My daughter comes downstairs ready to go out for a family dinner. She is wearing a fluorescent-pink crop top and has her hair scraped to the top of her head in a gravity defying ponytail.
I then utter the words I swore to my 17-year-old self I would NEVER say when I had kids: “You can’t go out dressed like that!”
Yet my daughter isn’t 17 – she is 10.
She thinks she looks like her pop hero Ariana Grande but she actually looks more like Little Britain’s Vicki Pollard.
At the age of 10 she is not mature enough to process what looks good and how to put it all together.
And why should she be? At the age of 41 I am still making fashion mistakes I know I will live to regret.
But when pop stars whose careers are funded by the tween and teen market parade half-naked on the telly all the time, it is no surprise that their 10-year-old fans think dressing like that is normal.
No wonder kids are confused. Just five years ago Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana, a wholesome country girl whose line-dancing routines my kids copied from the Disney channel.
Now, at 22, she is the self-styled bad girl of pop, posing provocatively on Instagram as a “sexy schoolgirl” in fishnet tights and a shirt open to her navel.
Then she rocked up to the Adult Swim Upfront Party in New York last week with a mankini barely preserving her modesty.
While no one can blame Miley for wanting to shed her wholesome image and prove to the world that she is all grown up, part of me wants to shake her and her “people”, and unleash a good old-fashioned sense of grown-up responsibility.
She may now be 22 but many of those little girls who watched her TV shows, bought her records and made her a millionaire when she was goody-two-shoes Hannah are still to hit their teens.
As a mum of two daughters, I am a proud feminist and believe firmly that women and girls can achieve anything and should be able to express themselves freely.
In fact, our family motto, much to my husband’s dismay, is borrowed from Beyonce herself: “Who runs the world? Girls!”
But along with achievement, expression and success has to come responsibility. Miley is a role model whether she likes it or not but I fear she is too busy being “grown up” to give that fact a second thought.
Let’s not just point the finger at poor old, misunderstood Miley. They are all at it.
Britney Spears went from the Mickey Mouse Club to launching herself into superstardom dressed as a lollipop-sucking schoolgirl in the video for Baby One More Time back in 1999.
But look how that ended up – failed marriages, losing custody of her children and a stint in rehab.
Yes, she is still coining it in Las Vegas and around the global money-making stadium circuit. But despite being a 33-year-old mum now, she is still falling back on shock and raunch.
At the weekend’s Billboard Music Awards she was prancing around on stage in a sheer catsuit with latex panels barely hiding a thing.
Why must pop stars like Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande dress like porn stars?
- OPINION
Mirror feature writer and mum-of-two Amanda Killelea says the transformation of wholesome teen TV stars into chart sexpots is confusing our children
My daughter comes downstairs ready to go out for a family dinner. She is wearing a fluorescent-pink crop top and has her hair scraped to the top of her head in a gravity defying ponytail.
I then utter the words I swore to my 17-year-old self I would NEVER say when I had kids: “You can’t go out dressed like that!”
Yet my daughter isn’t 17 – she is 10.
She thinks she looks like her pop hero Ariana Grande but she actually looks more like Little Britain’s Vicki Pollard.
At the age of 10 she is not mature enough to process what looks good and how to put it all together.
And why should she be? At the age of 41 I am still making fashion mistakes I know I will live to regret.
But when pop stars whose careers are funded by the tween and teen market parade half-naked on the telly all the time, it is no surprise that their 10-year-old fans think dressing like that is normal.
No wonder kids are confused. Just five years ago Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana, a wholesome country girl whose line-dancing routines my kids copied from the Disney channel.
Now, at 22, she is the self-styled bad girl of pop, posing provocatively on Instagram as a “sexy schoolgirl” in fishnet tights and a shirt open to her navel.
Then she rocked up to the Adult Swim Upfront Party in New York last week with a mankini barely preserving her modesty.
While no one can blame Miley for wanting to shed her wholesome image and prove to the world that she is all grown up, part of me wants to shake her and her “people”, and unleash a good old-fashioned sense of grown-up responsibility.
