Miley & Taylor........ A double standard?

I'm not a big fan of Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana. Ok, not a fan at all. I don't think she is a good role model for young girls, and her defense of gay marriage a few months back reinforced that idea.

I'm sure we all know and remember the Miley Cyrus scandal of '08. She posed pretty scantily for Vanity Fair, then claimed she didn't know they would be published. People came down on her pretty hard, especially Christians. And rightly so. For someone her age and who is a role model, to be posing like that, was a disgrace and wrong. If you are not famliar with the photos and want to see them, here is a link to the google images result: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&q=miley%20cyrus%20vanity%20fair%20&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

OK. I'm sure you all heard about that. But what about the Taylor Lautner scandal. Oh. You didn't hear about that one? That's because there is no scandal. Maybe you haven't even heard of Taylor Lautner. If not, I'm going to enlighten you.

Taylor Lautner is a 17-year-old actor from a Christian family. He is in the popular "vampire" movies geared for teenagers, "The Twighlight" movies. He pretty much stars in the second movie, New Moon. From what reviews of the movie are saying, he appears shirtless for 3/4 of the movie, and the same reviews say that when he rips his shirt off on screen, the teenage girls in the theater scream.

I ran across this interesting article on Yahoo News one day - I did not search it out, it was a headline story. Here is a little from it:

Remember the huge uproar in April 2008, when 15-year-old Miley Cyrus appeared in "Vanity Fair" wrapped in a sheet, with her right shoulder and the top of her back visible, implying that, under the sheet, she wasn't wearing a shirt? That week, the cover of the New York Post read "Miley's Shame," the Christian Coalition called for the Hannah Montana star's employer, Disney, to reprimand the teenager, and finally Miley was forced to apologize in a statement to People Magazine, saying: "I never intended for any of this to happen, and I am truly sorry if I have disappointed anyone." The pandemonium was so huge that critics ranging from the ladies of "The View", to Bill O'Reilly, to Miley's fellow Disney star Joe Jonas all expressed their disapproval over what they saw as the sexualization of a child to sell magazines.

Now, with the premiere of his movie, "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," less than a month away, magazines, websites, and TV are blanketed with images of 17-year-old star Taylor Lautner, shirtless and showing off the body he trained for months to perfect for the role. And yet, none of the cultural critics who turned Miley's photos into a full-blown "scandal" have said a word about the sexualization of Taylor, who, at 17, is just two years older than Miley was during her "scandal" and is also a minor. So, does Hollywood have a double standard?


Hmm. Interesting. Does Hollywood - and Christians also - have a double standard here? Oh, but you say it is different when it is a boy. Women don't think like a guy, aren't visually stimulated. Oh really? Tell that to the screaming girls in theaters across America. Plus, ever hear of gay guys? Guys who are attracted to other males? I have read that most subscribers to "Playgirl", a magazine full of male nudity, are not women, but men. (Wonder how Levi Johnston feels about that?!)

Be honest. Would you want your 17-year-old son's shirtless picture splashed across the internet, movie screens, and all other sorts of places? Google "Taylor Lautner" and you will come up with tons of pictures of this young boy, many shirtless. Google "Taylor Lautner New Moon" and even more shirtless pictures will come up. Walk into the entertainment department of Walmart and you will see pictures of him, many shirtless. Wrong, or no big deal?

We live in a wicked world. A world full of sex and lust. Knowing all I know, there is no way I would allow my teenage daughter to pose like Miley Cyrus. Knowing all that I know, there is no way I'd let my teenage son appear shirtless to millions of people. People who would be lusting for her, for him.

Modesty is a thing of the past. Some would say a church like mine goes too far with standards of modesty. Yet some go further. The Bible says we should be modest, but no one agrees on what that is. I can tell you what it is not: It is not a guy running around shirtless. It is not a girl showing more than she is covering.

So do we have a double standard? Yes, we do. The case of Miley Cyrus versus Taylor Lautner helps show that we do.