MTV Video Music Awards 2013: Why Miley Cyrus' performance has got everyone talking

The innocent actress, Miley Cyrus we all knew as Hannah Montana has gone into overdrive to kill off her Disney image. I almost screamed as I watched her VMA performance. She licked Robin Thicke for pete's sake. Is that even healthy?
Her performance was enough to drive the online world mad. She made sure she gave many people something to talk about for some time to come.
Does Miley think that she can dance provocatively and still be empowered? Her near-naked performance (dancing in a nude bikini) and the audience reaction caused a debate around what is and isn't appropriate on and off stage from a 20 year old that used to be a Disney starlet.
Miley Cyrus has successfully twerked, gyrated and grinded her way into a new look. She is obviously hell bent on shedding her childhood star image. Hannah Montana has definitely grown up but is the half-naked, tongue-sticky-outy 'package' complete with oodles of sex appeal the way to go?
Miley's performance killed Lady Gaga's opening performance of her new single, Katy Perry's closing rendition of her latest hit and Kanye West's artsy set. She even grabbed more attention than Justin Timberlake's reunion with his 'N Sync band mates.
The performance immediately began trending on Twitter, with a record-breaking 306,000 tweets per minute set during Cyrus' medley of her song 'We Can't Stop' and Thicke's 'Blurred' Lines'.
Fellow Disney star, Selena Gomez, 21, praised the performance, describing it as "amazing. I loved it". Other stars appeared less positive, however. Rihanna appeared to look less than impressed. Stars including Taylor Swift and One Direction also seemingly looked awkward as Cyrus strutted around the stage. Brooke Shields, who played Miley's TV mother in Hannah Montana called Miley's act "desperate".
Miley Cyrus wasn't the only pop singer with edge at the 2013 VMAs. Swift also turned heads. She won best female video, and in her speech praised rumored ex, One Direction member Harry Styles, for inspiring the song.
Conclusively, whether we like it or not, Miley has followed in the footsteps of many other female teen stars who 'grow up' and for them, somehow, that means behaving and looking like a sex symbol. It seems almost inevitable that for many young women in the pop music world, marketing yourself to the masses equates to the old adage of "sex sells" more easily than it should. As Telegraph reported it; Whether Miley will shed her childhood label of Hannah Montana in the process depends on whether people stop referring to her as the former Disney star. And yet, in the light of her most recent performance, this little fact is one that many a column inch will find it hard to ignore.

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