what articles about what the Miley Cyrus VMA performance says about our culture say about our culture

Miley Cyrus was on the 2013 VMAs, and stuck her tongue out, and wore very few clothes, and did something called "twerking" that is apparently a dance move that is so much a part of black culture that Miley's doing it, and having black background dancers, makes her a racist. And her desperate need for attention makes her a slut, and maybe crazy, and saying that is slut shaming, and part of the way society oppresses women's expression of their sexuality. And everyone - everyone - is horrified by Cyrus's performance, so horrified for so many different reasons that they have to watch it over and over again and write articles about it that link to the video of her dancing so other people can see it and be horrified and write their own articles about how terrible Cyrus is and how she made a horrible mistake by doing something that has upped her fame level by about 1000% (at last when I hear the names Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift I'll now be able to remember which one is which).

Is the Miley Cyrus performance the most egregious overuse of sex in a song in the history of mankind? Is it the most horrific example of naked racism? Is it something shocking that we will never forget?

I'm going to say no.

So why is this getting so much attention? Well, first off, it was on the VMAs, which apparently a lot of people watch (honestly, my only objection to the Cyrus performance is it made me pay attention to the VMAs). It was a little (purposefully) over the top, and people started talking about it.

And then bloggers and columnists all over the world said, oh my god if I wrote something about this that puts a spin on it then I'll get a billion blog hits. And when they got their billion hits, more people wrote about it.

And that's it. The truth is, the Miley Cyrus performance is not especially important, except for being a textbook example of how the blogosphere, and modern journalism, which now takes its cue from the blogosphere, operates. Writers are sharks, and when first blood is spilled, there is a feeding frenzy.

It is understandable. Even though I am not linking to the video, because if you haven't seen it already it's probably a conscious decision, just the fact that this article contains the phrases "miley cyrus" and "VMAs" means it will probably get more hits than anything I've written since I wrote an article about Kate Beckinsale's breasts. That still won't be a lot of hits - maybe a few hundred over the next year - but for serious bloggers, a popular article about the thing everyone is talking about can get them as much attention - almost - as Miley.

Miley Cyrus tried to get attention, and succeeded, and while her performance is being lambasted everywhere, a whole slew of singers are already trying to figure out how they can get this much attention. And when they figure it out, expect much joyous wailing and gnashing of teeth.

the only thing I'm going to say about Britney

Okay, I'll admit it, I've been somewhat interested in watching Britney Spear's remarkable public meltdown. But honestly, it's just too much. I am not one of those people who slows down on the freeway to see a traffic accident or tries to see what's going on when there's an ambulance on the street, and Spears is the same sort of thing, something so sad and disturbing that I think it's best to just leave it alone. I'm just increasingly conscious that what you've got is some dumb, desperate young woman without a clue how to function acting out for an audience of vultures.

 Everyone should really just stop looking. Just let her fall apart, go through rehab and hopefully pull her life together without an audience. After she's cleaned up her life if she wants to get back in the public spotlight she can always go on The Surreal Life, but really, wouldn't it be great if everyone just stopped following her, photographing her, mocking her? Wouldn't it just make the world a better place if for once people could see, this is going too far and stop?

Alas for Britney, the world is not going to become a better place anytime soon.

Kate Beckinsale's breasts; now there's a title that will drive some traffic to my blog

Recently I saw the awful, awful movie Click (very funny for the first half hour or so, just to trick you to keep watching). Kate Beckinsale, who has been very good in much better movies, had an uninteresting part in this one, and as I was looking at her I thought, she's so perfect looking, I wonder if she's had plastic surgery. Because so many people have their faces rebuilt that you really never know nowadays.

Googling on the topic, the first thing I check out was Beckinsale's nomination for The Ugliest Breasts In Hollywood at awfulplasticsurgery.com, a site whose purpose is pretty clear from the name. They do look oddly high and they do have stretch marks, although I read elsewhere that Beckinsale denies it, saying the stretch marks are from pregnancy and the change in breast size is from gaining weight, which she said she was asked to do by movie producers (I've always heard movie producers ask actresses to lose weight, but that's her story). Other articles say she later had the implants removed.

But I wasn't wondering about her breasts, I was just wondering about her face, and there's less about that. I did find something on Beckinsale's face at savingfaceforum.com, another plastic surgery site (there are tons of places devoted to celebrities and plastic surgery; I have a friend obsessed with her perceived bad nose job who scours these sites). There someone posted a bunch of pictures throughout Beckinsale's career and then everyone comments about how much plastic surgery they think she's had. Pretty much everyone says she's had a nose job, some say her lips were shrunk and one or two said her chin was elongated. But I don't really see it. Her face has narrowed a bit, as generally happens with age, but the nose looks basically the same to me in all the pictures, and the lips don't vary enough to be any more than you could get by differing lipstick application. I'm not saying she hasn't had plastic surgery, but I do wonder if people obsessed with celebrity plastic surgery are actually a good source for information.

Anyway, it does look like she was always extraordinary looking, although I think in all cases celebrities aren't going to look as good in real life as in movies, where professional makeup and lighting people can create the illusion of perfection.

Beckinsale says she doesn't want to be thought of as the sort of person who would get plastic surgery, saying "That implies a kind of insecurity, shallowness and thoughtlessness that I don't feel applies to me very much." If she has had plastic surgery, well, then it's a dumb thing to say, but could be taken the way one takes closeted homosexuals decrying gay marriage; as a panicky attempt to distance herself from something she's embarrassed by.

But if she hasn't had plastic surgery then the quote bothers me, because I think it's incredibly judgmental for someone who is drop dead gorgeous to look down on people who want to be but weren't born that lucky. I used to be very down on plastic surgery (and I'm still down on breast surgery, because I have never seen breasts I didn't like so see no reason to shove silicone in a pair), but there are people I wouldn't date because I don't find them attractive, and there are people (many many people) who wouldn't date me because they don't consider me attractive, and really, why shouldn't we all get to be gorgeous and sought after like Beckinsale? (On the other hand, plastic surgery can only do so much; Paris Hilton has apparently had tons of it but she's still not in the same league as Kate).

What I find interesting is the reason there is all this discussion; actresses generally won't admit to having plastic surgery. I don't know if it's embarrassment at being perceived as vain, or actual vanity, or a perception that this will effect their career, but I think a lot more celebrities have plastic surgery than admit to it. Plastic surgery is often treated as a crime and celebrities will put on a defense; Tara Banks actually brought a doctor on her talk show to feel her up and pronounce them real (perhaps she should have other celebrities come on the show and do the same; it would probably be a popular segment).

Because this is such a moronic subject, I feel I have to point out that I don't spend all my time googling celebrity breast jobs. Just yesterday after watching some of Leonard Bernstein's Candide on PBS I went on a wikipedia hunt that took me from Candide to Gottfried Leibniz, whose theodicy was being attacked, possibly somewhat unjustly, in Candide, to an article on how various philosophers reconcile the existence of God with the existence of evil (evil is necessary, God isn't all powerful or he/she isn't all good, etc.), to a little reading on Taoism (which I love; my favorite Tao Te Ching translations are here and here). But none of that seemed as worth writing about as Kate Beckinsale's breasts.

Addendum: Unsurprisingly, this has been the single most popular blog post I have ever written, so I am just, apropos of nothing, going to put a link here to my Wii games site, because I get paid by the page view and have to drive traffic somehow. Please go there now. There are just as many pictures of Kate's breasts on that site as there are in this blog, so what the hell.