The difficulty that I have with ducking the pendulum swinging from one to the other is that the decisions to make music videos of a similarly sexual nature are made every day and there's not a blink of an eye-lid. The raunch and skin on display on that stage seemed to me remarkably unremarkable. (I didn't watch the whole thing, so I may need correction on that)
So why the outcry?
The outcry about the narrative of Miley Cyrus has been pinned as justification for knotted knickers. Once such a wholesome icon of goodness, Miley's shocked the world by turning slutty.
Except, that she hasn't. Surprised us, that is. Cyrus is only following a well-worn path trod by Brittney and others before her. The shock and horror has nothing to do with Miley's, totally expected, sexualisation.
I suspect that the reason that it has gained so much traction is because it was simply bad. It undeniably had no positive aesthetic qualities, let alone redeeming ones. Cyrus' attempts to find a value and identity fell flat in amongst a sea of cheap and nasty sexual stunts. If she'd been as tasteful as, say, Rihanna who has equally fallen victim to raunch culture, then I suspect we'd have only seen about half the outrage that's come about.
And so, amongst the evils of exploitation of women so rife in our culture, we can add the sin of only really caring about it when they do it badly.