Most people follow Miley Cyrus’ Instagram out of pure curiosity--as many posts reveal her craziness through scandalous pictures, questionable outfits, and captions that evoke you to scratch your head and wonder about her sanity. You may have become baffled with her infamous amount of courage to post such provoking pictures on the world wide Web, but then you recall that this is indeed Miley Cyrus and she is the queen of strange. However, despite all the ridiculousness that is usually associated with her, I found a hidden message that I believe she has been attempting to convey this whole time—a message that most of us have been blinded from.
In today’s age, social media is a mask of reality. We all conform to social expectations that compel us to create a falsified version of ourselves through social media by editing our pictures, filtering pictures to make us look more tan and posting pictures at the “right” time to get the most “likes”. Yes, we all have been guilty of these actions at some point or another as we all desire to fit in with society. However, that’s exactly the opposite of what I found as I scrolled through Miley’s Instagram.
I was baffled by how many pictures she posted with zit cream all over her face, no makeup on and evidently not caring what her followers think about her appearance. Maybe we have completely overlooked Miley as a person and as an artist. Are her wacky outfits and hairstyles more than just to get attention? What if this whole time we judged Miley Cyrus when we should have been applauding her ability to testify against society and individualize herself—especially when most of us could never muster the courage to do the same.
Through my perspective, Miley is absolutely right. We shouldn’t care about our Instagram ratio or what we appear as in our pictures. Has the media ever took the time to delve into Miley’s personality and criticize her based on that alone? No; this entire time we have criticized her for her image, but not once have we formed a rational opinion based on who she is as a person. What we thought of as “crazy” or “insane” may actually be completely twisted, instead society as a whole should be labeled "crazy" or "insane" because of the ridiculous standards it sets for our younger generation.
Miley’s ability to be quite different, especially in a society that thrives on conformity, is something we should all strive to do as well, but this is a lot easier said than done. We all have become obsessed with the wrong aspects of our daily life. As we continue to worry over silly things such as “bad Instagram lighting” or “having a bad hair day,” Miley Cyrus is somewhere in the world right now making millions of dollars for just “doing her” and simply being herself.
So, maybe it isn’t Miley Cyrus we should be concerned with—rather it is society that we should attempt to change.
