Irish Pop Singer to Miley: Don’t ‘Prostitute’ Yourself

On her website, Irish pop singer Sinead O’Connor wrote an open letter to Miley Cyrus about Cyrus’ shameless, sexualized dancing at a recent awards show and her new video that shows her completely naked on a large wrecking ball. The letter has since been taken off of O’Connor’s site, but a rift between the two entertainers has deepened, leading to more letters.

In the latest letter, her fourth to Cyrus, O’Connor demands an apology from her after Cyrus called O’Connor “crazy” during an interview with NBC’s Today show’s Matt Lauer and mocking O’Connor’s battle with psychological illnesses, including suicidal tendencies, over the years. O’Connor says in the letter that the correspondence between her and Cyrus has affected her reputation.

In her first letter to Cyrus, O’Connor, 46, told the 20-year-old singer not to “prostitute” herself to the music industry.

“I am extremely concerned for you,” she wrote, “that those around you have led you to believe, or encouraged you in your own belief, that it is in any way ‘cool’ to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your video. … You will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped, whether it’s the music business or yourself doing the pimping. … I repeat—you have enough talent that you don’t need to let the music business make a prostitute of you. You shouldn’t let them make a fool of you either. Don’t think for a moment that any of them give a flying [expletive deleted] about you. They’re there for the money.”

O’Connor added, “As for the shedding of the Hannah Montana image, whoever is telling you getting naked is the way to do that does absolutely NOT respect your talent, or you as a young lady. Your records are good enough for you not to need any shedding of Hannah Montana. She’s waaaaaaay gone by now.”

O’Connor said that getting naked is not the way for women to empower themselves: “You ought to be protected as a precious young lady by anyone in your employ and anyone around you, including you. This is a dangerous world. We don’t encourage our daughters to walk around naked in it because it makes them prey for animals and less than animals, a distressing majority of whom work in the music industry and its associated media. … Your body is for you. … It isn’t for every spunk-spewing dirtbag on the net, or every greedy record company executive to buy his mistresses diamonds with.”

In another interesting part of her letter, O’Connor warned Cyrus not to mistake lust for love, noting, “Many’s the woman mistook lust for love.”

“Whether we like it or not,” she added, “us females in the industry are role models and as such we have to be extremely careful what messages we send to other women. The message you keep sending is that it’s somehow cool to be prostituted. … It’s so not cool, Miley. … It’s dangerous. Women are to be valued for so much more than their sexuality. We aren’t merely objects of desire.”

Movieguide says amen to almost everything in Sinead O’Connor’s letter to Cyrus except her use of expletives. We would add another message to Cyrus:

“God is watching. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).