Wrecking Ball 
Avia Jay
The video for Miley Cyrus’s wrecking ball sparked a major interest as it confronts very apparent and current events on the views of women. There is always an issue within the media on the way women are represented whether they’re gaining or losing weight, wearing or not wearing makeup or how they're expressing themselves as individuals.
In the Wrecking Ball video Miley Cyrus has eradicated her previous ‘queen of tweens’ persona and has fully embraced her sexualisation. Although feminist views we would normally consider a woman who is expressing her sexual freedom to be empowering, there is a sense that Miley isn’t so much as just exploring her sexuality here but exploiting it, as she appears nude, and orally pleasuring a sledgehammer a notoriously masculine item with possibly phallic connotations. This links to Mulvey’s ideas of the male gaze and how the visual narrative and pleasure is aimed at heterosexual males. Miley as a nude young female has entered a male dominate location; a building site, and proceeded to share her body in a highly suggestive and sexualised manner e.g. riding the ‘Wrecking ball’. The iconography of porn is arguably explored in this video as Miley collaborated with the ‘repulsive’ Terry Richardson a man whose views on the female body are damaging to all women as they only appear as ‘blown-up sex dolls’ to him as a director.
A more positive argument on how the Wrecking Ball video contributes to modern day feminism states that this video is showing a young female who is confident and in control of her own body. This argument ensues that we should be celebrating the empowering decision of Miley to express her own sexual identity, in this song about a breakup. From this argument stems the question as to why women aren’t allowed to express their sexuality as flamboyantly as men do. We are constantly reminded of the male sexual activity and confidence with the iconic Michael Jackson ‘crotch grab’ and the relentless reminders that
The video for Miley Cyrus’s wrecking ball sparked a major interest as it confronts very apparent and current events on the views of women. There is always an issue within the media on the way women are represented whether they’re gaining or losing weight, wearing or not wearing makeup or how they're expressing themselves as individuals.
In the Wrecking Ball video Miley Cyrus has eradicated her previous ‘queen of tweens’ persona and has fully embraced her sexualisation. Although feminist views we would normally consider a woman who is expressing her sexual freedom to be empowering, there is a sense that Miley isn’t so much as just exploring her sexuality here but exploiting it, as she appears nude, and orally pleasuring a sledgehammer a notoriously masculine item with possibly phallic connotations. This links to Mulvey’s ideas of the male gaze and how the visual narrative and pleasure is aimed at heterosexual males. Miley as a nude young female has entered a male dominate location; a building site, and proceeded to share her body in a highly suggestive and sexualised manner e.g. riding the ‘Wrecking ball’. The iconography of porn is arguably explored in this video as Miley collaborated with the ‘repulsive’ Terry Richardson a man whose views on the female body are damaging to all women as they only appear as ‘blown-up sex dolls’ to him as a director.
A more positive argument on how the Wrecking Ball video contributes to modern day feminism states that this video is showing a young female who is confident and in control of her own body. This argument ensues that we should be celebrating the empowering decision of Miley to express her own sexual identity, in this song about a breakup. From this argument stems the question as to why women aren’t allowed to express their sexuality as flamboyantly as men do. We are constantly reminded of the male sexual activity and confidence with the iconic Michael Jackson ‘crotch grab’ and the relentless reminders that