The Demise of Miley Cyrus, from Disney to the Most Recent Indecency

By Lauren D'Avolio
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Surely Hannah Montana was blushing as she watched Miley Cyrus perform at the recent MTV Video Music Awards.

But how did Miley Cyrus go from a faithful Christian with a purity ring to her latest performance of "Wrecking Ball?"

Chances are Disney -- the mega family-friendly brand that nurtured Cyrus as a teenage superstar, shut down its Disneyland park for the first-time ever so she could host a sweet 16th birthday bash in 2008 and made "Hannah Montana" a household name -- isn't so thrilled about being connected to the risqué songstress either, according to Fox News.

"When Walt Disney was running the company, it would have been unthinkable that a former Disney star would go this route," Melissa Henson, director of communications and public education for the Parents Television Council, told Fox News.

Indeed, during his time as head of the brand, Walt Disney was strict with his former child stars. Annette Funicello, for example, honored the creator's wishes that she not dress provocatively long after she left the Disney brand. 

Cyrus burst into the big time in 2006 on Hannah Montana, a TV show about a girl who lives a double life as an average teenage school girl named Miley Stewart by day and a famous pop singer named Hannah Montana by night.

Cyrus wore a purity ring several years ago and, in 2008, she said that she wanted to be pure until marriage, according to examiner.com.

 (In 2012, her view on virginity changed saying "it's a beautiful and magical thing.")

Also in 2008, Cyrus changed her legal name to Miley Ray Cyrus. That same year, she found herself in the midst of a controversy for posing for revealing photographs taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, which appeared in Vanity Fair magazine. The resulting criticism and media frenzy did little damage to her career, however. Her album, Breakout (2008), was a huge hit, reaching the top of the pop album charts, according to biography.com.

In recent years, Cyrus has made no mistake of distancing herself from her past as the Disney Channel star Hannah Montana. The 20-year-old singer has reinvented her image, transitioning from the parent-friendly, relatable jokester Hannah to the wild, twerking, boundary-pushing Miley, according to The Huffington Post.

As an aside, her parents - her father is performer Billy Ray Cyrus -- announced a separation and then called off their divorce in July.

Cyrus recently spoke to her Disney days, claiming she was never anything like her character of Hannah Montana.

"I don't think I've ever had to exorcise Hannah because I think people knew I was different from her in real life," Cyrus told Daily Star Sunday. "Most people on Disney act as if they are really like their characters but I never felt the need to do that. I never pretended I was as good as what Disney writes."

A new survey by Outbrain, a leading "content discovery platform" on the Web, tracked traffic data from its network of 100,000 publishers and major news organizations and found that Americans viewed 12 times as many pages about Miley-the-twerker as they did about Syria-the-damned, according to a story in USA Today.

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