Miley Unleashed
“Mother’s Daughter” and the radical evolution of Miley Cyrus
Britney’s shiny, fire-truck-red latex catsuit is back, this time with metal teeth on the crotch—specifically the crotch of Miley Cyrus as she crawls, punches, flexes, and gyrates her way through the 2019 video for “Mother’s Daughter.” Directed by Alexandre Moors, the video is a carefully wrought spectacle, and the visual reference to Britney Spears’s outfit from the 2000 “Oops… I Did It Again” video is unmistakable. Female American pop stars cannot appear in red catsuits, curved crotch spikes aside, without evoking “Oops,” especially if they share Disney Channel training, as Cyrus and Spears do.
Oops… I Did It Again was the first CD I ever bought. I idolized Britney Spears in all of her midriff-baring glory, developing an affinity for crop tops myself that has not, to this day, worn off. (This would likely resonate with Miley, who once joked, “If I owe anybody an apology, it’s the people who make the bottom half of shirts.”) While Britney Spears was in the sweet spot for my unquestioning adoration (she was about nineteen when I was six), Miley Cyrus was born a couple years before me. This is important because though I loved Hannah Montana (my best friend and I had a sleepover in high school to screen Hannah Montana: The Movie), I aged out of her demographic. I was in college when Miley abandoned Hannah.
Five years later, with her feminist anthem “Mother’s Daughter,” Miley alchemized her teenage rebellion into the battle cry of a line “don’t fuck with my freedom.” She had finally articulated her own evolution.
That iconic Spears video set a stage of sorts for “Mother’s Daughter.” In “Oops,” the flare-legged, turtle-necked red catsuit and its contrasting white ensemble represent the angelic lyric “you think I was sent from above” and the devilry that undermines it—“I’m not that innocent.” The song’s speaker rebuffs the advances of a suitor who, in the video, has followed (stalked?) Spears all the way to Mars to present her with the long-lost necklace from Titanic. She keeps the necklace, admonishes him (“aw, you shouldn’t have”), and sends him away.
When Cyrus sings “back up, boy” multiple times while wearing a similar but edgier catsuit in “Mother’s Daughter,” she amplifies the sentiment of “Oops… I Did It Again.” For all its coy, faux-confessional distress, “Oops” is a song about rejecting a man. In her video, Spears oscillates between a neutral-sex-object stare and what looks like genuine anger as she lip-syncs that she’s not that innocent, dammit! Cyrus channels this defiance and intensifies it. A pretend apology becomes a demand, if not a restraining order: back up, boy.
The lyrical echo and the catsuit allusion amount to a gesture of solidarity, Cyrus to Spears, from one Disney-bred child star to another. Spears did not fare well during her transition from teen stardom to adult celebrity. She suffered a decline in mental health well-documented by a tabloid frenzy in which photographers took pornographic pictures of her without her consent. Though Cyrus clearly grew to resent the confines of her Hannah Montana image and broke away from it with typical teen celebrity rebellion (getting tattoos, smoking weed, dancing “sexy,”, etc.), that virginal guise also protected her for longer. In 2008, Annie Leibovitz photographed Cyrus topless but holding a sheet over her chest for Vanity Fair. Cyrus was 15 at the time and still in high Hannah-Montana gear. In the accompanying story, Bruce Handy wrote, “in an era when every under-age actress in Hollywood is stalked by the Ghost of Britney Future, [Cyrus’s success] depends on her continued public innocence.” Cyrus, however, told Handy that because she knew Spears (and Lindsey Lohan, another Disney “trainwreck”), she understood that they had “good hearts” and were “struggling.” The catsuit in “Mother’s Daughter” suggests that Spears, supposedly a bad example to follow, is a pop-mother to Cyrus, worthy of homage.
I coached a U12 volleyball team in 2014. One day at practice, the subject of Cyrus came up. The year prior had been rife with her unruly performances: she’d licked a sledgehammer naked in the video for “Wrecking Ball”; the drug/party ode “We Can’t Stop” had topped the charts; and at the VMAs, Cyrus had wiggled her tush while grinding on Robin Thicke. A nine-year-old player told us she’d been crushed when Miley eviscerated Hannah, saying with unnerving gravitas, “Talk about breaking a little girl’s heart.”
Cyrus distanced herself from Hannah Montana over the course of about five years. As she told Elle, “The minute I had sex, I was kind of like, I can’t put the fucking wig on again.” Yet after so much effort to shed, if not exorcise, her Disney persona, Cyrus returned in 2019 to blond hair and blunt bangs in the style of that famed wig. This surprised me, in a good way. “I decided that I’ll just be Hannah forever,” Cyrus said in a cheerful Twitter video after her trip to the salon. A few months later, she put out the “Mother’s Daughter” video. By permitting her child-star hair aesthetic in the same space as her edgiest feminist work yet, the video offers a visual reconciliation with the past. Regarding her Hannah Montana period, Cyrus told Elle, “I feel like I’m just not ashamed of that anymore.”
