I think it’s really interesting how much people love to hate celebrities. As a society, we choose who we want to worship, and then proceed to bash every choice they make from then on.

Miley Cyrus is a product of nepotism in the entertainment industry. Not to say she is not talented or not a good person, because I truly believe she is both. However, she did garner her initial fame from her father. And what a scary thing it must be to have Disney Incorporated, agents, managers, and millions of children (and their guardians) watching your every move at the age of fourteen.

I hardly survived middle school, and I was only dealing with my parents asking me if I had finished my homework and cleaned my room. What is it like knowing a majority of the people you associate yourself with only “care about you” for your net worth? When I look at former child stars like Cyrus, I think about Amanda Bynes and Lindsay Lohan, and realize that transitioning from a child to a young adult in the spotlight can be hard. Compared to other starlets, Cyrus is fairly unscathed. I am infinitely grateful that the only people who were able to see all of my rash, rebellious decisions were my friends, family, and followers on Tumblr. I don’t think anyone can say that he or she is proud of every single moment of his or her life. Privacy is a luxury Cyrus doesn’t have.

Granted, those factors are not get-out-of-jail-free cards for artistic choices that are questionable. Cyrus’s performance at the VMA’s was culturally ignorant at best, and at worst, racially degrading. I am not an expert on racial cultures, and I have no certification to make official judgements on the severity of her degradation of the “ratchetness” she claims to embrace.

But I can speak as a woman who is offended by the fact that Robin Thicke, a married man with a son (who was just as much involved in the grinding as his female counterpart) was not given the same reaction. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a victim of sexual assault, my assailant saying, “I know you want it”, and then hearing those same words in a poorly written pop tune on the radio. I can however, imagine the outrage of seeing the reaction of millions of people to Miley Cyrus’s relatively tame music video and thinking, “Why didn’t people get this offended when Robin Thicke made a music video with women literally fully exposed to a camera, singing lyrics centered around rape culture, and then saying it was all for ‘fun’?”

I have a huge problem with the fact that women are constantly berated and punished for simply being women. Janet Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and now Miley Cyrus are all perfect examples of sexism and slut-shaming. People can’t wait to see what they are going to do next. Sure, Justin Bieber can be outright rude at Anne Frank’s home and pitch a fit about paying for attractions, and he’ll barely get a raised eyebrow, but if Miley Cyrus licks a hammer, you can bet that there will be at least hundred posts about her tongue within the hour. Chris Brown can recover from beating Rihanna, but the minute Taylor Swift fakes a British accent on stage, the media goes into a tizzy for a week.

What I’m trying to say is this: Miley Cyrus’s image has been manufactured her entire career, and that element is still present today. However, there is something far more sinister here than just twerking. It’s the underlying racism and the not-so-underlying sexism and slut-shaming. Not only are we crucifying a twenty-year-old woman for exploring her boundaries (most twenty-year-old women do that), but we’re telling young girls very scary things through our reactions to pop media.

We are telling them that a young woman can be judged solely by her physical appearance and even if a man is involved in a provocative equation, the product’s weight will almost always be on the female’s shoulders. We are teaching young girls to define themselves by their bodies. We are teaching them to be afraid of themselves.

The “Crazy Phase” of Miley Cyrus might pass, but the repercussions won’t. The kind of backlash this has created will cause the next generation to do the same, which will teach the next generation, and the next, so on and so forth. And that’s not okay.

When I was little, my grandmother would constantly tell me, “Letting someone be bullied is just as bad as being a bully.” I didn’t get it at the time, but after going through high school, I think it’s probably one of the most important things that we forget. We act like celebrities are better (or worse) than us, but that’s not true. We are all human. We’re all unsure and afraid and flawed and curious and hopeful and downright wonderful. Life is short, okay? You’ve only got a certain amount of time, and you don’t know how much of it is left on the clock. So instead of bashing what you hate, promote what you love. Speaking words of kindness instead of criticism is hard, but if we make the effort to open our hearts and minds before we open our mouths, we can break the habit so our kids won’t have to.