Perez Hilton and Miley Cyrus.

Re: You Reap What You Sow

Recently, gossip blogger Perez Hilton (real name: Mario Lavandeira) posted a link on his Twitter feed to an upskirt photo of 17 year-old Miley Cyrus. In the shot, Cyrus is allegedly not wearing underwear. Since she is a minor, phrases including distribution of child pornography and jail time quickly hit the press as various news organizations marched out legal experts to comment on the controversy. Hilton removed the photo and later defended himself in a video he posted to his website. In the video, he claims that Miley was wearing underwear and he only posted the photo to make fun of her for getting out of a car in “a very un-ladylike fashion.” Yet, the tweet that accompanied the link said: “If you are easily offended, do NOT click here. Oh Miley! Warning: truly not for the easily offended!” Oh Miley? Oh Perez! Clearly, Hilton’s defense is disingenuous but the controversy raises an interesting point about the boundaries of celebrity gossip.

If you’re not familiar with Hilton’s website, it is basically a catalog of paparazzi and PR photos of celebrities to which he adds breaking news and his opinion. For example, in a recent post on Real Housewives of New York City’s Kelly Bensimon and Bethenny Frankel, he blasts Frankel for her comments regarding Bensimon: “This is like the pot calling the kettle a fame whore!” He’s also famous for scrawling words across the photos he posts. In the Frankel, Bensimon story, the words “Crazy vs Ugh!” appear across their pictures.

Hilton’s less than congenial approach to celebrity gossip means that he is both loved and loathed. One thing he is not however, is inconsistent. His style is harsh and offensive, sometimes funny and always about bringing celebrities his version of a reality check. Considering that he is also known to draw white smudges on his subjects’ photos that appear to drip from their mouths, he is not your mother’s gossip columnist. His fans don’t go to his website for items they can read in People magazine. They hit it for the nasty scrawls and bitchy comments. Short of libel, it’s anything goes. So the Miley photo was a miscalculation because of the legalities regarding her age but not because of the outcry it caused. Hilton is a product of American popular culture–a culture that wants to know all the dirty details of a celebrity’s life. If there was a boundary regarding celebrity privacy it was crossed long before he started drawing sexually explicit doodles.

Hilton will survive to scandalize another day. Miley will also be fine and may even benefit from the incident since her recent stage outfits suggest that she’s trying hard to put her Hannah Montana days behind her. Her response to the story was to place a call to Ryan Seacrest’s morning radio show. Making her marketing team proud, she tells Seacrest: “Isn’t it funny that things like that, that are so negative, have to come out right before my record? It’s like no one can let positive things happen. All I do is focus on the positive, and I hope this record does well.” If Miley did happen to forget her panties that day, she’s not telling.