Miley’s Wardrobe

I’ve probably seen Miley Cyrus’s breasts more this year than my own. She’s 21, has bleached eyebrows, and seems to have concluded that bras are unnecessary. Magazine shoots, award shows, paparazzi moments—there’s always that chance she’ll just be completely bare-chested, totally comfortable with it. At first it seems like a series of accidents, these perpetual wardrobe malfunctions. But it happens too often. It’s just what Miley does.

I genuinely can’t tell if she’s genuinely that unrestrained about clothing or if she’s engineered the most ruthlessly efficient publicity strategy of the decade. Her breasts are more famous than her music, more discussed, more everywhere. You have to respect the math of it—barely any actual work, barely any actual talent on display, and somehow her body has become more newsworthy than news. The machinery runs on her refusal to cover up.

What’s wild is how much it works. She’s a name everyone knows, everyone talks about, and it’s almost entirely because she doesn’t wear a shirt. That’s either the greatest marketing insight of her generation or the luckiest accident in celebrity history. Probably both.