She may now be 22 but many of those little girls who watched her TV shows, bought her records and made her a millionaire when she was goody-two-shoes Hannah are still to hit their teens.
As a mum of two daughters, I am a proud feminist and believe firmly that women and girls can achieve anything and should be able to express themselves freely.
In fact, our family motto, much to my husband’s dismay, is borrowed from Beyonce herself: “Who runs the world? Girls!”
But along with achievement, expression and success has to come responsibility. Miley is a role model whether she likes it or not but I fear she is too busy being “grown up” to give that fact a second thought.
Let’s not just point the finger at poor old, misunderstood Miley. They are all at it.
Britney Spears went from the Mickey Mouse Club to launching herself into superstardom dressed as a lollipop-sucking schoolgirl in the video for Baby One More Time back in 1999.
But look how that ended up – failed marriages, losing custody of her children and a stint in rehab.
Yes, she is still coining it in Las Vegas and around the global money-making stadium circuit. But despite being a 33-year-old mum now, she is still falling back on shock and raunch.
At the weekend’s Billboard Music Awards she was prancing around on stage in a sheer catsuit with latex panels barely hiding a thing.
Then there’s Taylor Swift, who transformed herself from sweet and innocent country singer to a global pop phenomenon without barely a hint of scandal or naked flesh. Until now...
The video for her latest single Bad Blood opens with an ass-kicking Taylor in a latex bodysuit in a violent fight scene.
Then 25-year-old Taylor’s “girl-gang”, including Cara Delevingne, 22, Ellie Goulding, 28, and Selena Gomez, 22 – all hero-worshipped by my daughters – proceed to fight with rocket launchers and swords.
They might think it is all very 21st century girl power. I just think it is a bit predictable and unnecessary.fcom cleared ITV’s The X Factor of breaching broadcasting rules after thousands complained about sexy performances by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera before the 9pm watershed in 2010.
I am no prude but I have to admit I was uncomfortable watching with my children. I think that what youngsters are allowed to watch on TV should reflect what they are likely to see in real life.
Pop is not real life and therefore the people behind the industry seem to think there are no rules.
Yes, music is art and no one wants to stifle creativity. But when my kids are singing along in the car to Iggy Azalea, “Cause most guys only want one thing”, or to Robin Thicke, “I know you want it”, it makes me shudder.
Yes, Robin, the line is definitely blurred. My kids have no idea what the words mean but they are effectively children talking dirty.
People might argue it has been going on for years. Madonna, who is still writhing around on stage in fishnet tights and hotpants at the age of 56, practically used “sex sells” as a career plan from the outset. But Madonna never pretended to be a tween role model.But nowadays the pop career path seems to be: get a child TV star, build them a pre-teen fan base, turn them into a pop star, make them sexy and outrageous.
That might seem a perfectly plausible way to make a living in pop world but I doubt any mother would tell their daughters the way to get ahead at work is to put on a short skirt and a push-up bra and flutter those eyelashes.
Back in the 1980s, Madonna was one on her own – hidden between a bit of innocent Wham! or Bucks Fizz on Top of the Pops.
Now, watching pop music channels is a parenting minefield. My kids’ after-school club had to stop the children watching them as some videos were so explicit.
But that is not the only worry. Our kids can access horrific pornographic images at the click of a button online.
A survey found a quarter of kids had seen online porn by the age of 12 and experts fear exposure to such material can blur kids’ perception of what is appropriate sexual behaviour. Us parents have enough to worry about without pop stars adding to the burden.
Research shows that exposure to sexualised images like those in some music videos can increase the risk of young girls suffering eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression.
At the age of 10, my eldest daughter has already asked me if she is fat or thin – and that makes my heart sink.No matter how much we reinforce a positive body image at home, my girls are bombarded with so many images out of my control, many of them Photoshopped, that it is no wonder they are confused.
If grown women say that pictures of “perfect” celebrity bodies in the media cripple their self-esteem, then what hope have our children got?
The sad thing is that Miley, Britney, Taylor and co are all amazingly talented, bright, young women.
It is a sad reflection on us as a society that they appear to think being sexy is their biggest selling point.