“Mother’s Daughter” forms part of Cyrus’s triumphant reclamation of her highly scrutinized “Wrecking Ball” video. In “Wrecking Ball,” Cyrus rides a literal, gigantic wrecking ball naked or semi-nude, depending on the cut of the video. She endured a maelstrom of slut-shaming for this performance. In an open letter Sinéad O’Connor told Cyrus to stop “prostituting” herself. Though the discourse between O’Connor and Cyrus devolved—Cyrus ridiculed O’Connor’s mental health struggles and (righteous) anti-Pope activism; O’Connor said Cyrus was “too busy getting [her] tits out” to educate herself—O’Connor’s reaction was indicative of the misogyny, internalized and overt, that flared up in the video’s wake. One writer for The Guardian criticized Cyrus for having filmed “a wank fantasy” and predicted she would feel “embarrassed” about the video in the future. “Mother’s Daughter” is spliced with close-ups of Cyrus’ face, a tear running down her cheek in a shot nearly identical to one that appears throughout “Wrecking Ball” (ironically, Cyrus told Rolling Stone that the shot had been inspired by O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares 2 U.”) By referencing a much-maligned past project, “Mother’s Daughter” seems to say, “I regret nothing.”
I do wish that the “Wrecking Ball” video had not been directed by Terry Richardson, the photographer notorious for sexually harassing numerous young women, particularly relatively unknown models. His involvement casts the video in a far creepier light. The fact that he steered the whole project makes it seem more voyeuristic, as if the “wank fantasy” comment, which I find abhorrent, might also be partly true. Still, Richardson’s contribution doesn’t devalue the video wholesale—rather, it exemplifies the rampant misogyny of the music industry that Sinead O’Connor was trying to warn Cyrus about, albeit without much tact or solidarity.
Reactions to “Wrecking Ball” obsessed over Cyrus’s nakedness. But the policing of her so-called indecency and sexual pantomiming obscured the politics of self-pleasure put forward by the video, wherein Cyrus rides the wrecking ball. She sits in a prime position for (female) masturbation, mounting—that is, assuming a traditionally masculine posture above—the object which could provide that pleasure. And she rides it as an agent of destruction. Rarely is Miley Cyrus recognized for promoting self-pleasure through her continued willingness to openly touch herself, both sensually and sexually. At the 2020 VMAs an enormous, glittering disco ball descended from the ceiling during Cyrus’s performance of “Midnight Sun.” She straddled the chain from which it hung, reigning from atop the wrecking ball once more.
Any credit owed to Cyrus for her sexual boldness is limited by her tasteless appropriation of Black culture. This tension emerged most infamously during her 2013 VMAs performance, alongside Robin Thicke, mashing her song “We Can’t Stop” into his song “Blurred Lines.” Critics panned the performance for using Black women as props—the Black back-up dancers wore enormous teddy bears on their backs—and for the appropriation of twerking, a dance move with roots in New Orleans bounce culture and, going further back, Mapouka dance in Côte d’Ivoire. As Jody Rosen wrote for Vulture, Cyrus’s twerking allowed her to “[annex] working class Black ‘ratchet’ culture, the potent sexual symbolism of Black female bodies, to the cause of her reinvention: her transformation from squeaky-clean Disney-pop poster girl to grown-up hipster provocateur.” While Rosen and company identified the racism of “Miley’s Minstrel Show,” the anonymous women’s bodies police took to the internet to call Cyrus a slut. Even more esteemed sources, such as The New York Times, cashed in on double standards and called the performance a “molesting of Robin Thicke.”
Cyrus’s Black appropriation phase lasted for quite some time. When I finally listened to the entirety of her 2013 album Bangerz, I found that some of the songs try cringingly hard to be Black. It’s a toss-up whether “Do My Thang,” where Cyrus raps lines like “mind yo bidness / stay in yo lane, bitch,” or “SMS (Bangerz)” is worse. Despite featuring Britney Spears (a combination that should be unstoppable) and sampling “Push It” (released in 1987 by female rap super-group Salt-N-Pepa), “SMS (Bangerz)” manages to be remarkably bad. The refrain “I be struttin’ my stuff” sounds wrong when Cyrus says it. And when Cyrus hosted the VMAs in 2015, she wore dreads.
