Miley Cyrus is a Role Model
Long before Miley Cyrus was branded as a racist-hypersexualized-minstrel show, she was looked up to by millions of children across the United States. Many people know Miley for her role on Disney Channel's booming television series, "Hannah Montana," but lately she primarily gets acknowledged by backlash. The attention focused around Cyrus has been a vast amount of criticism. In 2013 Miley had a performance, on the VMA awards, accompanied by large African-American women shaking their rears, and a foam finger that rubbed everyone the wrong way. It was safe to say that performance was going to take a while for people to move past, but it still lives on in everyone's memory of Miley. Since the VMA's Miley has been
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The conversation of it being degrading or empowering begins with how you interpreted it. At first glance while watching the show all you see is a white girl making a fool of herself, and essentially that is pretty close to what it was. Miley was dancing "clumsy, flat-footed and cringingly unsexy" (Paglia), but it was all an intended effort to encompass the things she wants to represent: embracing sexuality and accepting/loving yourself. In the moment people took it upon themselves to say that "young white pop stars [, Miley,] take on persona associated with people of color and shed them at will," (Rodney) meaning that he believes Miley is not genuine and used her platform to imitate black culture. Some have even gone as far to say, "Cyrus is annexing working-class black 'ratchet' culture," (Rosen) and others view it as, "[s]he is, in her position, just American" (McWhorter). McWhorter believes that Miley is just the outcome of America being a melting pot of cultures. While art is meant to be translated in different ways by different people, Miley stands for equality of all colors and sexualities, and to think that she purposely was mocking another culture seems farfetched. Miley has shown most recently that she wants to uphold her roots by singing covers of Dolly Parton song "Jolene" and even covers of her own songs from the Hannah Montana era, showing that she wants to explore her