The photo caption reads: “Noah Lindsey Cyrus & Emily Grace Reaves, with Emily’s dog Bunny, pose for the cameras at Brittany Curran’s Retro 50’s Poolside Bash on Saturday, May 30 in Burbank sporting Juicy Couture vintage bathing suits. The two friends filmed an episode of their Noei and Ems Show at the party. So pretty!” (Click pic to enlarge)
Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I totally and completely covet that “retro” swimsuit (for when I’m not preggers, natch – that adorable little skirt would make me look like a circus clown right now), there are SO many things wrong with this picture. See, Noah, i.e. “Noei”, Cyrus is Miley Cyrus’ little sister. As in, she’s nine. And her little gal pal Ems? Is eight.
1. This is not the Nickolodeon Kids’ Choice Awards – the one venue at which it might be appropriate to let pre-tween walk the red carpet. Rather it is for the pool party of one Brittany Curran – a 19-year-old starlet I’ve never heard of but apparently likes to invite 9-years-olds over to “play”.
2. They’re wearing swimsuits, yes. But lacking any context of an actual water-filled receptacle, it kinda looks like they’re wearing little hooker dresses and jackets. Not to mention all the makeup and – I strongly suspect – spray tans involved.
3. A nine-year-old chugging a Red Bull. That is one child who will not be hitting her 8-o-clock bedtime, methinks. And it’s even a school night. (Dear Cyrus Parents: I gave you a pass on the Vanity Fair nakie-pics debacle because 15-year-olds are notorious for doing things like that – albeit on a less national scale – but a nine-year-old cannot purchase a Red Bull. Someone had to give it to her. Please supervise your children. Thank you.)
4. This marks my age I’m sure, but a nine-year-old and an eight-year-old “filming” an “episode” of their (YouTube only) “show” that centers around a swimsuit party sounds a) crazy and b) a little creepy. There are pedophiles out there, people. Egads. At the very least there are anonymous commenters out there, one of whom wrote, “the girl on the right has fat thighs.” (Holy crap, if an 8-year-old has fat thighs then what chance does a post-pubescent actual woman have?!?)
5. This last one is just my personal pet peeve but who names their girl “Noah”?? I have nothing against off-beat names but I wish people would leave boy names to the boys! You have no idea how hard it is to name a little boy these days!! People keep taking all the boy names – think Ryan, Jordan, Kyle, Taylor, Charlie and Micah – and appropriating them for girls! A girl can take a boys name and everyone thinks it’s cute and original but let me assure you it does not work the other way around. The net result is a dwindling pool of appropriate boy names. Basically you’ve left us with John, Ralph and Atrayu. Oh, and Horace. Seriously, quit it!
What say you? Am I overreacting? Did I miss something hilariously atrocious? Do you not share my hatred of girls stealing boys names?
You always have such an interesting point of view!
I guess since girls have taken to wearing boy's clothes, There's no stopping them from taking the names also!
eek.
I think maybe I'm glad I don't have little girls? We'd have to move to the middle of nowhere.
There are so many things wrong here! Red bull for a 9 year-old?!?!?! Little girls partying with starlets? Doing web shows? Being called "fat"?!?!?!
I'm just glad my little girl is the way she is. We went to the playground today, and she climbed, swung, and played like the boys. And they got out of her way, lol!
There is so much wrong with what they are doing to those little girls….. I don't even know where to start!
Oh, and, ummmmm…… do you know my real name? 🙂
So disturbing on so many levels!
Ditto on the boys names. We had a name list a mile long with our daughter. But with the boys there were maybe 3.
I am SO WITH YOU about the name thing. Less than six weeks ago I was confronted with the reality of naming a second little boy. I was so enchanted by the name Scout, but didn't go with it because too many people thought it was just too much of a girl's name, like the girl in To Kill A Mockingbird and Bruce Willis/Demi Moore's daughter. Such a bummer, since I think that without literary and celebrity reference, it sounds like a boy's name. But oh well. I love my little James/Jamie anyway.
(Congrats on the pregnancy, by the way! I am absolutely able to relate to your pregnant workout woes.)
What bothers me is all the strange spellings people have these days. Saw 2 classics the other day.
Jakub & Klaetyn
Please people!
John!!
What a great name for a girl. We'll take that…snatch!
I agree and this all just depresses me as well.
My first love is TWEEN FICTION and Ive been told routinely by agents that if I dont add in sex and drinking even the greatest voice/writing ever will no longer sell.
sad sad.
