There seems to be an uproar over Miley Cyrus’s pole dance performance at the 2009 Teen Choice Award show. People are appalled. People are astonished. People are surprised. I’m not.
I appears that parents want teen idols to be pure and chaste and have squeaky clean images so that our kids might follow in their footsteps. Since our teens do imitate and emulate those they idolize, everyone wants to control the private lives and performances of teen stars in an effort to control their own kids.
This is laughable.
Historically, (for the last 50 years anyway) teen idols have always pushed the boundaries on what is acceptable. Think of Elvis Presley, the Beetles, and Scott Baio. These were hardly people that we wanted out daughters to bring home. They were five years or more older than their fans, and a bit edgy and provocative. When girls finally broke into the teen idol club, they had to compete. There were a couple of sweethearts like Annette Funacello, Melissa Gilbert, and Marie Osmond, but to remain popular, there had to be a tiny bit of scandal attached to the name as in the case of Brooke Shields.
With that said, parents need to spend less time trying to police the actions of those in the media that our teens latch onto and more time keeping the teens from latching on. I have always discouraged my kids to idolizing any star. “To idolize means to regard with blind admiration or devotion”, or to “worship as an idol”. For any Christian reading this, you should immediately have a red flag go up. To idolize another human is to essentially break the first commandment. If you taught your kids the commandments, you should have not trouble expressing to them the danger of putting so much love and energy into one human being.
I am not saying kids cannot be fans of a famous person. But they cannot be obsessed with that person or even try to imitate them while being true to themselves.
So I guess I am saying that Miley Cyrus can swing on poles, pose half naked, have a boyfriend move into her home, or anything else that her parents allow. But as for me and mine, her behavior will not affect that of my kids, and in many cases, they aren’t even aware of what she is up to.
If you liked this you should also read my other posts at the home blog, the homeschooling blog, the parents blog, and the frugal blog. You can read my recent posts here.
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