As one can imagine, I spend a lot of time Googling boobs. It’s not always the most enjoyable of experiences, but in the last month it’s been more grating than usual. The recurrent problem? Miley Cyrus’s bra size.
Has Miley Cyrus had a boob job? According to the four million posts about the subject, she either has or she hasn’t. She either looks bigger or she doesn’t. I don’t give a crap, but I’m going to take her at her word and believe she hasn’t. Miley Cyrus is 20, and has been in the public for over six years. There’s inevitably been changes to her figure, and indeed there will continue to be for the whole of her life. She’s a woman!
What is most disturbing about the absurd clatter about Cyrus’s chest is that in truth has absolutely nothing to do with the “news” that a young girl may have had breast implants. It’s simply because people want to legitimise their desire to look at her boobs. Whenever you see a headline reading “has Miley Cyrus had a boob job?” above a picture of her in a low cut top, the translation of that header should be WE’RE LOOKING AT MILEY CYRUS’S TITS! CORR! AND IT’S NOT CREEPY ANY MORE BECAUSE SHE’S 20! YOU CAN LOOK AT THEM TOO! PHWOAR etc etc, ad nauseum.
Charlotte Church recently went in front of the Leveson Inquiry, and in her emotional testimony described the treatment she’d received as a young girl growing up in the spotlight. She described feeling harassed by the tabloids, and disturbed by the fact they seemed to be “counting down” to her sixteenth birthday. (See image below for a creepy example of the articles posted when she was 15 – so beautifully positioned just across the fold to the same paper’s misplaced outrage at the Brass Eye Paedophile episode.)
What message does it send to other young girls when it’s acceptable for them to be objectified and dissected en masse in this way? It’s weird, and it’s creepy, and it shames us all that it’s clearly click-worthy enough to justify the constant dirge of banal speculations. Enough is enough. Can a 2012 resolution be to give up churning out this crap this year please?
Arg!
(Like this? Try Under the Mistletoe: Feminism for some heartening and inspiring feminist action…)
Busts 4 Justice 
Agreed! Who cares if she has had a boob job in the first place, and why in the world is it an acceptable topic of conversation? Yuck.
I know many say that celebrities choose their life and should just accept what the tabloids do, but come on! She got into this as a kid so really it was more of her parents choice not hers. Now she’s just doing what she knows.
I’m thinking that some of the attention (not all of it, but some of it) might be from flat-chested women who are wary of girls whose breasts will outgrow theirs. I would know, as I’m flat-chested myself, and am all too aware of other women’s breast sizes, and aware of how younger girls than myself are eventually outgrowing me. Making me feel like I’m at a standstill, haven’t had the same progression towards womanhood, if you get my gist. My breasts have not grown since I was 12 or 13, and it was such an agony for me when I was younger. Sometimes there might be jealousy.
That said, I do agree that it’s creepy for all the tabloids to scrutinize women’s bodies so closely like that. They really ought to give celebrities their personal space and respect their privacy.
at the risk of missing the point, she has gotten one:
