Yes, that's right, you read the headline correctly -- this is probably going to be a really unpopular opinion, but I don't care. I am going to defend Miley Cyrus' Oscar dress. Because the more I read how much people hated it, the more I'm like, "... Wow, I really didn't think it was that bad at ALL."
To do it, though, I'm going to start with what she wore last year. Remember this?
At the time a lot of critics -- including me, and I still stand by it -- thought this was overly aging. Like she was trying to be a demure 25-year old, and while I appreciate the instinct not to skank it up at her first-ever Oscars and ESPECIALLY at her young age, it came off more like she borrowed a dress from her mother. Under extreme duress. At the time Miley was 15 and whether you like her or not, she's got a really lively personality. She banters with Ryan Seacrest better than people twice her age, even if occasionally that banter is about how bummed she is that she got a hand-me-down Porsche for her birthday. (I mean, I hope she can also have her tight diamond shoes stretched so they don't give her blisters -- seriously, I've had the same Honda since I was 20, and I just found out the front undercarriage is being held together by a coat hanger. For real. I have no idea how it happened.) Yet somehow she hits this oddly entertaining combo of acting her age AND being personable, and this dress really wastes that.
So, now let's jump ahead to this year's Oscars and take a gander at what she picked:
To do it, though, I'm going to start with what she wore last year. Remember this?
At the time a lot of critics -- including me, and I still stand by it -- thought this was overly aging. Like she was trying to be a demure 25-year old, and while I appreciate the instinct not to skank it up at her first-ever Oscars and ESPECIALLY at her young age, it came off more like she borrowed a dress from her mother. Under extreme duress. At the time Miley was 15 and whether you like her or not, she's got a really lively personality. She banters with Ryan Seacrest better than people twice her age, even if occasionally that banter is about how bummed she is that she got a hand-me-down Porsche for her birthday. (I mean, I hope she can also have her tight diamond shoes stretched so they don't give her blisters -- seriously, I've had the same Honda since I was 20, and I just found out the front undercarriage is being held together by a coat hanger. For real. I have no idea how it happened.) Yet somehow she hits this oddly entertaining combo of acting her age AND being personable, and this dress really wastes that.
So, now let's jump ahead to this year's Oscars and take a gander at what she picked:
I've read many complaints about this dress, including that it looks like giant fish flippers and/or a dish of scalloped potatoes. (Presumably made with Papa Smurf's old family recipe, as I've never actually seen blue-tinged scalloped potatoes before, unless I'm just not truly living on the edge.) People have also ranted against the amount of cleavage and the sheer size of the skirt.
My thoughts are: Yes, okay, it's a tiny bit like what Barbie would wear to the Enchantment Under The Sea dance if it were being held by actual merpeople. And that belt thing eerily resembles a drawer-pull you'd see in your Great Aunt Sylvia's South Florida condo. I do see most of those points. But I'm not sure I think the cleavage is that inappropriate in quantity -- it's THERE, yes, but is it really that scandalous? Granted, having gone to school for a couple years in a place where everyone in ninth grade wore those flowered skintight spandex minidresses they sold at Express in 1991, I am probably not fazed by a 16-year old actress wearing a v-neck dress. But I think the cut of the bodice itself makes everything look much larger than it is, which might in turn make the amount of skin on display seem more robust. When actually, it doesn't shock me any more than a prom dress. Wake me when she stars taking formalwear tips from this year's human produce department, Sarah Jessica Parker.
More than that, though, I think this dress reflects a bit more of HER. It's fun. It's sparkly and kind of spunky. It's in-your-face. It probably doesn't have very good judgment about when to let someone take its photo doing something stupid, and when to force people to put away their digital cameras so that it doesn't have yet another idiotic and totally avoidable Internet photo scandal. And it's also the sort of fairy-tale dress every girl of that age probably imagines -- or grew up imagining -- she will wear the day she takes Hollywood by storm and rolled up at the Oscars. Miley didn't get to do that last year. Ergo, I don't blame her for going this route, and I have to say, I'm not mad at it either. This strikes me as infinitely more age-appropriate than the red thing -- kind of a junior version of Marion Cotillard's white dress from last year crossed with something Penelope Cruz would pick.
Or have I just been huffing too many of the fumes coming from whatever that is in the Tupperware in the back of my fridge?
