The exhausting battle between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor we mentioned yesterday has inexplicably ensued, rolling heads and pummelling the depths of this-needs-to-stop-right-now like never before.
The stand off between Sinead and Miley is exhausting because neither of their arguments or their behaviour is right.
On the one hand—to call on fatally weak Playground logic—Miley started it, with this grossly out of context and low jab at Sinead O’Connor, an artist who she had previously admitted to being inspired by. Not so subtly mocking someone’s mental state to your 14 million followers? There’s low and then there’s straight up dirty.
Before Amanda Bynes…. There was…. pic.twitter.com/6JZPVnunPc
— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) October 3, 2013
On the other hand, we have Sinead who approached her open letters to Miley Cyrus with some seriously flawed, double standard arguments that it’s become difficult to take her stance seriously. In one of three open letters, Sinead O’Connor writes, “This is a dangerous world. We don’t encourage our daughters to walk around naked in it because it makes them prey for animals and less than animals”, and that Miley, “ought be protected as a precious young lady”. What is presented here is a forceful slut-shaming rhetoric, promoting an unhealthy discourse of women as objects “to be protected” and as potential “prey” for presenting themselves in the wrong way. This was the last thing I would have expected to be nurtured from this ludicrous conversation between two stars.
At this point, neither Miley or Sinead are playing this game right, and if there’s one thing that needs to stop is these back and forth open letters that breed negativity. In fact, here’s an open letter to the open letter-writers that are flooding this issue on the internet in the past day.
Dear epistolary warriors,
Let’s begin with the obvious. Writing open letters on the internet is fucking awful. Open letters are the worst. I can’t even go on I feel so self-aware and terrible.
In vain,
Pedestrian.
Title images by Jason Kempin and Fred Tannaeu via Getty.
