The Porning of Miley Cyrus

Today's post is from Kevin M. Scott, co-author (with Carmine Sarracino) of The Porning of America: The Rise of Porn Culture, What It Means, and Where We Go from Here, forthcoming from Beacon Press in Fall 2008. Scott teaches courses in American literature and culture and directs the English education program at Elizabethtown College.

Talk about teachable moments. Two days before the "topless Miley" stories broke all over television and online, my class and I were discussing the young star of the Disney show, Hannah Montana.

My endlessly digressing American Studies class, fifteen young women and one lonely fellow, saw a connection between the subject and period we were studying—the representation of women in Cold War-era popular culture—and the current phenomenon of young female stars being offered up onto the altar of a lecherous public consumption.

Knowing, as they do, how easy I am to distract, they asked me what I thought of Miley Cyrus, who plays a normal high school kid who moonlights as a rock star. (Don't we all remember that kid from our own high school days? No?)

I said, roughly, "Well, the music makes my ears bleed, BUT, considering the options, if my daughter were to be a fan of the star, I would probably decide to shut up and let her have her fun."

He’s Having a Baby

by Matt Kailey

Matt Kailey is the author of Just Add Hormones: An Insider’s Guide the Transsexual Experience (Beacon Press, 2005), the editor of Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices (Johnson Books, 2007), and the managing editor of Out Front Colorado, Colorado’s oldest and largest GLBT publication.

And now for the latest transsexual travesty (there’s at least one a week nowadays, isn’t there?): a transman is pregnant. Female-to-male transsexual (born female, now male) Thomas Beatie is bearded, breastless, and with child, and although he is not the first transman to become pregnant, nor will he be the first to give birth, the situation is causing a major blip on the media’s sensationalism sonar. Beatie has been interviewed on Oprah, told his story to The Advocate, and had his picture passed around like a bottle of Boone’s Farm all over the Internet, with his pregnant abdomen prominent below his reconstructed chest. He’s been called everything from “freak” to “fabulous,” and everyone with an opinion has made it known. Forgive me if I yawn.