Miz, who hates to mention that she kinda sorta likes the BOY NAMED SUE 🙂 and the girl named DEVON thing.
Funny observation about girls stealing boys names.
It will actually be interesting to see if we ever live in a time where women are so empowered and men are so secure in their masculinity that you could name a boy Priscilla and every one would just think it was cute and quirky, like naming a girl Kyle or Ryan.
Not in my lifetime I'm thinking.
I didn't give the Cyrus' a pass on the Vanity Fair issue. My kids watched Hannah Montana a few times until I realized how consistantly sassy everyone on the show was. But now, I won't even accept a free hand me down Hannah Montana t-shirt for my daughter. It wasn't just the pictures of her. The ones wth her dad were creepy, too.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with little girls (who are related to at least semi-famous people) playing at celebrity parties. Provided their parents are there. Which is not the case here.
Honestly, it looked a bit like they were hitting the red carpet for the pedophile awards (as they were nominated for best web show).
And why can't the nine year old be satisfied with tons of sugar?
I have a friend who named her little girl Noah. I guess the biblical figure was named after a woman? Never checked that one out. Seems normal now, but when I first met them I thought it was the weirdest name ever.
There should be a license to be a parent. Sometimes I feel like we're headed toward a future like the movie Idiocracy. Sad that little girls can't be little girls anymore.
those pictures are super creepy…
excuse me! my name is tyler and i'm a female, and i enjoy it very much. i was actually named after my mom's roommate's sister. this was before tyler became a top boy name…
*tiptoes in*
I really like boys' names for girls.
In other news . . .
Ok, I'm speaking as someone who's steeped in the LA culture (and is PASSINGLY familiar with the Cyrus family), so take the below with that in mind (either adding to or subtracting from my credibility, LOL).
First, I have to admit that although I wasn't crazy about the Vanity Fair pics (there was DEFINITELY something creepy about the picture of Miley in her dad's lap), I understood it from a marketing perspective. Frankly, her years as Hannah are numbered. She's getting older, her market is SUPER young, she's only been on the air 3 years, and she'll probably only be able to do Hannah for another 3, max. She's got to start making the kid-to-young-adult transition early. That is, for better or worse, part of the job she's working.
Yes, it's weird that the little girls are at a 19-year-olds b-day party. No qualifiers there.
As soon as I looked at them I knew they were wearing swimsuits. The idea of a "hooker dress" didn't even cross my mind until you wrote it. And my initial reaction was actually, "Thank God they're wearing little-girl-appropriate swimsuits and not freakin' bikinis!!!" LOL.
As far as the YouTube "shows" . . . you know, I'm not crazy about them, but then again, every kid I know is a YouTube addict out here. (And Facebook. Dear God, I hate Facebook.) And the Cyrus parents have made no secret about the fact that they're trying to teach their kids to handle the paparazzi instead of trying to shield them from it. Which sounds bad until you think about the kids that were shielded and then had the effects of fame hit them all at once (think Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Macaulay Culkin, etc.). So the kids having a YouTube show, given the environment that they live in . . . well, I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't necessarily think it's a GOOD thing, but I see the reasoning behind allowing it. (And seriously, even WITHOUT a YouTube show, these girls are pedophile bait. They may not be household names, but they're well-known enough around here that their pictures are already on the internet, anyway. Someone looking for that kind of thing has probably found them already. And again, I come back to giving the parents credit for keeping them safe while teaching them to handle the paparazzi.)
Honestly, the Cyruses are definitely doing SOMETHING right: Miley's a really level-headed kid with her priorities in the right place, and as far as anyone can tell, so are her siblings. Miley's not out drinking, drugging, etc. That wholesome image really *is* who she is – and that NEVER happens out here. Kids Miley's age are already out drinking and clubbing, especially if they're celebrities, because no nightclub will turn away a celeb, regardless of his/her age.
I mean, I get the weirdness of it all. But Los Angeles is a weird place, which is even weirder if you work in film/TV, and it's even WEIRDER if you happen to have any sort of fame at all. So you either have to learn to live in it without getting sucked into the Weirdness Undertow, or . . . you just get sucked under, and end up like Lindsay Lohan. The Cyrus kids are learning to live in it. Weird in most places? Sure. Eminently sensible for a celebrity family in Los Angeles. Yup.
