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Bonnie Fuller, who oversees Star magazine and is therefore the arbiter of American media standards, has a question about this whole Miley Cyrus thing, and its connection to the current Texas polygamy scandal: "Is it OK to sexualize a fifteen-year-old if it is in the pages of a high falutin' magazine and her parents seem OK with it? Or is this really not much different from parents in a cult acquiescing to having their teen daughters wedded and bedded?" Ummm... can we say 'No' to all of the above?

In one of her random HuffPo rants (reminiscent of her earlier fretting over the treatment of Britney Spears) Fuller exercises her trademark lack of self-awareness by not only piously standing up as the voice of morality (any asshole can do that), but by actually conflating a photo spread with an epidemic of actual statutory rape. The kind that happened in the real world.


I'm not sure that it is all that different. In both cases 15-year-olds, who are well under the age of consent, are being exploited because they are viewed as sexually attractive. And in both cases, their parents are allowing it to happen.

Miley may not have been forced to have sex with a creepy old man but she is being put out on display like a modern day Lolita and you can bet a lot of creepy old men will be eyeballing her bare shoulders and back and having nasty thoughts about her other parts that appear to be bare. Yuck!

She seems to be having trouble distinguishing between real stuff and media celebrity stuff, so allow us to help. Bonnie, just imagine a straight line, representing the spectrum of disgusting things in the world, from "Very disgusting" on one end to "Just amusingly disgusting" on the other. At the far end, towards "Very," is polygamy mixed with statutory rape. Closer to the middle are things like glossy photo shoots for Miley Cyrus (imagine that on the "Somewhat disgusting but mainly boring" branch), and Star magazine's existence. Then, closer the "Amusing" side, you'll find things like Gawker (I like to think), candy cigarettes, and ultimate fighting.

Yuck!