Never let someone tell you you’re not brave, for you’ve just willingly chosen to read yet another article regarding Miley Cyrus’ performance at the 2013 Video Music Awards.

As you’re undoubtedly aware, Miss Cyrus performed her summer hit, “We Can’t Stop,” and followed through by performing with Robin Thicke to his hit “Blurred Lines.”

Throughout her performance,  Cyrus stripped down to a skincolored bikini, smacked the derriere of a back-up singer, used her tongue in a manner which Gene Simmons would’ve been familiar with, and twerked her way into the Oxford dictionary (for anyone unfamiliar with the term twerking, there’s a rather hilarious video of Morgan Freeman defining it on YouTube).

Upon her grand finale, the former Disney star was criticized by the Parents Television Council for her “provocatively inappropriate” performance on a music awards show deemed viewable for fourteen-year-olds (it’s MTV, is it truly that surprising?), harped at on the Twitter-verse, and provoked a response by the creator of the foam finger, Steve Chmelar.

Yet, despite all the negative reactions she’s received, Cyrus has also gained support from many of her fans and family members. Her song, “Wrecking Ball,” became the fastest viewed video ever on VEVO in a 24-hour period, and she’s continued to stand by her decisions as expression and freedom of speech.

Whatever you may say, she’s got a gift.

However, despite the controversy surrounding Miley Cyrus, there’s a larger issue most have seemed to ignore. While it was the 20 year-old Cyrus who stole the show overall, the 36 year-old Robin Thicke remains forgotten.

This married man, recently famous due to the hit song he sang with Cyrus, agreed to the whole show willingly and without question. It’s one thing to be a nice guy and let a girl have her way, but Thicke crossed a line by how he portrayed the 20 year-old action’s with a man his age. It is also portrayed in the lyrical content of “Blurred Lines.”

The song, strikingly similar to Marvin Gaye’s 1977 single “Got to Give It Up,” has been in lawsuit based on copyright charges (can any artist today not make a remake?). In addition, the music video portrays women in an objectified manner where they are almost completely naked for four straight minutes. It also states Thicke’s desires for “domestication,” among other innuendos.

Women have fought long and hard for equality, whether it be in the workplace or how they’re portrayed in pop culture. Yet, they still have to deal with such degrading lyrics as these in “Blurred Lines”:

“One thing I ask of you, let me be the one you back that a** to…..Yeah, I had a b***h, but she ain’t bad as you. So hit me up when you passing through, I’ll give you something big enough to tear your a** in two.”

Is this really what we want to be “popular” music? This was the #1 song in the U.S. for 12 weeks.

Of course, the supporters will harp back by saying, “It’s freedom of speech. Miley Cyrus sang and danced to it, so some girls must like that,” and “who cares, that’s what sex is all about.”

That’s the exact issue. We still see it as culturally acceptable for women to be objectified and oversexualized by men, but when a young woman such as Miley Cyrus gets involved, we make her a harlot. Such a double standard is both illogical and harmful towards individuals of either gender. Women are not playthings; they are living, breathing people who have their own opinions and beliefs. Do and say whatever you want, but don’t make your words and actions make things difficult for the people around you.

Miley Cyrus isn’t the problem. She’s just a gifted star experimenting with what seems to work when it comes to growing up and attracting fans, and she’s moved on from her old Disney image (Lady Gaga never got harped at for her superb VMA performance).

Society as a whole needs to shed the preconception that while the system has worked with the way things are, anything is questionable and prone to a need for change.