world. From what I gather, she feels there are a two problems with sexualizing Miley Cyrus. One is the privacy of sexuality, another is that men should not be making money off of it, but interestingly she also brought up the issue of talent, wherein Miley's voice disqualifies her from this kind of performance. This has been a recurring theme recently when I've heard women criticize Miley's performances, either at the VMAs or in this video: her voice is too good to be doing this, like sexuality, particularly female sexuality, is what you rely on when you have nothing else to bring to the table. And men do it too: if you can't get anyone's attention, have a woman in a bikini stand next to you. And maybe bounce a little. Up and down and up and... moving on.

Meanwhile, Sinead O'Connor likes anal sex. Actually, she doesn't just like it, she considers it an integral part of any sexual relationship and something future partners (of any sex or gender) need to be prepared to do if they want to attempt to sexually satisfy Sinead. I know this only because she thought it was worth sharing with the world in an interview. I mention it because it raises the question of whether Sinead is being hypocritical, telling Miley that unlike her self-appointed surrogate mother's butthole, the sexuality of Hannah Montana is only for "her, and her boyfriend". I thought that was funny, but I don't know that it's hypocritical, since being able to talk about one's healthy sex life is a far cry from inviting everyone to join. Sinead did not actually put out a (brown) welcome mat and take up a three-point stance in the doorway.

On the other hand Miley invites strangers to ogle her and when she got out the foam finger during the VMAs she was inviting teenage boys to masturbate along with her. That being said, if you believe an aging Sinead O'Connor used her sexuality to make a promotional interview memorable and seem relevant again, that's probably even sadder than anything Miley has been doing. But she talked about what she likes, she didn't get up on the coffee table and show America and Europe her butthole (although who knows, I wasn't there), and this was one unscripted interview that went to an unusual place, not a huge planned production involving the assistance of hundreds of people to show off her naked body.

Which somehow brings me somehow to Amanda Palmer's open letter to Sinead, which was in no small part an homage to dressing like a whore, if that's what you feel like doing. I liked reading that, somebody saying it's alright to have the freedom to express yourself and your sexuality however you wanted, and boy do I want to live in a world like that, where we aren't ashamed and afraid. I love the point she made about the same record industry jerks telling her she was too fat to appear in a bra, which to me suggested that we not allow these people to define sexuality. If everyone hides it and "saves if for their boyfriend", if over a lifetime women reveal who they are and what they like and what makes them feel beautiful to only to a handful of partners in private semi-darkness, that's fine, but it means the conversation and the images of sexuality in our culture will be defined by those who have nothing to hide: the exploiters and marketers and anyone they do pressure into doing things their way. Which is also why, despite my middle school giggling on the topic, I think it's wrong to shame Sinead O'Connor for having spoken honestly about the joys of the "Difficult Brown" (her words).

There is a perspective on Miley's recent performances that suggests that's what she's doing. That the VMA performance was an attempt to play off of Robin Thicke's video, grinding on him and enjoying herself with a foam finger for a release the way that his video suggests he's doing with all these naked women who crowd around him and his fabled big dick. In that moment #Thicke or whatever we're supposed to call him was just there for her enjoyment as she completely stole his thunder. And licking the sledge hammer in "Wrecking Ball" is not a tantalization of fellatio from Miley, but actually an attempt to express outwardly the ache and longing for someone's physical presence we can feel once we've lost them. I've struggled to stop remembering the warmth, the breath, and even taste of someone's sex after they dropped out of my life, so even if you take it at it's most literally sexual, why can't Miley make a video holding a hammer and thinking about missing the taste of cock? Because she's too young, and her voice is too good, according to Mama?

With that being said I think there is one difference between Miley's performances and Amanda Palmer's stories of rebellion and exploration: none of Amanda Palmer's stories end with the happy ending of, "And finally the boys and the pretty girls all liked me!" Being herself annoyed her mother, made kids call her a freak... it's actually much more akin to Sinead buzzing her hair, removing with it a particular cultural image of femininity. When she shaved her hair off, that was bigger than Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana has ever been, but it also made her a really easy punchline. Meanwhile, whether it was safe or not, has Miley ever done anything that wasn't also the popular choice, the definite crowd-pleaser? There is a difference between exploring what it is to be a woman, sexual, powerful, vulnerable, whatever she may be, and just borrowing the images you think will play best in front of a focus group.

And in my opinion borrowing images is where this whole thing began. This is what makes me most sympathize with Sinead O'Connor's disappointment. Miley said she was so taken with the video for Sinead's cover of "Nothing Compares 2 U" that she based the look of her own video on it. So the question to me is did she borrow from Sinead while missing almost all of the point? I don't know when she started sporting that stupid looking short haircut, but it's ironic to take an image of Sinead, who was trying to avoid being trapped by a particular image of femininity, and then turn it into this sharply drawn, frosted caricature with garish lipstick and a look that's more reminiscent of Brigitte Nielsen's impression of an ice sculpture in Rocky IV. Don't get me wrong, it worked great for that Rocky movie (which was still giggle inducingly stupid) but in a video that seemed to be about vulnerability and regret, showing off the gyrations of your perfect body, single tear frosted, everything perfectly in place but the rubble around you, just didn't show any message but "Look, I'm pretty!" For that reason I think ultimately Sinead may be right: between the two of them one sang the hell out of a song and let that be what people took away from it, while the other one was "too busy getting her tits out."

Since I started writing a response to my friend that exploded into this, Miley has done an SNL appearance where I'm sure they made tacky superficial jokes about Sinead. Sinead has apparently since threatened to sue Miley and wrote a third open letter, because that's working out great so far. And I'm sure all three of these women are somewhere hugging it out, while endless bloggers analyze this and blame "the real enemy". But unlike these women who can promote themselves and make a living off of open letters and twitter feuds, I eventually had to wrap it up and go to work, so apologies if I missed anything.