Still, that 2013 VMAs performance was also an unrestrained display of female self-gratification, particularly in the “Blurred Lines” segment, where Cyrus was effectively invited to (coerced into?) acting as the sex object. She stood in for Emily Ratajkowski, the most prominent of three female models featured in the “Blurred Lines” music video, all of whom appeared topless. (Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, of course, were fully clothed.) So at the VMAs, Cyrus turned her role in a song about domesticating women and disregarding consent into a ribald quest for female pleasure, grinding on a foam finger and on Thicke himself.
Cyrus retains this sexually transgressive spirit in the video for “Mother’s Daughter,” in which she touches herself often and all over the place. She rubs her breasts and hips and pelvis; she also rubs up on Vendela, a female model who receives the most screen time besides Cyrus herself. In the video Cyrus, who identifies as pansexual, enacts a queer orientation with Vendela—yet another facet of the “back up, boy” sentiment: back up, boy, because I don’t need a man at all.
Both the imagery throughout “Mother’s Daughter” and the crew it assembles flaunt female anatomy. A menstrual, traditionally feminine red-and-pink color palette is the backdrop for shots of scarlet-spotted underwear and balloons shaped like nipples rubbing together. These balloons poke fun at the shirtless double standard (flat-chested men can go topless in public; women, as well as men with “moobs,” a word I wish didn’t exist, are punished for the same behavior.) Actor, dancer, and single-mother advocate Melanie Sierra adds to this commentary: she appears breastfeeding her youngest child, lit from above and wearing a sun-rayed crown like the Virgin Mary herself—though, as the video reminds us in one of its flashing slogans, “VIRGINITY IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT,” and pregnancy leaves marks. The video cuts between a metallic-ring-embellished C-section scar, another taboo image, and a horizontal zipper unzipping in the same position. The teeth of the zipper recall the metal fangs on Cyrus’s catsuit, an allusion to vagina dentata. This is a Latin phrase for a myth found in folklore worldwide about a woman whose vagina teeth protect her from rape and/or punish men who have intercourse with her by castrating them. This costuming choice may be the most overt visual version of the “back up, boy” imperative: back up, boy, or I will bite off your penis.
And yet the video resists a reading of “back up, boy” as directed only at male-bodied people. The most prominent man in the video, Casil McArthur, appears glittery, necklace-clad, and shirtless (remember: male nipples are allowed). He rubs his hand across his mouth, smearing his lipstick dramatically. This gesture emphasizes how the makeup, a tool of feminine performance, is just that: a tool. He can wield it defiantly. Looking anguished, he lip-syncs the words “back up, back up”—the word “boy” is elliptical. Because McArthur, a trans man, is the video’s only recognizable example of a man, it’s powerful to see him in particular perform this line. When his appearance emphasizes the construction and malleability of gender, his iteration of “back up, boy” rejects mainstream (cis) masculinity. “Mother’s Daughter,” then, celebrates female anatomy—which has been mystified and maligned for millennia—but also proposes a transinclusive feminism. It’s a kind of body feminism that opens its embrace to femme, feminine, female, trans, and gender-nonconforming bodies. In this way, the video broadens the category of woman. In 2019, Cyrus told Elle, “‘She’ does not represent a gender. She is not just a woman. ‘She’ doesn’t refer to a vagina.”
I revel in the video’s attention to detail, such as model Aaron Philip’s sculptural, metallic purple heels and luxe white-fur blanket, but I wonder if this prettiness sanitizes the effect somewhat. The menstrual panties, for instance, with their evenly spaced, petal-like dots, are quite cute. Even when activist Trydryn Scott and dancer Paige Fralix undulate by a bonfire, their bare chests and backs painted with the slogans “I AM FREE” and “RIOT GIRL” in the style of “body posters” favored by the Ukraine-based, militant, sextremist group Femen, the raw scene feels cleaned up. The smoke billowing amidst their slow-motion writhing is blue and pink, for goodness’ sake. This is not to say that feminism can’t be artistic or portrayed by an auteur—see “New Rules” by Dua Lipa or “PYNK” by Janelle Monae. But the cool outfits and color-coordinated photoshoot backgrounds in “Mother’s Daughter” do somewhat elide the tenacity that real life requires of video guests such as non-binary skateboarding phenom Lacey Baker or youth water activist Mari Copeny.
This aesthetically pleasing form of feminism seems most effective when it interrogates beauty standards. Sure, Vendela, Miley, and her mother Tish (also prominently featured), are hot, skinny white women, but they’re only part of the equation. Philip, who was born with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, wears a sparkly, belted mini-dress and the aforementioned fabulous metallic heels. Dancer Amazon Ashley, who appears in a low-cut, chartreuse jumpsuit with a “World Wrestling Champion” belt around her waist, stands at 6’7’’. When Philip (the first Black, trans, disabled model to sign with a major agency) and Amazon Ashley (a Black, trans, “too tall” burlesque performer) and Angelina Duplisea (a white, cis, fat activist) all appear in the same work, an expansive understanding of body acceptance begins to emerge.
