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Hopefully when Miley Cyrus told her dad, Billy Ray, that she wanted to go into the family business, he handed down his suit of armor. After years of being known as the guy behind Achey Breaky Heart, he has to have learned all the better ways of dealing with negative press. And now, for the past several months, Miley has been dealing with plenty of her own. So here’s the question, is it worse for the public and the paparazzi to harangue a young star causing them problems or is it worse for them to make some questionable decisions?

Miley has starred on The Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana for the past two seasons, becoming an instant success. It didn’t take long for her image and name to fill up every tween and teen girl’s life. Of course, with extreme success comes negativity. After a year of popularity, pregnancy rumors began circulating. They were determined to be unfounded. Earlier this year there was a lot of flak surrounding some pictures she has taken with and without her father for Vanity Fair. Some call them too suggestive because of some of the poses. Her midriff was showing as well, but I challenge anyone to call every teenage girl with an exposed midriff suggestive.

Her costar, Jason Earles, who plays her older brother on the show, has come out now in her defense. He calls her a good kid, and says like any 15 year old out there, she makes some bad decisions. Having a 15 year old son, I say hallelujah to that. If he was held up to that type of scrutiny, I know he wouldn’t survive, and I doubt most 15 year olds would. Jason wants us to know about the good things she does, such as the many visits with the Make-A-Wish Foundation kids and Phone-A-Friend.

Jason suggests if we find the things that Miley is doing so terrible, we should share our concerns with our own kids, as we can’t look to Miley to raise our kids for us. While it seems a little preposterous of him to say such a thing, in a way he has a point. Instead of blasting Miley for making some bad decisions, maybe we should talk to our own kids about how they make decisions. And while we’re discussing these decisions, I have to point out that at least Miley isn’t make bad decisions that we know of regarding drugs or sex.

Maybe a good role model isn’t someone that is always making the right decisions, but someone that is making decisions and becoming accountable for them. Miley hasn’t shown herself to be accountable for these decisions yet, but I think we’ve made it incredibly hard for her to be. Yet, wouldn’t it be refreshing and a much better role model for our own children if she would come out and say the pregnancy thing is just not true, and I do have a boyfriend, but I always practice safe sex or I wouldn’t have sex yet at my age? Or wouldn’t it be better to say I got caught up in the whole thing during the photo shoot, as I wanted to look good, but looking back, I can see why some of those poses might not have been the best considering the age range of my fans?

It has to be hard for a star at that age to be hounded for everything they do. True, she asked into this business, and that’s after seeing what her father goes through, but she probably wasn’t aware of what he went through early in his music career. Is it more detrimental for her to pose suggestively or to be hounded by everyone for doing so? It’s like a wild Catch-22.

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