It has been a week or so since Miley Cyrus’ infamous twerking incident at the MTV Awards. Everyone on social media had something to say, a lot of it very mean towards the former Disney star. A lot of mean things were said about her body, choice of outfit for the performance and her provocative dance moves, especially the part where she twerks for the crowd and decides it’s a good idea to grind on married man and musician Robin Thicke. The worst part of it comes from the ignorant few who associate her new interest in hip hop and her dance moves to being “black”. It is pretty disturbing that people associate a young woman’s choice of dancing or music to a whole race of women. Anyway, that is a topic for another day. I’m here to complain about the harshness that was shown to this young woman and the kind of language that was not even necessary. Miley Cyrus comes from a family of artists that are used to being in the spotlight. She spent her whole life on people’s television screens playing a character suitable for young girls – Hannah Montana. What I consider smart is that once she was old enough, she ended the show and decided to make more teenager/young adult type of movies and make the same mistakes young adults do regarding different vices. Unfortunately for her, all this is captured in the media. The phase Miley is going through is what most people did in college and in their early twenties. Unlike us though, she has more money than most of us can even imagine. People will argue she is too young but she probably had more life experience than most of us by the age of 18 and probably a better work ethic too. People should not judge from their seat in their late twenties after they have made all their mistakes and recovered from them. Personally, I cannot go out as much as I used to before or wear the same scandalous dresses because I live and work in probably one of the smallest cities in the world. Also, because that is not the construed image I want people to have of me. I realised Rwandans will consider you a party girl if they see you out more than once and you could be the most sober person in the room, just having fun and you are categorised as “that girl” - you never know when this image will come back to haunt you.Why can’t we let Miley experience her own life and then make that decision? People need to stop pointing fingers when they live in a glass house or to be more specific when most of your binge drinking nights from university are still on facebook for everyone’s viewing pleasure. What do you 21st century women think?