My guess is that she wanted to include her little sister at the birthday party, and the other little girls were there for her sister. That seems totally normal to me.
i kind of like the boys-names-for-girls, too. and there are still some that work for both — cameron, for example (i like that name).
My middle is Ralph!
These pics are ridic and I thought they were a joke and made-up until I read your entire blog and realized, wait, these girls were actually dressed up like this and trotted out like little mini hookers. It's too sad to even comment.
PS just a guess but were you planning on naming your next baby Noah if it's a boy? 😉
Stuff like this makes me cringe, especially now that I'm a dad of a little girl. I don't know what's worse: This image being promotted to young girls that this is acceptable atire and therefore make it something they want, or the parents who give in and buy this type of stuff for them.
I'm not saying that all girls should dress like the characters on Little House on the Prairie, but let kids dress like kids, not 20-year-olds in the club scene! Kids should be able to be dressed in fun clothes, but their clothes should never put them in a position to be the object of desire or have flirtatious outfits…that's just wrong.
I'm kinda torn.
My daughter loves Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus … and she's a down to earth, smart, modest, fun, respectful 16 year old. I tried really hard to raise her right, but not hide her from the world, an as of now (knock on wood) it seems to have worked.
Lucky for her we've always been lower middle class, so she hasn't had to worry about growing up with money!
I remember when my daughter was going into Jr. High (so 7th grade) I spoke to some parents I knew as well as the principal of my daughter's grade school and they told me that nowadays if kids get into trouble it's in Jr. High. By the time they get to High school, they've either already done it or aren't going to. Scared the bejeezus out of me to think that my 11 year old was facing stuff I didn't really see even in high school (like girls getting caught giving oral sex in cars at school dances. 11 year olds. I kid you not.)
And this is in an average neighborhood.
Sometimes I wonder how my kids seem to have gotten through it relatively normal.
Well, as normal as you can be with me for a mother!
(and my daughter's name is Harley…not named after the bike, it was from a baby name book I swear!)
The Redbull? AAAAHHHHHH!
It sounds crazy and creepy to me too. Little girls wearing mums make-up for playing dress-up, okay, that's fine. But strutting around like little celebrities? Next thing you know they'll be doing lines of coke before their 12th birthday. Shudder. This is awful.
wrong on so many levels…
the sexualization of young girls, the red bull, youtube show. Where are the parents and why do they think this is OK??
I live in the crazy LA/OC area of CA but I don't work in it so I can't relate to the one commenter who is part of it. For me, I am really tired of this & seeing parents let their kids do this. I think it is wrong on a lot of levels. I just think kids are growing up way too quick which leads to this Lindsey Lohan & others that get fame too early OR don't & just get caught up in drugs, alcohol & more. Some don't but many do. I just think way too much adult stuff happening too early. Kids can't be kids anymore.
I swing on the names thing but I never had to name a child since I am a stepmom.
I'm right there with you on this one, those pictures make them look like baby hookers.
Boys names for girls names DRIVES ME NUTS. Actually I thought it was cute until I had 3.5 of the little buggers. We were fresh out of names after #2.
Those pictures are so disturbing! Honestly, you can see who these kids' role models were… In Afrikaans, my mother tongue, we have a saying "Quick to ripe, quick to rot".
This is wrong on so many levels – I think you discussed most of them. Unbelievable & very sad.
I think Horace is a cute girl name, we should name our next one Horace. And her nickname could be Hor, oh wait… that won't work.
Sadly, this is just another example of our sex/youth obsessed culture. I fully expect to see more photos like this in the future. I hope no one looks to Hollywood for moral decisions anymore.
Let's hope the Redbull was a prop, I'm thinking so.
My daughter loved to play dress up when she was a kid – difference is that she did so in too big dresses, shoes and make-up she applied herself, LOL.
I took a picture here and there but they were for our own enjoyment, not for the world to see.
Glad I have boys. This is just an example of kids that will grow up to fast and not really appreciate what life is really about. They will think fame, attention, money and things are IT. Too bad.
i thought the pictures looked fake. Like there heads look big to me… but fat thighs- no way! too sad
I'm with you–we were so sure Blake was definitely manly and then I remembered Blake Lively. Ah well… And after having 3 girls you'd think we had plenty of boy names ready, but no, we didn't. The ARE harder!
9 year olds do film their own shows these days. We used to put on plays for anyone who would watch when we were younger, well its the same thing but with their resources. As for posing in suits – the suits are cute – the context seems odd.