From what I've read, the hottest concert ticket this year is for Miley Cyrus, and I have to ask, what's the deal? Why is she so popular?
—Cecelia, Dallas
The B!tch Replies: What part of devil-spawned media-marketing vortex powered by the Skittles-fueled fever dreams of eight-year-olds don't you understand? Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, is the product of a careful media strategy backed by a bazillion-buck communications corporation. She is cute, obedient, nonthreatening and in possession of a modicum of talent. So of course she's driving first-graders into a drooling grand mal seizure of need. She is what David Cassidy, Tiffany, the Wiggles and Debbie Gibson were to past generations: pure packaging.
In Cyrus we have a blue-eyed daddy's girl who knows how to sit still and pose for People, while Billy Ray brags about what a strict pa he is. And Middle America coos and sighs and remembers a nonexistent past when they, too, skipped stones at the local watering hole and made eyes at the dreamy soda jerk at the Woolworth's.
And these parents whip out their wallets, determined to buy their children a piece of that imaginary innocence—for upwards of $2,000 per concert ticket. (Crafty brokers were way ahead on this trend and snatched most of the $63 seats, now selling for hundreds of bucks.)
Observe the following formula: pliant child actor + Disney marketing warlocks + carefully crafted squeaky-clean PR campaign + guilty overworked parents + pie-eyed, credulous target audience. It's the perfect formula for world domination. I'm spontaneously rubbing my hands together and cackling at the mere writing of it.
And there's one more factor. Cyrus plays a character with particular appeal to tweens: an accessible superstar. Hannah Montana is a pop sensation who masquerades as an ordinary girl, Miley Stewart, so she can have a normal life. What kid hasn't fantasized about befriending their favorite singer and having them over for a game of Dance Dance Revolution? The concept is almost evil in its perfection, like designing a cat treat laced with baby mouse ears and tuna juice.
"The celebrity-driven culture today is all-pervasive," says Bobbie Carlton, marketing director for the teenybopper publishing house B*tween Productions. "Hannah Montana represents the best of that without the worst; Hannah is the superstar with all the perks, but the 'real-girl' life is still accessible to her through her alter ego and secret identity."
Accessible. Sure. If you have $2,000 for a seat to her show.
- NEXT QUESTION: How does Britney get into court so fast?
- GET MY PODCAST: It's weekly, free and hilarious! Or listen on satellite radio. Either way is okay with me, really