Online survey results show that 48% of voters viewed Miley Cyrus’ performance as “trashy”

Miley Cyrus has proven to millions of people that she is no longer the innocent teenybopper Disney actress we watched grow up on television, after her recent scandalous and highly controversial performance during the VMAs (2013) award show on August 25^th, 2013. Throughout her performance, Miley pranced around on stage in a plastic nude bikini, ‘twerked’ her body, and gyrating against “Blurred Lines” singer Robin Thicke. The performance was jaw dropping and sparked criticism from parents, fans and attendees that were surprised by Cyrus’ hyper sexual performance. Due to the large publicity and backlash that was generated, Tellwut thought it would be interesting to poll their panel members and find out their thoughts about the performance. When asked whether panelist have viewed the VMA performance between Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke, 22% of panel members indicated that they did watch the performance, in comparison to 68% that did not watch the performance. The remaining 9% of voters were not familiar with the VMAs. When asked to express their opinion of the performance, only 6% of voters felt that Miley Cyrus looked great on stage, while 48% of voters felt that the controversial performance was too trashy. In fact, some parents viewed Cyrus’ performance to be so sexual that they wrote a letter to the Parent Television Council claiming that “MTV continues to sexually exploit young women by promoting acts that incorporate ’twerking’ in a nude-colored bikini. How is this image of former child star Miley Cyrus appropriate for 14-year-olds?” Although it is apparent that this performance has upset many people, it has also generated a significant amount of attention and publicity that has left Miley Cyrus’ name on headlines for over a week. Indeed, one can only imagine the Miley Cyrus team gathered together in a room and giving each other high fives, as she dominated the whole event and overshadowed other artists performances; such as; Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake who reunited with his former band ‘N SYNC which very attention be made to them. Some critics are even stating that Miley Cyrus is the biggest winner at the award show, despite not bring home a single award. And if anyone doubts the marketing power behind Cyrus’ performance, just check out the numbers: Cyrus added 100,000 Instagram followers, 50,000 Facebook likes and scored 300,000 twitter mentions per minute, which is more than what the Super Bowl reached at their highest peak. So although the performance may have been raunchy, over-hyped and over-sexual one cannot deny the power of marketing and the brand that Miley Cyrus is slowly becoming.