As the comment on the ABC News blog states: “…our children are sexualised so early…”

In case you are wondering what the hell I’m going on about, Miley Cyrus, daughter of ‘Achy Breaky Heart‘ singer Billy Ray Cyrus, posed nearly nude for the June issue of Vanity Fair. This flies in the face of her ‘good-girl’ image and alter-ego of Hannah Montana. Miley has since apologised to her fans for the indiscretion.

Annie Leibovitz shot the picture and claims that because the family was there right through the shoot then it’s OK, because they approved it. Annie Leibovitz is one of the worlds foremost fashion and illustrative photographers. I would imagine that the ability to say no to Annie would be very difficult indeed.

Leibovitz’s claims that it was a very simple portrait, without makeup, do nothing to dispel the fact that it is essentially nothing more than a sexual image of a fifteen year old girl.

Is Miley Cyrus heading down the path of many young female artists, who come to rely only on their sex appeal rather than their talent? That question will be answered over the coming years. It should be our responsibility to discourage this sort of behaviour.

On another note…I bought pizza from Divine Pizza in Khandallah. They have installed a flat-screen TV on the wall so punters can watch music videos while they wait for their dinner. At 6pm on Saturday night we (myself and my six year old twin boys) were subjected to gyrating half naked women. One of my boys began to ask pertinent questions about the female anatomy, which I can assure you were very hard to answer, or deflect in a crowded pizza parlour. I was tempted to ask the staff to turn it off – perhaps I should have. That would have been taking my responsibility seriously.