Wondering aloud what happened to that nice girl they used to hire to babysit, Americans were shocked to see 20-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus strip to her underwear and gyrate suggestively at last night’s MTV Video Music Awards, the annual celebration commemorating the year’s best efforts at distinguishing nearly indiscernible pop music with empty visual spectacle. Surprising all who believed she was probably off at college and maybe studying nursing, and who haven't looked at the Internet in the past year or so, Cyrus took the stage surrounded by giant teddy bears and wearing a furry, teddy bear-emblazoned one-piece—signifiers of childhood innocence she symbolically stripped away by literally stripping, leaving only the flesh-colored underwear that grown women wear, because they are proud of the naked bodies they intend to use for sex.


Imitating how those grown women behave when they are pursuing said grown-woman sex, Cyrus then began grinding on everything in sight, including Beetlejuice-suit-clad singer Robin Thicke, an adult male to whom Cyrus presented her posterior in a way that could be read as invitation for intercourse. Cyrus also stroked her crotch with a giant foam finger, in a manner that evoked masturbation, and being the No. 1 fan of it. Furthermore, she “twerked”—a dance move that involves jerking the pelvis in a manner she definitely didn’t learn at cotillion—and dangled her tongue from the side of her mouth as a sign of rebellion, as well as possible dehydration from having so much sex.

Cyrus also sang a song about partying and doing whatever she wants, irrespective of approval.


Reaction was swift, as other, slightly older adults paused from maintaining their social standings and making potato salad for the church picnic to express dismay that a young female pop star would do something so scandalous for attention, on a show where young female pop stars have historically done something scandalous for attention. “I wouldn't make a joke of it, actually,” Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski said while scolding her co-hosts and, by extension, everyone everywhere who might regard this as insignificant. “That was really, really disturbing. That young lady, who is 20, is obviously deeply troubled, deeply disturbed, clearly has confidence issues, probably an eating disorder, and I don't think anybody should have put her onstage. That was disgusting and embarrassing.”


While Cyrus has yet to respond to such criticisms, presumably she doesn’t care, because she’s not a little girl anymore. She is, in fact, a grown sexy person who parties and does whatever she wants, and Brzezinski is so not her mom.


In related news, a bunch of people who make nearly indiscernible pop music primarily for teenagers won awards for that, including Justin Timberlake, Selena Gomez, One Direction, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.

Before things devolved into such scandalous flouting of decorum, Lady Gaga opened the ceremony with the traditional showing of her butt.