Montana or Molehill?

"I think it's really artsy. It wasn't in a skanky way." Thus did America's big sister, Miley Cyrus, describe a Vanity Fair photo by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz of herself, tousled and clutching a blanket to her torso. Many parents of fans of Disney Channel's Hannah Montana, on the other hand, saw not an homage to classical portraiture but a topless 15-year-old. Um, no, they demurred. That was totally in a skanky way.

Cyrus later apologized for the "embarrassing" pic, but calling it "artsy" may have been a greater cultural misstep than the photo shoot itself (which she did with the blessing of her manager mother and the participation of her co-star father). As with the Janet Jackson incident at the Super Bowl, the dustup revealed a chasm between those who shrugged off the photo and those who saw it as an assault on common decency. The artsy/skanky gap, if you will.

Part of the problem is that, while fictional pop star Montana is loved by tweens and preschoolers, Cyrus is 15. Critics called the photo "sexualizing," but that's precisely the wrong verb; teens do not need professional help to become sexual. The sexualization that some parents really fear is off-camera. They see their daughters being pushed down a slope that starts with sexy princesses and ends in rehab. Pop culture, they say, is making kids grow up too fast.

Of course, those parents might not want to let their 6-year-olds watch a show about a teen pop star. But Cyrus has based her career--and Disney its franchise--on offering a safe harbor. The squeaky-clean Hannah promises, as the theme song goes, "the best of both worlds": a big-girl pop-star story scrubbed of the scary Britneyness. When parents see Cyrus' bedroom eyes or Internet pictures of her flashing her bra, they feel--just as when Zoey 101's 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears got pregnant--baited and switched.

But switching--that is, changing--is what teens do, and the canny Cyrus surely knows that her future career depends on segueing successfully from child to woman. She may still add gray hair to parents who know that their own kids must someday make the transition. Just not yet, please. And not in a skanky way.