No Blurred Lines Here…

Until Sunday night I mistakenly believed foam fingers had but one purpose–cheering on the home team and indicating one’s belief that a team is, in fact, number one. Given that only Bama can claim that moniker, Roll Tide, the masses use the foam finger for fun. Evidently so does a certain Miss Cyrus. If Miss Cyrus lived in my house, she would be grounded. After I beat her black and blue. Perhaps I shouldn’t spank her–she might like it.

What I learn Monday, second hand so to speak, is that Miss Cyrus believes it appropriate to rub her near naked booty on a married father sixteen years her senior. Whaaa? This is apparently twerking. Call it what you like–looks to me like a little girl rubbin’ her backside on somebody else’s husband. Granted the man is wearing a striped suit and not putting up much of a fuss. Billy Ray and the dad from Growing Pains–can you claim your children? Neither one appears to know how to behave in public. Follow along.

Myself–I did not watch the VMAs as they unfolded–various reasons: can you say Brooklyn? Just kidding, unbunch your undies. Real reason: The Newsroom. And Real Housewives of New Jersey and Breaking Bad. So, lucky me, I watch the festivities in recap. Hmmm. Unaware of twerking as anything but shaking one’s ass, I do have advice. As an activity, it appears to be effective enough in grabbing attention and making a scene. No instruments, like a foam finger, need be added to prove it’s efficacy. Basically, if you’re over twenty-five, or your daughters don’t take dance–twerking is wild butt shaking. This girl, however, decides it might be okay to back that up into the crotch of a little boy’s father.

Some may say the fault lies with Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke’s runaway summer smutty ditty which references a dirty girl and her desire to get nasty. I hear the song and succumb to it’s beat and saucy lyrics. I’ve seen the video with mostly naked chicks–such tiny, tiny butts and waists. Shameful. In that video, Mr. Robin appears immune to dancing, naked ladies throwing themselves about him so perhaps he is naturally impervious. They, at least, appear to be closer to his age range. In VMA footage, he again appears cool as a cucumber so to speak.

This, combined with Miley’s strange hit, We Can’t Stop featuring a video in which a gentlemen eats a dollar sandwich and smoke blows from a random penis along with far too much butt spanking (is there an appropriate amount?) and freakish dancing bears, is more image than can be infused into the brain of a fifty-year-old. And then there are the taxidermy animals. Run Liam Hemsworth run! Don’t worry, if Liam doesn’t have the good sense to get out, his mother does. Mothers are all powerful. This engagement is so over. It’s been shaky all summer. Ain’t no way Hunger Games boy is gonna marry that.

At best, Miley seems confused as to how everything works. But then on stage, she seems quite clear in what she wants from another woman’s husband and it isn’t conversation. Oh, you didn’t see? Let’s recap. This is not imagined, a dream or fantasy. A girl, Miley, emerges from a giant stuffed teddy bear, wearing the rattiest furry bear bathing suit ever made. She has a problem, a tic of sorts, with her uncontrollable tongue darting about willy nilly. And she’s screeching. She skips like a child, appears to be a child (even sports two-year-old pigtail things on her head, like a child) and then whips off her furry bear onesie and gyrates on stage in a rubber bra and panties with her butt cheeks out for all to see. And again with the tongue. Put that thing away.

Provocative is rarely a problem for me. Writers read all sorts of shocking things and just this afternoon, trying to understand Miley’s intentions and give the girl the benefit of the doubt, I search out “public sexuality” thinking perhaps this is the problem. What I find are myriad stories I can never exorcise from my brain with website after website devoted to something called “dogging.” You don’t want to know. There are now a number of things for which I am unable to forgive Miss Cyrus–amongst them tutelage in something I never need know exists and the possibility that one of my children will follow my ipad history and decide I am a freak.

I remain puzzled at the foam finger. Seemingly from nowhere, as she gyrates in platform tennis shoes–really? You couldn’t get more creative than that? Pfft. Is this the eighties? I lived them, loved them and still wouldn’t be caught dead in a platform sneaker, doll. But what does one properly pair with a fuzzy onesie and a rubber bathing suit? Out of nowhere, emerges a foam finger which this girl uses not to point at the audience or to indicate her team, like Bama, is tops. Instead she uses it in a way that, in many states, would get her arrested. She even rests her foam finger on Robin Thicke’s nether region, just in case any of us watching are unaware that might be the hiding place of his privates. Again, my Chickens–so grounded.

Miley has parents. Evidently not the kind of parents who ground her ass. Robin Thicke does too. His mother, a lovely actress herself, no stranger to the arts and all that entails, said “I was not expecting her to be putting her butt that close to my son. The problem is now I can never un-see it.”

That, my dear, is the problem for all of us.