I’m not a particular Miley Cyrus fan. But today, I’ve found myself in her corner, and this is why:
Cyrus is being slammed as “disgusting” and “filthy” and a whole range of other awful adjectives today, because she posted an image to social media broaching a topic that doesn’t get talked about very much: Female masturbation.
The 22-year-old singer posted the caption “a masturbate a day keeps the haters away” on Instagram, alongside an image of a woman’s hand reaching into her shorts.
Predictably, the world — which generally prefers women to remain pigeonholed as sexless virgins or as porn stars performing sexual acts exclusively for men — could Not. Even. Deal.
The Daily Mail, for example ran this headline, declaring that the post signalled Cyrus was “Out of control!”
“If we needed any more evidence of how far Miley Cyrus has gone off the rails, her latest Instagram post surely supplies it,” the article declared.
Celebuzz branded the move “ridiculous”, while Pink is the New Blog wrote: ” it’s just a bit sad to see an obviously talented young person resorting to this kind of behavior in order to get people to see her or pay attention to her… it just seems so … sad.”
But here’s the thing: what is more shocking and appalling than Miley Cyrus’ reference to female masturbation, is the fact that society still assumes that women don’t masturbate.
Or, more broadly, that women simply don’t have many sexual feelings at all, or only have sexual feelings in very tightly prescribed contexts.
Which, as every woman in the world knows, is BS.
Now, I’m not saying Miley Cyrus doesn’t build much of her image on Shock Factor because, let’s be honest, she goes around licking dumbells and wearing onesies made of dollar bills and humping a person with dwarfism in her stage shows. Indeed, by all accounts she can be a bit of a loud, obnoxious brat.