Miley Cyrus arrives at the 2013 MTV VMA Awards red carpet at the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Aug. 25, 2013.
A mother’s open letter to her daughter begging her not to turn out like Miley Cyrus went viral this week, with 2.5 million views in its first 36 hours, according to a follow-up blog post.
Kim Keller, of Frisco, Texas, wrote in the letter posted on her blog Monday, “Yes, this is what happens when you constantly hear everything you do is awesome. This is what happens when people fawn over your every Tweet and Instagram photo. This is what happens when no responsible adult has ever said the word ‘no,’ made you change your clothes before leaving the house, or never spanked your butt for deliberate defiance.”
Keller, who told ABC that her daughter had grown up watching Cyrus on Hannah Montana, voiced the concerns that many parents shared about Cyrus’s controversial performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards. “If you ever even consider doing something like that, I promise you that I will run up and twerk so you will see how ridiculous twerking looks,” she wrote, “I will duct tape your mouth shut so your tongue doesn’t hang out like an overheated hound dog.”
But not all parents are as appalled as Keller. On Wednesday, Cyrus tweeted a quote from her own father, Billy Ray Cyrus: “‘Mile, if twerkin woulda been invented…. And I had a foam finger…. I woulda done the same thang you did.'”