Defamer
Vanity Fair has done it again. In their upcoming issue, famed photographer Annie Leibovitz shot a controversial photo spread featuring Billion Dollar Girl Miley Cyrus, prompting public outrage from the Christian Coalition, Disney and, naturally, the ladies of The View. Leibovitz and VF are being accused of crossing the line between art and pedophilia by shooting Cyrus in what some are calling "topless" photos (shown after the jump). Before the issue has even hit newsstands, Miley has apologized to her fans and Disney, concerned that the spread could affect the Hannah Montana cash cow. But this isn't the first time VF has hired one of their star photographers to use her lens in an effort to reinvent the images of underage starlets by featuring them in a slightly more provocative and mature light...
Vanity Fair has done it again. In their upcoming issue, famed photographer Annie Leibovitz shot a controversial photo spread featuring 
Hayden Panettiere posed in a very pin-up girl series of poses in this past December issue, Lindsay Lohan went fully topless in their January 2006 issue, and Nicole Richie played Moulin Rouge dancer, baring her tiny butt in the May 06 VF. While none of the three girls were underage (Hayden had just turned 18), the photos are far more soft-core porny than Miley's somewhat glamorous black and white snapshot.
And, as we all recall, the July 2003 cover of VF was all about "raining teens," featuring the likes of Amanda Bynes, the Olsens, and Lindsay Lohan long before they became the powerhouses they are today. More importantly, the underage stars were all shot looking like adults. They were sexy. They were pouting. The cover officially transformed them from smiley untouchable kids to Lolitas.
So, here's what we're wondering. What exactly is so horrifying about seeing Hannah Montana, from behind, covering herself up with a sheet? We've already seen her in short skirts on stage, and cleavage-enhancing dresses on red carpets. All we see here is her back. Frankly, the scandal heard round the world isn't breaking our eardrums. And we sincerely hope Disney agrees.
Comments
NOT a big deal. I think the big deal is that Disney has been grooming these kids to be totally sexy since day one. They have a 14 year old girl doing this sexy, pouty version of Cruella De Vil at the end of the new Dalmations video. I wouldn't let my kids watch it. This is tepid compared to her myspace photos. What a bunch of bullshit to sell magazines.
i don't see anything sexual about the raining teens cover. okay, maybe mandy moore is eyefucking us, but the rest look fine to me.
hasn't Vanity Fair tired of Annie and her covers? the starlet group shots are only interesting to visit years later to see which ones made it and which ones fell.
In our post post post modern society where everything is a simulation and nothing is real/original anymore, the line between whore and starlet is too blurred to be discernible. Case in point the picture of Elliot Spitzer's prostitute clutching her breasts. Who did it first, the hooker or the pop tart? Who the hell knows anymore.
Just get drunk before your head explodes.
She looks like a Chris Isaak video.
She looks like Linda Blair.
or a Les Miserables poster.
Oh...and Annie is an overrated boob.
She looks like one of those LIFETIME movies... "Tory, Portrait Of a Teenage Hooker" or something.
Oh, come on. Miley Cyrus looks like she just lived through "The Story of O" for god's sake. What happened after? Annie gave her a cigarette and her cell number? It's creepy.
Nothing wrong with the Teen Cover except the fact that Lohan already looked 30.
BREAKING: MILEY CYRUS NUDE SCANDAL!!!
New allegations have surfaced suggesting that Miley Cyrus showers every morning completely nude. Representatives from Disney could not immediately be reached for comment.
The girl from "The Ring."
It's not the bare back, she looks like she just rolled off of the Jonas brothers. All three of them!!!
I must be getting old, but at 15 she does not need to look like a 30 year old woman. Can't she wait until she is 19 to look 30?
Not scandalous. Not licentious. Perhaps a bit avant garde for a provencial American teen from the fly-over states, but hell, Annie knows how to shoot a tasteful nude, and in this Miley in IN NO WAY nude. She has nothing to be embarrassed about. We puritanical 'murricans are the ones who ought to be "embarrassed and ashamed..."
Just like seeing a girl in a bathing suit is different than seeing her in her lingerie, it's not what she's showing, it's how she's showing it. I'm sure she bares more in lots of her concerts, or even on her Disney show, but that's a bed sheet, and that's bed hair. Those details and any number of others make this a Lolita shot.
Of course, I don't know that she necessarily needs a stern talking to, but I do think her dad does.
That fabric she's holding represents ten times the fabric I used to wear at her age when I mowed the lawn.
What's gross is she is 15, and she looks tousled and recently bedded...don't feign obtuseness, we all know what it infers. And it's for a magazine for grown-ups.
It does not bear comparison to the age-appropriate sensuality (yes, there is such a thing!!) of TigerBeat or the girl from the Cruella DeVil video.
We're sexual creatures from a young age. It's just a matter of how detailed you want to get, and how much you want to blur the lines between youthful sensuality and adult sexuality.
I think this crosses the line.
To Annie: What's wrong with taking a NICE, AGE-APPROPRIATE photo of young girls? Why do you have to exploit them? As the older person, YOU should act more responsibly! For shame!
[z.about.com]
Not a big deal. She's just four years closer to marrying a back-up dancer, popping out two kids, shaving her head, having a nervous breakdown, and playing the girlfriend to some bitchy gay actor on a bad sitcom.
In four years we will look back on this and remember "the good old days."
I'm not American. I was born in France, for god's sake. But this is supposed to be sexy. And she is topless. And you're not supposed to take sexy, topless photos of fifteen-year-olds.
It's. Just. Creepy.
Are Billy Ray and Miley's publicity folks really so daft as to not know that this would be the ultimate outcome of Leibovitz' suggestions?
Further, "take your clothes off and here's a sheet" should have been a slight clue.
Bottom line is it's not surprising Leibovitz posed these photos, but the question is, art or not, why they agreed to them.
Unless this is just the latest PR move to keep her empire rolling in dough so she can make the jump from Disney star to "real" actress in Hollywood.
It's not the pictures I object to - it's the Cyruses pitching Miley as a wholesome, good-for-you role model kind of girl, and then turning around and permitting suggestive pictures to be published in a national magazine. I had no problem with the Britney pics, nor Brooke Shields or AJ - they weren't selling all-American goodness.
At least they should wait until she's seventeen before trying to "glamorize" her image.
@ObtuseIntolerant:
Good on you. Exactly; she's supposed to look like she just got nailed. And that's seriously wrong.
And let's not forget, despite all the excuse-making: technically, Daddy Cyrus as the guardian, broke the law here in California.
How long until the nude Elizabeth Hasselback photos and/or sex tape make their way to the Internets? And at what age?
what's the hulabaloo - grand theft auto 4 is okay but god forbid a girl shows her back.
Hannah Does Montana!
OK, ok, I know. That's wrong. And too early.
Hanna Montana is one of the most annoying shows ever on television -- ever! It is more annoying than that one where the chimp was a detective -- and less watchable.
Bunch of fuckin Puritans, still, 250 years later.
@Honeybhind: Exactly right about Grand Theft Auto and the National Program for All Teens Everywhere...
Lots of bangbang, but no kisskiss.
Disney's not called "Duckau" and "Mouschwitz" for nothing.
The global sexualisation of pre-teens & teen is very disturbing. It's all way too much pressure for very young girls to be dealing with, where will it all end? Girls trying to look 30 and 30year olds trying to look 13. It's all so wrong.
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