Miley Cyrus Vanity Fare

A photo shoot taken for Vanity Fair, and appearing online and in this month's issue, has caused Miley to apologize and fans to freak out.

Most of the fan blogs are written by parents who are standing behind Miley, saying the magazine and photographer Annie Leibovitz took advantage of the young star in order to sell magazines. Miley herself has apologized to her fans saying she thought the picture was done in a tasteful fashion, until she saw it.

The Vanity Fair photos will just add fuel to the fire because many racy photos of Miley Cyrus have been circulating around the web lately. The latest Miley Cyrus photos show her pulling her top away to reveal her bra and cuddling with a guy, who appears to be older than her. "You get the best of both worlds," Miley Cyrus sings in the theme song of her hugely popular Disney Channel show, "Hannah Montana." It's a reference to her character's secret double life as both a rock star AND a normal schoolgirl.

Offscreen, though, this 15-year-old phenom is starting to learn how hard it really is to have the best of both worlds: as a G-rated Disney superstar AND a real-life, growing teenager with an eye on a long career.

It has been nearly a week since it was first reported that Miley Cyrus, the once squeaky-clean 15-year-old star of Disney's wildly popular television show "Hannah Montana," had posed partially clothed for a Vanity Fair photo shoot. Endless images of the teen loosely draped in what appears to be a rumpled bed sheet have hit Internet and media outlets, prompting Cyrus to apologize for the "inappropriate" photos. Disney has alleged that the girl was manipulated by the national magazine that hit newsstands Thursday with the controversial shots. Making matters worse have been MySpace images that have surfaced of Cyrus baring her midriff and suggestively revealing her bra.

Now, as the days pass and the "Mileygate" photo furor refuses to die down, parents are grappling with what to tell their children, and it is becoming increasingly clear that this public relations nightmare could have lasting consequences for Disney, the gold standard for inoffensive child entertainment, and Cyrus, perhaps the most popular young star in America.

"I think events like this really drive home to parents how much they're fighting an uphill battle against the values being presented to our children on TV and in movies, videos and music," said Marj Adler, a parenting counselor in Madison, Conn. "Kids see images like this and start to think, 'Hey, this is how I'm supposed to look too.'"

Billion-dollar girl It is hard to exaggerate the nation's teen and preteen obsession with Cyrus, who is predicted to make Disney some $1 billion this year and whose show has a regular audience of nearly 3 million viewers age 6 to 14.

Over the past two years, Disney has literally taken Cyrus' allure of innocence to the bank, with Gary Marsh, the company's president of entertainment, going so far as to say in a Portfolio magazine interview: "For Miley Cyrus to be a 'good girl' is now a business decision for her. Parents have invested in her a godliness. If she violates that trust, she won't get it back."

So it is not surprising that parents are fuming. They, after all, have been the ones to shell out $500 for Hannah Montana concert tickets. They have proudly sent their children to school in Miley T-shirts. And they have happily watched with their kids the goofy television show in which Cyrus plays a music superstar, all the while patting themselves on the back for steering their children in the direction of a role model so wholesome.

But the photos in Vanity Fair - shot by Annie Leibovitz, who famously photographed a naked and pregnant Demi Moore as well as Whoopi Goldberg floating in a bathtub of milk - have seemingly changed things overnight. MomLogic.com, a popular Web site for mothers, promptly addressed the issue under the headline, "Miley Cyrus: Naked Cover Girl?"

'Miley is a role model' Shannon Fox, a psychologist who studies the sexualization of young girls in media, was unequivocally critical of Cyrus' decision to pose in such a manner.

"Miley is a role model for so many young girls - many of them as young as 5 years old," Fox wrote on MomLogic. "She's really aware of her audience and her fans and how much they look up to her. So as a role model, she has a completely different responsibility than an average 15-year-old girl does."

Fox went on to warn parents that the incident served to make impressionable young girls think that the best way to seem grown up is to "put on sexy clothes, take a sexy photo or maybe even have sex."

Other high-profile groups have weighed in equally emphatically on the racy photos. Free for Life Ministries Inc., an organization from Cyrus' hometown of Nashville that raises funds to open safe houses for children who have been the victims of worldwide sex trafficking, issued this statement on Tuesday: "Any media outlet that exhibits a child as a sex object needs to understand the degree to which this type of behavior is harming our society as a whole."

Out of character? Perhaps the most disturbing part of the whole controversy for many parents is how out of character the photos seem to be. When Cyrus, who is devoutly Christian, won favorite female singer and favorite TV actress at Nickelodeon's 2008 Kids' Choice Awards, the teenager thanked her family "and my Lord and savior Jesus Christ." Her parents, including her father, country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus, are notoriously strict with their millionaire daughter, once taking away her credit card because she bought a purse that was too expensive without permission.

"Kids who watch her so closely are going to find this all very confusing," said Adler. "They're going to be coming home saying, 'But this isn't at all how she acts on TV.'"

Adler, who counsels parents on how to communicate with teens and tweens, said the key to having a constructive conversation is to not immediately express judgment but to ask questions like, "Were you surprised by her decision?" and "What kind of image do you think a photo like that is creating?"

"If you immediately start the conversation sounding like a judge or a cop and saying simply, 'This is horrible,' you shut the door to a real conversation," Adler said.

Fox added another point: That Vanity Fair episode could serve as a lesson for a generation of kids who are increasingly posting inappropriate content on Facebook and blogs. Remind them that pictures last forever, she advised.

The fallout The question that lingers even as Vanity Fair copies sell off newsstands is this: Will parents - and thus their children - condemn Cyrus as they have other teen stars who have made recent high-profile errors in judgment: Jamie Lynn Spears, the TV star and little sister of Britney Spears, who got pregnant at age 16, or Vanessa Hudgens, the "High School Musical" star caught e-mailing naked photos of herself?

Certainly, both Cyrus and Disney have a lot riding on that question. A Hannah Montana motion picture is planned for 2009. Cyrus reportedly has also signed a seven-figure book deal with Disney Book Group.

"The bottom line is that in recent years kids have been seeing some really horrendous role models," Adler said. "And the challenge for parents is to use these moments to really talk to their kids not just about the behavior of these stars but about their own behavior and values. Turn it into a conversation as much as you can. Don't just insist they remove the posters in their room or never turn on the television again."