Miley Cyrus is all grown up.  Yes, I am going to squeeze Simone de Beauvoir and Miley Cyrus into the same sentence.  If you’re following Miley’s career these days, you’ll know that she’s “becoming a woman” in the media and entertainment worlds.  Simone de Beauvoir definitely had it right, and rarely do we see so clearly exactly how someone “becomes” a woman.  But really, this is her “adult,” womanly roll-out, and just to be sure we get it the media coverage makes clear that Miley is all “grown up” now.  She’s on the cover of Glamour magazine this month, hit the American Idol stage this week in a sexy strapless gown, and has a movie in theatres nationally.  With a career like that she definitely has adult responsibilities, I’m sure.

But just ask my daughter—Miley is sixteen, which does not seem especially grown up to me, particularly as the parent of an 8-year-old (So my daughter is halfway to adulthood?? I hope not!).  Here are my questions: what does it mean for a sixteen-year-old (or her handlers) to be reinventing herself as a “woman” in media terms?  Can we expect her to shed the squeaky-clean image and angle for meatier (read: sexier) parts?  And what does it mean for her tween fan base to witness this transformation?  Finally, you tell me: when do girls become women?  What marks that transformation in your mind?

Becoming a man.  Judith Warner has a thoughtful column this week, “Dude, You’ve got Problems,” about the use of “gay” as an epithet.  She writes, “It’s weird, isn’t it, that in an age in which the definition of acceptable girlhood has expanded, so that desirable femininity now encompasses school success and athleticism, the bounds of boyhood have remained so tightly constrained?”  I’m not so sure, however, that I agree with Warner’s assertion that being called a “fag” has “almost nothing to do with being gay.”  Instead, she argues, “fag” is used to deride weakness or femininity.  Well, yes, and that’s what I call homophobia, which certainly does go hand in hand with sexism.

Is Women’s Studies the next Sex and the City?  Let’s hope HBO can do for women’s studies what it has already done for big city career girls, mobsters, undertakers, and polygamists.  The cable network apparently has a show in development about a former “feminist It Girl” who is now turned to being a professor at a small liberal arts college.  Will such a show poke fun at women’s studies?  Sure, this field offers plenty of material for laugh lines, but if we also wind up as the next hit series everyone is talking about, then the HBO line on my cable bill will have been money well spent.

–Allison Kimmich