Vanessa wonders if we should take a leaf out of Miley Cyrus’ book

I don’t have anything interesting to write about this week, so I’m afraid it’s going to be about Miley Cyrus. Well actually, it’s not really about Miley at all, it’s about mental illness, neo-feminism and breasts, which might all be the same thing come to think of it. The patchwork of my online life brought three items together for me yesterday. One was an image of Charcot’s Hysterics. Another was an article written by Sam Woolfe on the pathologising and medicating of normal behaviour, and the third was the censored version of Robin Thicke’s video ‘Blurred Lines’.

This all led me, as everything does these days, to Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor. I’m a convert. I thought O’Connor’s letter was so righteous when I first read it, but then I read another article on The Huffington Post that quoted a tweet by Jill Filopovic: “Why are we telling girls that their sexuality isn’t theirs? That if they’re publicly sexual, they’ve somehow given it away? People publicly display other aspects of themselves — intelligence, humor — all the time. But publicly being a sexual creature = cheap?” What we’ve got here is a battle between post-feminism and neo-feminism. Yep, we’re there already and once again feminists (otherwise known as women) are turning on each other. *Sighs*. (brand-feminism)
While I love the spirit in which O’Connor wrote her (numerous) letters to Miley, what I’ve found distasteful are her growing threats that Miley’s behaviour will undoubtedly lead to mental illness and ruin. I’m not one of those people who thinks that it’s better to do something and regret it than not do it and regret it, preferring to listen to the wisdom of those who’ve been there before me and can offer guidance and maybe save me pain, I find it all a bit overbearing at this point. It’s not her exposing her sexuality that will cause mental illness, it’s the entire internet hounding her about it. Or, you know, an actual chemical imbalance in her brain.

This brings me to Sam Woolf’s article, which is about the DSM-V, known as The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to its friends. The new issue has made numerous additions of things that most of us would just describe as part of the normal spectrum of human behaviour, such as bereavement, shyness or swinging half-naked on a wrecking ball.

Cyrus said recently that she’s creating a “strategic hot mess”, which is kind of what the drug cartels, oops, I mean companies, are doing by pathologising our eccentricities to sell records, oops, I mean drugs. But who to be mad at? Miley for fulfilling and promoting Charcot’s theories about beautiful, sexual, hysterical, mentally disturbed and oh so photogenic women, or O’Connor, for associating sexuality and rebellious behaviour with mental illness, thus creating mental illness where there was none?

“The thing’s as dull as ditchwater without the sexy good girls strutting their stuff”

I was trying to figure it all out from my sun lounger in Turkey when the censored and fully clothed version of Thicke’s video came on the flat screen behind the pool bar. And you know what, aside from a catchy four-note hook, the thing’s as dull as ditchwater without the beautiful, confident, sexy good girls strutting their stuff on TV to empowering and/or offensive lyrics just because they can – when they’re not being censored that is.

Follow me: @vnessenvy