One Finger on the Censor Button
The Miley who twerked on Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV VMAs like she was personally settling a generational debt with every Disney executive who ever smiled at her—that Miley was never really gone. She took what everyone insisted on calling a mature break, which meant acoustic country records and public statements about having grown up, and then she just came back. Same as she ever was. Maybe more.
She came out as pansexual and said she was attracted to the person rather than the gender, which she meant genuinely—and which coexisted perfectly well with her discussing the precise dimensions of her boyfriend’s dick in the same interview. The photoshoot with the unshaved everything, the police cap, and the black strap-on became legendary in the way only Miley photoshoots become legendary: it caused several news cycles and absolutely nobody was surprised. She looks straight into the camera in that shoot with an expression that says she finds your discomfort entertaining. Maybe even ours, if we’re lucky.
The press gasps, the parents weep, the fans jerk off. On the latest Saturday Night Live, she performed Nothing Breaks Like a Heart with Mark Ronson wearing a jacket and nothing else underneath it—no net, no safety equipment, no bra. The whole studio and presumably everyone watching at home had one eye on the performance and one eye waiting for a nipple to appear unannounced on national television. NBC’s censors were presumably sitting there with a finger hovering over the dump button for the entire set. It never happened. The jacket held. The performance was clean, controlled, and absolutely deliberate.
That’s what tends to get lost in all the provocation: Miley is a professional. The near-miss, the tension, the constant sense that anything could happen—that’s crafted. She knows exactly what she’s doing with her body and with an audience’s attention. The chaos is choreographed. Honestly, that makes it more interesting, not less.