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Artist News
Sinead O’Connor offers Miley Cyrus advice, Miley raises another problem
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 4 October 2013
As was widely reported online yesterday, Sinead O’Connor published an open letter to Miley Cyrus on her website. In it, she offered advice on Cyrus’s recently revamped image, expressing concern that, although she might think she was driving this change, the cycle of female popstars being sold on their sexuality over their talent was one that precedes her many times over.
She wrote: “Nothing but harm will come in the long run, from allowing yourself to be exploited, and it is absolutely NOT in ANY way an empowerment of yourself or any other young women, for you to send across the message that you are to be valued (even by you) more for your sexual appeal than your obvious talent”.
This was not apropos of nothing, O’Connor also noted. Cyrus said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone that elements of her image, and particularly parts of her ‘Wrecking Ball’ video were inspired by the Irish singer songwriter. Since then, O’Connor said, she has been bombarded with requests for comment by the media, hence the open letter.
Miley response was to mock Sinead on Twitter for, at one time, being depressed to the point that she feared she would harm herself. Something O’Connor did not, as you might expect, take kindly to. She pointed out in a response to the response the danger of signalling “that those who have suffered or do suffer mental health problems are to be mocked and have their opinions invalidated”. She also threatened to get her lawyers involved.
Rather that addressing this, or perhaps deleting her original tweet, Cyrus said she was too busy preparing for this weekend’s ‘Saturday Night Live’, which she is hosting, to care. Well, she didn’t actually say “care”, but it’s hard to see what else she could have meant.
Read CMU Editor Andy Malt’s editorial on this story here
