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Wrecking Ball Analysis

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The music video for Wrecking Ball challenged societal ideas of femininity, masculinity and sexuality (into something the woman has control over). Cyrus facilitated this by using a relatable topic and simultaneously presenting herself as stereotypically feminine and masculine.
By juxtaposing feminine makeup and nudity, with stereotypically male clothing, haircut she allowed people to subconsciously re-associate these ideas. Re-associating things such as short haircuts not only being for men in and of itself is a large shift in ideals. It used to be abnormal, and seen as possibly rebellious. In the four years since the video was released and such an idolized figure transitioned from the typical long blonde hair to a very short pixie cut, it has become much more widely accepted and even praised for women to have said “boy cuts”. In addition it has become normalized and popular for women to wear oversized and/or men’s clothing, which was not the case just a few years ago. She also presents the image of her in control of a wrecking ball, destructive, giant and unforgiving. The idea of a woman being completely in control of something such as this is and unusual one. While challenging these stereotypes about…show more content…
Appearing naked swinging on a wrecking ball, many claimed this was inappropriate for young girls to see as their role model; but Miley seems to be trying to normalize this for women, allow them to control their sexuality, not allow men to define it. It’s consistently pointed out if star women are sexual but when male stars have naked women in their music videos it is not questioned. This double standard is furthered with the use of drugs; shortly before the release of the video, Miley smoked weed at a MTV Europe music awards in Amsterdam, which outraged people although drug use by male stars is widely
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