What is the Question, Ms. Cyrus?

It took me a long time to sort out my thoughts, or maybe wait for better ones on the VMA, Wrecking Ball public floggings of Miley Cyrus.  I woke up thinking about it and asking, what is the real question here.  I read and read and I have not found a real question.  If this is all industry hype then it has nothing to do with me and most of you.  However with all the hoopla, I considered this may be a true question.

How does anyone transition from child to adult?  How does anyone strike their own ground and plant their flag?  How did I?  How did you?  Some of us did it very young, like children of addicts.  Some of us never do.  But it seems to me that most of us did something, a series of things to stop being a referential, controlled person to taking control.  Some with grace, some with ire, some in secret, some out loud, and some with great pain. 

There are so many icons to compare this to; Prince Hal to Louise in Gypsy and even Jesus of Nazareth on the train, taking off on his own with his mother freaking out. 

Maybe one wants to say that doing it in public is a special kind of problem but those of us who have not had an easy go of it would disagree.  Escaping domination, establishing one’s self as chief in command, and doing it with intelligence is never easy. My issue with the VMA performance is not that Miley wanted to sound the death knell to all references to Hannah, it is that she didn’t accomplish that goal. 

How do you age out of adolescence is not clothes, not sex, not shock; you behave your way out of it.  Twerking, licking, sticking one’s tongue out, grinding on Beetlejuice while he sings about disrespecting consent, is not going to get you what you actually want, Ms. Cyrus.  If you want society to believe you are an independently thinking adult, then you have to keep behaving like one and we will get the message. It is how these people did it.   Some more successfully than others, but this is not a new or one-of-a-kind situation. 

Who could have been more controlled than Janet Jackson?  Little sidekick to the King of Pop.  I got up today and played her album, Control.  The stage is filled with men, her dancing is mega sexual and, yet, she is making it clear ~ with her new apartment key on her earring ~ SHE IS IN CONTOL.