Miley Cyrus, Unfolded

I bought issue 93 of V Magazine at Do You Read Me?! in Berlin and unfolded the nude centerfold of Miley Cyrus on my kitchen table. Small breasts, direct stare, the whole thing shot with that particular editorial flatness that makes nudity feel like architecture. I looked at it for a while. Put it back. Took it out again.

She’d spent the previous two years methodically demolishing the Hannah Montana brand—the foam finger, the wrecking ball, the relentless tongue, the performances that launched a thousand think pieces about whether she was in control of her own image or being exploited or whatever. By early 2015 none of that felt like an open question anymore. She’d won. The persona had calcified into something genuinely her own, with a solid run of actual music underneath all the provocation. The Bangerz era had real moments. The nude poster wasn’t a scandal; it was just Miley being Miley, which somehow made it more interesting than if it had still been shocking.

The poster is matter-of-fact about the whole thing. No apology, no performed transgression, just Miley naked in a magazine that prints things like that. The Hannah Montana posters this was meant to replace were probably hanging in rooms of teenagers who are now old enough to buy the issue themselves. That gap—between the Disney Channel and the V centerfold—is the actual career. Miley and me, unfolded on the kitchen table. Inseparable, probably forever.