So young Miley Cyrus rises to fame on Hannah Montana, gets her pop country singer Billy Ray a job on the set, becomes a cash cow for Disney, poses almost topless on a Vanity Fair cover, and now this week at age 15 gets castigated on blogs for looking a little too provocative with a milk mustache. (Ad blogger Steve Hall deconstructs America's can-you-believe-it-but-let's-look-closer obsession here.)
Sex works in advertising because it is an irrepressible part of our response mechanisms, and one that may be the most easy visual. (By comparison, it's really hard to communicate the scent of fresh-roasted meat in magazine or TV creative.) Societal mores aside, the human physiology is ready to reproduce around age 13, and young teenagers respond to any whiff of hormones. The very fact that there is a lower limit to what society approves of in sex, officially, means the people who want to get a response are going to step slightly across that line.
Marketers behind such Miley "scandals" may stage these events because they know there is a difference between what people say they don't like and what they respond to. The same parents and teens upset that a glowing Disney star would look so provocative are chasing her all over the internet and buying all her DVDs and MP3s.
In a way, the Miley scandals are a bit like a gruesome highway accident, that thing on the side of the road that reminds you of your own physical rawness, forcing you to slow down and look even if you really don't approve of the bodily concept. Sex and fear, anger and shock heighten impressions and extend recall. We're not suggesting that snapping photos of a 15-year-old girl in a sheet is right. We're just saying that major entertainment companies who pose teenage girls in tight tank tops with milk drizzling from their lips know exactly what they're doing.
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