Duplisea, whose Twitter description reads “Plus Size Performer/Professional Fat Shaker,” in the video reclines nude among the pillows on an ornate chaise lounge. The emerald cloth in her hair, combined with her dangling earring and her glance over her left shoulder, evoke the 1665 painting Girl With a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vandermeer. Duplisea’s pose, with her left knee bent in the foreground, is also reminiscent of the figure of Venus in Peter Paul Rubens’s 1612 Venus, Cupid, Bacchus, and Ceres as well as Michelangelo’s 1531 statue Night, which Vandermeer later sketched in 1601 (La Nuit). These works of art were created during an era when women’s bodies were permitted to be larger, whether they labored in fields or feasted at banquets. Their fleshiness was revered. In response to “Mother’s Daughter,” online comments blatantly fat-shamed Duplisea—for instance, “I’m sorry, but the person in this image is not acceptable.” Such reactions lay bare the bleak reality that her mere presence in the video is radical. By alluding to the artistic lineage of the Renaissance, Duplisea’s portrayal in “Mother’s Daughter” points toward alternative forms of beauty. That possibility becomes even more liberating when triangulated with Philip and Amazon Ashley.
“Mother’s Daughter” pushes back on the notion that Miley’s father, Billy Ray Cyrus, made Miley into the star she is today. (Though no amount of pushing back changes the fact that Billy Ray’s fame, surname, and genes were a huge leg up.) Tish is Miley’s manager, and the song lyrics give her credit: “My mama always told me that I’d make it / so I made it.” As these lyrics play, we see a long shot of Tish and Miley absolutely decked out in Chanel. They wear matching tweed suits adorned by Chanel belts and necklaces, their arms crowded with bracelets and rings. Fittingly for these French-designed ensembles, they sit on a Louis VIX-style couch, Miley resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. Tish holds a (Chanel) teacup and saucer and gazes directly into the camera, looking pretty damn royal. Both lyrically and visually, Cyrus identifies herself with her matrilineal heritage, a feminist salute reinforced by cameos from elder relatives as well as her brief appearance in Joan-of-Arc-inspired golden armor. When I noticed that my research rabbit hole had led to dissecting the Cyrus genealogical tree, I decided to cut my losses and make educated guesses about the three older white people in leopard-print clothes who show up for less than a second: the woman in glasses looks like Cyrus’ maternal grandmother, Loretta Jean Palmer Finley. The man could be Carl Dean, husband of Dolly Parton, who is Cyrus’s godmother. The other woman could be Dolly herself. Or Dolly’s sister Stella. I do not know for certain. Regardless, here Cyrus celebrates her under-acknowledged ancestors, invoking the die-for-your-beliefs legacy of Joan of Arc and elevating her (biological, entrepreneurial) mother, Tish.
The first time I watched “Mother’s Daughter,” I was floored. The video introduced me to the new Era of Miley: in 2019, she divorced Liam Hemsworth, starred in a Black Mirror episode as a futuristic pop-princess heavily inspired by (and distorted from) herself, and joined Lana Del Ray and Ariana Grande on the new Charlie’s Angels soundtrack. With the song “On a Roll” by her Black Mirror character, Ashley O, Cyrus became the first female artist to chart songs in the Billboard 100 under three different names. In response to allegations that she’d cheated on Hemsworth, Cyrus tweeted, “You can say I am a twerking, pot-smoking, foul-mouthed hillbilly, but I am not a liar […] I am simply in a different place from where I was when I was younger.” The “Mother’s Daughter” video manifests this quote, albeit in totally different context: Cyrus acknowledges her past self, especially the thornier parts, but she’s looking ahead, paying tribute to her predecessors and embracing the contemporary feminist moment.
Back in 2008, those semi-nude photos of Cyrus in Vanity Fair unleashed a parental and media uproar (“MILEY’S SHAME,” blared one New York Post headline). Cyrus responded to the backlash with an apology and said publicly that she was “embarrassed” by the pictures. Ten years later on Instagram, she posted an image of an article about her apology with the caption “I’M NOT SORRY FUCK YOU.”
The “Mother’s Daughter” video makes a similar move. It validates “Wrecking Ball” and other past work that engendered misogynistic vitriol and even extends that affirmation to another singer, Britney Spears, whom the press has similarly punished for baring her body. “Mother’s Daughter” selects a lineage of antecedents to honor while also presenting a many-faceted, gender-encompassing, collective feminism that foregrounds the human body in many of its, to use a Darwinian phrase, “endless forms most beautiful.” The title of Cyrus’s 2019 EP, She Is Coming, couldn’t be more fitting—and “she” includes more people than ever before. ▩