Wisdom versus passion: Miley Cyrus vs Sinead O’Connor

They say chivalry is dead. I say this generation of girls killed it. The sorts of role models they make popular now probably merely reflect their character. No wonder boys nowadays feel less need to impress where it counts — because they get sexually rewarded for merely acting like buffoons. Even before the advent of social media and the hookup and porn star culture it created among the youth, women have already lost a lot since their “liberation”. Our quest for “equality” got us what we wished for — but not where it counts. The media still makes its daily bread objectifying women. Look no further than the abomination that former Disney child star Miley Cyrus has become. One could say she did that to herself. But if we step back and see this from a higher vantage point, we could see that she merely does what she likely perceives is expected of her.

So much for “progress”, girls.

Think about it more, and we will realize that the joke is really on us. We’re less of a mystery to men nowadays. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing as it takes two to tango which means that the “market” simply got more fluid and, as a result, more dynamic — kind of like the old trite consulting tagline that heralded the advent of e-commerce: technology broke down barriers and closed the gap between supply and demand. Social networking is to the dating scene what Ariba and eBay were to the buying-and-selling scene. With Facebook, people can now easily “pimp out” themselves with their selfies and shoutouts. But it’s a lurkers’ and stalkers’ market in the huge cyber-bazaar created by social media. Mister Right may be out there but I’d hazard a guess that psychos shopping online for conquests outnumber them ten-to-one.

In short, men can now get into women’s pants with half the effort it took even just a decade ago. Both parties in a potential hookup could even exchange product samples — all they need is a good internet connection and Skype installed. And then girls today wonder why boys seem so uninspired, unmotivated, and, worst of all, non-committal when it comes to relationships. I think it is because the standards to which we ladies hold them up to have dropped. We virtually (literally virtually) serve ourselves up to be checked out and sampled!

That’s exactly the sort of “motherly” insight late-1980s music star and former wild girl Sinead O’Connor tried to impart on Miley, expressing concern that the music industry was “pimping” her out. Trouble is, the wisdom presumably coming from O’Connor’s age does not square away with her own reputation in her younger days. Ouch! From O’Connor’s view it’s a case of “if I knew then what I know now…” sort of thing. Well, Sinead should probably excuse Miley for not being as attentive as she hoped she would to her motherly advise as it is quite obvious that her wisdom is a product of the very wild ways the younger star is enjoying now.

The youth is wasted on the young, as they say. As Rod Stewart once crooned, “time is on our side”. Too bad many of us lacked the wisdom to make the most of our 20’s. For me in particular, if I had only known my 20’s would be so fleeting, I would have spent a bigger part of it sober and remembered more of it.

On that note, let Miley be Miley. As a typical showbiz wildchild, she’s got two paths ahead of her — she could go the way Drew Barrymore went, eventually getting over her childhood alcoholism to build a pretty decent career, or she could go on to be another Lindsay Lohan.

Kate Natividad

Frustrated artist doing geek for a living.