Miley Cyrus, Welcome to Hell

Those green bra photos were bad enough for a 15-year-old Disney-brand pop star, but controversy surrounding Miley Cyrus officially went bats@&t f^$%ing crazy today thanks to a Vanity Fair article and photo shoot. The photos in question that made everybody freak the crap out:

In the article, Cyrus is quoted as saying the first photo is "really natural" and "really artsy," but today released a statement of apology: "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about."

(Unimportant observation: shouldn't it be "whom"?)

The famously protective Disney released a statement saying, "Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines."

The photos were taken, by the way, by no less renowned a photographer than Annie Leibovitz...and Disney's right, the story does kind of suggest that it took some persuading to make Cyrus pose like that.

The article and pictures are up on Vanity Fair's website at the moment, although they were conspicuously missing for most of the day - presumably while the editors decided whether to pull it, run, and hide...or take advantage of the bad press. I guess the latter won out, as Vanity Fair found its spine and responded to Disney's allegation, saying "Miley's parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley."

If I've somehow failed to accurately describe just how massive this story is, have a little fun by searching for "Miley Cyrus" on Google News.

Have any thoughts on this? Is it a story totally blown out of proportion, or a terrifying example of the exploitation of a 15-year-old girl? And what about that pretty creepy but technically-nothing-wrong-with-it photo of Miley and her dad?

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