Fashion guru and silver fox Tim Gunn commented on tween dream Hannah Montana's appearance, noting that "She's just a little too tart," and went on to say she looked 25, not 15, forgetting that's the end goal of every teenage girl. So Miley Cyrus/Hannah is right on track.
Unlike most teenage girls though, Hannah and Miley's look is personally manufactured by the Disney Channel, Annie Leibowitz, and whoever else on the PR payroll in the Burgeoning Sexuality Of Teenage Girls indystry. One might argue Project Runway, which Gunn hosts, is a cog in the very same machine, albeit on a different channel.
Mr. Gunn has been commenting on high-profile celebs a lot recently, including Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain. We're now turning to Gunn for every minor fashion question; he is the Carson Kressley of the late 00s.
Have a friend that's done you wrong? Disney is now providing you with an unintentional revenge opportunity: a five a.m. wake-up call from their controversial tween money-machine Miley Cyrus.
The back-to-school site Hannah Montana Calls is a Wall-Mart campaign purportedly for parents trying to woo their kids out of bed in the morning with a semi-personalized phone call from the singer.
But since you can type in any phone number into the website, it has a great potential for misuse. Like sex predators hounding their prey. CONTINUED »
Well, this is unsettling:
Miley Cyrus‘ pics in Vanity Fair may have been scandalous, but she should look on the bright side, because now she has a whole new crop of admirers! Only problem is, they’re felons.
Miley has received thousands of love letters from prison inmates since the magazine hit newsstands
Hannah Montana's ratings are down, she's growing up, and Disney needs new paper to print its tween cash on. That's why they've already found Miley Cryus' successor in 15-year-old Texas Demi Lovato. They're going to ease Lovato onto the scene with the move Camp Rock — and then the floodgates will be unleashed. Or, as Disney Channel president Gary Marsh says, "Once we find someone, we go all in." So then will come the music album, an opening act on the Jonas Brothers tour, and endless marketing to make sure she's a brand name by the time the new school year starts. Disney execs will also be issuing a restraining order against Annie Liebowitz. And while Disney insists it's not just a chopshop for tween talent, you'd be silly to think otherwise. Lovato's rise to stardom follows the tried-and-true path of child stars: guest spots that slowly turn into solo vehicles that eventually end up as market behemoths. Oh, and Lovato has one other Miley Cyrus factor: the dad-ager. Her stepfather Eddie De La Garza quit his job at a Ford dealership to become her co-manager (joining the Jonas Bros.' father Kevin Jonas Sr. to become, along with an agent and a publicist Lovato's "team"). Before long, he'll be posing with Lovato's head in his lap. [WSJ]
Deal or No Deal, that gimmicky hour of game show bile that employs some trade secret formula to determine how much money to give away to contestants while still raking in the dough from advertisers, is not as popular as it once was. Actually, it's the least popular it's ever been! Not even Star Wars-themed episodes can help. CONTINUED »
"Hitwise reports today that VanityFair.com traffic spiked by a factor of 20, that searches for the Leibovitz photos doubled the searches for Lindsay Lohan's for-real topless pics in New York Magazine. Hitwise Director of Research Heather Dougherty says 98% of Vanity Fair's traffic was comprised of visitors who had never visited the site before." Just wait till you see the newsstand numbers. [WPN]
And so it has come to this: A spoof of the Miley Cyrus-Vanity Fair photo shoot, starring Annie Liebowitz's nose and dad Billy Ray Cyrus who gives Joe Simpson a run for his creepiness.
Is the Miley Cyrus-Vanity Fair photo scandal actual news? Some websites – us! – would say OMG YES YES YES and refute any notion that we aren't in the midst of our era's cultural epicenter, DISCUSSING THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE OF THE DECADE.
Then there are actual news outlets like the NBC Nightly News, the broadcast where Brian Williams practices his comedy routine.
On Monday night, he devoted over two minutes to the scandal, which is like 45,000 words in blog terms. Speaking of blogs, one notes, "That would be embarrassing enough for a news organization purporting to be credible." (via) By comparison, Wililams' segment on the Supreme Court's ruling on voter IDs commanded only about 80 seconds.
More embarrassing? That earlier on Monday, Williams also penned a much-noticed Daily Nightly blog post, criticizing the New York Times for, wait, what was it again? Oh, right: Running puff pieces.
But the biggest part of this controversy? That BriWi chronicler Rachel Sklar hasn't yet devoted a lengthy column to the topic on Huffington Post. (Update: Sklar is, apparently, out of this office this week.)
Picking up where Slate left behind in the racy Disney marketing photos – newsworthy thanks to Miley Cyrus! – TMZ.com Googles "Shanghai Zhenxin Garments Co. Ltd.," the Chinese company behind the ads, and puts together a whole gallery of tweens prancing around in naughty lingerie.
Already the Miley Cyrus-Vanity Fair "scandal" has been defused by certain rational arguments, such as, "We see kids younger than Cyrus appear on film wearing fewer clothes and in more sexually compromising situations, and nobody is crying foul there." But nothing helps combat the idea that Cyrus's photo shoot is a non-issue like another still photograph — this one also of a Disney brand.
A Disney underwear brand. In China. That can be described as nothing more than a pedophile pinup.
How did something much more scandalous than a photograph of Cyrus' back get plastered on a billboard? For starters, the age of consent in California might be 18, but in China, where this billboard appeared, it's a mere 14. CONTINUED »
Rosie O'Donnell: "Leave Miley Cyrus alone," O'Donnell says in a video posted Monday night. "Disney [is] making her apologize. Ay yi yi. [...] Listen, Annie Leibovitz – I had two photo shoots with her. You kind of do what she says. It's intimidating. I also didn't think it was a pornographic photo in any capacity. I thought it was sort of a beautiful portrait. [...] "I like the one of her and her dad, too. I don't know. It's Annie Leibovitz, people."
Bonnie Fuller: "Does anyone else find it ironic that men in a polygamy cult in Texas are being locked up for sexually exploiting teenage girls while here in medialand, a half-nude photo of 15-year-old Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair is being touted as art?"
• Miley Cyrus and her parents saw an opportunity to boost her profile with a Vanity Fair photo shoot that portrayed her as more than an innocent little girl.
• Vanity Fair saw an opportunity to sell magazines by shooting America's tween sweetheart as more than an innocent little girl.
They both exploited each other. Neither should apologize. Except for one little thing: that the the photos are, uh, actually quite terrible.
Photographer Annie Leibovitz, responding to criticism over Miley Cyrus' topless Vanity Fair photoshoot: "I'm sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted. Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together, and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful.” [Us]
The Today show didn't even get around to mentioning it until its second half hour. CONTINUED »
Entertainment Tonight was drooling over its weekend scoop that Vanity Fair had pried Miley Cryus' top off for Annie Leibovitz's camera, airing promo spots about the June Vanity Fair that would feature Disney's cash machine in the semi-buff, from behind.
Parents hitting the blogs have called foul; some are labeling the whore affair child porn.
For its part, Miley's corporate parent is blaming Graydon Carter's book: "Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines," said a Disney spokesperson.
And while Conde Nast fends off the second unwanted scandal – that dares disprove the "all press is good press" mantra – following Vogue's race-baiting Giselse-LeBron cover, the CBS tabloid show also finds itself in familiar surroundings. CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
