Ever since the VMA debacle a few days ago, there’s been one filthy word that’s been on everyone’s lips, blog posts, and cubicle commentary:
Miley.
The social media universe has been bombarded with all sorts of passionate takes and slants:
The Disgrace of Miley.
A Letter To Miley.
My Daughter Is Miley.
I’m Praying For Miley.
Miley, Miley, Miley.
I’m a little sick of it, to be honest.
Sure, Cyrus’ sad degeneration from fresh-faced, bright-eyed child star, to flesh-flashing, attention-grabbing party girl is well documented, and it’s certainly warranted to question her emotional state or her career choices lately.
However, the last time I checked, it takes two to tango, (or whatever it was that Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus were doing onstage last Sunday). Yet once again, the culpability, the disdain, the moral outrage, has been reserved only for the woman, while the man involved remains unscathed; a teflon participant in a dirty deed, who emerges sparkling clean.
Nevermind that Thicke is 16 years older than Miley, and should have a greater self-awareness or sense of dignity, or that he basically once again, (see the Blurred Lines Video), used the flesh of young women to promote his brand and peddle his product.
Apparently none of that matters very much to us.
Apparently we’re fairly OK with it.
The question I have is: Why is Robin Thicke exempt from national disgust?
Where are the sad laments over the way he is letting down young men?
Where are the crass jokes and the humiliating photos of him filling our newfeeds?
Where is the call for him to get his act together, or change his ways, or apologize to America?
Four words: Boys Will Be Boys.
Sadly, I don’t think Thicke will get any real criticism or take any kind of PR hit following the VMA’s, because that’s simply what we do with sex and scandal today at every level; we blame it all on the woman.
When young women are sexually assaulted, we question their pasts and critique their clothing choices, yet rarely ask their attackers to simply be accountable for having no self-control, and no respect for the humanity of the girls they’ve violated.
When middle school girls post half–naked photos of themselves on Instagram, we vilify and ostracize them as cheap and easy, while ignoring the dozens of young men who mindlessly vote their approval each time, who feed the insecurity, and who perpetuate each degrading act with the click of a mouse.
When high school girls get jobs at chain restaurants, which require them to expose their body parts to strangers over trays of nachos, we bemoan their lack of humility and class, yet never question the thousands of men who fill these eateries every day; many with daughters the same age as the ones they ogle.
When women embarrassingly writhe on poles for a few sweaty dollar bills, in dimly lit bars ironically called “Gentlemen’s Clubs”, we heap insults and judgement on them, yet let the many married men who pay both the dancers and the mortgage each month, come and go without blemish or critique.
Sooner or later, we need to stop letting boys be boys, and we need to challenge them to be men.
Sooner or later, we need to pull them out of their perpetual adolescence and into adulthood, and ask them to evenly carry the weight of sexual standards.
Sooner or later, we need to show our young men that the they can actually raise the moral temperature in sexual situations, not reflect them.
As someone who has spent the last 16 years trying to help teenage boys discover the meaning of true manhood, Robin Thicke’s tactics, and the lack of public concern for them worry me. More accurately, they make me sick to my stomach, because they remind me how low we’ve set the bar for them.
Unfortunately, Robin Thicke may actually be looked at after all of this with more street cred, as a “man’s man”; a cool, sophisticated, smooth operator, but I know better.
The truth is, he is a boy’s boy, (appealing to a sea of them), unable to restrain himself, unwilling to draw a line in the sand, and uninterested in saying no to using a woman as currency.
Guys, it’s time that we un-blur the lines of real manhood, and become true gentlemen.
