"It wasn't in a skanky way… I mean I had a blanket on. And I thought, 'This looks pretty, and really natural.' I think it's really artsy."
That was Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus’s original view of her provocative photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. Eventually, she backtracked and issued an apology, but the damage had already been done—not so much to the 15-year-old Disney star’s career, but to her image she presents for her tween fans.
So who’s to blame? Young teenagers are not known for deliberation, but by the same token Annie Leibovitz is not known for wholesome, Norman Rockwell images. You don’t go to Vanity Fair as an upscale Sears Portrait Studio.
Should we blame Disney? As a symbol of corporate America, it’s an easy target, and we do not yet have an explanation for why Donald Duck has three nephews who frolic in his house while they are all without pants. Nevertheless, it’s hard to criticize the House of Mouse for not exercising more control over its trademarks when they happen to share a likeness with actual human beings.
So where do we turn? It’s perhaps more than a coincidence that this scandal has broken during the week that we read the Torah portion of Kedoshim (Vayikra 19-20). Kedoshim is famous for its many moral teachings, such as loving one’s neighbor and forgoing revenge, but perhaps its most notable feature is the one verse (19:29) in the Torah which begins: “Do not desecrate.” Avoiding the desecration (chillul) of God’s name and holy things is a concept which arises often in the Torah, but this verse is the only time that this idea is not attached with a conjunction to the previous verse, offered as an explanation or justification for another prohibition. In fact, the verse doesn’t mention God at all; in its entirety, it reads, “Do not desecrate your daughter by whoring her, lest the land whore and the land be filled with lewdness.” The Torah is declaring quite clearly that there is a trust which as sacred as God’s name: the duty of a parent, particularly, a father. When that is abandoned, the result can move quite quickly from the breakdown of one family to a societal epidemic.
That is the scariest part of all this. Those of us who remember the presidency of the first George Bush recall Billy Ray Cyrus as a late-night joke, the one-hit wonder of “Achy Breaky Heart.” He re-emerged from obscurity on his daughter’s coattails, co-starring in her TV show, singing duets with her. Still, he deserved the benefit of the doubt; some kids really do want to perform, and perhaps he needed to stick so close to look out for her. But is anyone really looking out for her? Or has Billy Ray simply found out that jailbait sells?
We may think that this Britney Spears-Lindsay Lohan phenomenon is a 21st-century phenomenon, but the fact is that it’s as old as the Torah itself. For every father willing to sell, there’s a land full of lechers willing to buy. The only way to break the cycle is to make the choice which is neither artsy nor pretty: to treasure holiness above hotness. Even the non-skanky kind.
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