Miley at age 20 Me at age 20
(there is nothing even remotely alcoholic in
that cup)
There are a lot of ways in which I am different from Miley Cyrus. I'm not a child star. My name is generally considered an actual name. I tend to wear clothes in public. Just to name a few.
Perhaps one of the greatest of these, though is my fundamental natural regard for rule-following and the observation of societal norms. From birth, I have perfected the art of being the goodie two-shoes I was created to be, conscience annoyingly ever-present in every situation, whether I liked it or not.
Everyone else blatantly cheating on a super hard pop quiz? Nope, not me. I'll just take a B minus while everyone else gets 100. But hey at least I got the feeling of a job well done, right? (I should have taken the 100.) Playing tricks on a girl at a sleepover? I'll watch from over here, thanks. If the light's been red for five minutes and there's no one around and it's like 11:30 p.m., I still wait. I once cried because a teacher accused me of skipping class when really we were allowed to go home after our AP test.
Due to this I would even dare to call myself the anti-miley in pretty much every way. If someone had given me a global stage and told me to write a song reflecting my worldview and general approach to life, it would have been very different.
It's our party, but I gotta be home by midnight because of my 8am class I took because I needed to have some time open to work my minimum wage on-campus job. La da de da de, I respect authority. I dance conservatively and only occasionally at best. I do take things from somebody and will probably remember it later and cry about it. I will stop. If you ask me to. I, in fact, try to minimize the haters and would really rather people not judge me. Especially God. His standards are not low, you know.
I don't know how kids lost this fear of doing wrong. Since when is "I do wut I wawnt" an acceptable approach to anything past age 3? I blame society for lack of consequences. I'm aware that I sound about 100 years old right now but those darn kids and their rock and roll music!
I'm just saying caring what other people think is not always a bad thing, you know? I mean yes, I could stand to let go of some of it, but you know what? I've never used a foam finger or a sledge hammer for anything other than their intended purposes. I usually keep my tongue in my mouth. I've never slapped a stranger's butt while millions of people watched.
Sometimes fear protects you from things, like speeding trains and US Weekly features. And I for one am glad that my intrinsic rule-following and fear of judgement is actually paying off.
Do you feel like you care too much about what other people think? Where has this paid off or not paid off for you?
Alternatively, Miley's new one is kind of good if you keep your eyes closed when the video is playing, right?