Miley Cyrus' Signalling Tattoos

I noticed a tweet today from someone I follow, letting me know that Miley Cyrus was photographed frolicking topless in the surf while on vacation in Maui. Since I am a sexist old bastard that enjoys the objectification of women as much as anyone, I clicked over to see.

Miley Cyrus Completely Topless In Maui (Photo Album) http://t.co/ugzBhJUqId

— BlueBellOnSea (@BlueBellOnSea) May 10, 2015

Miley Cyrus is an excellent example of a beautiful young woman that does absolutely nothing for me. Some women, you want to see naked. Miley, on the other hand, is much better keeping her kit on. And the thing is, she willingly mutilates and alters herself. In effect she is sterilizing instead of sexualizing her image.

The first thing is that hair. Women who cut their hair pixie-style willfully degrade their sexual market value. Say Miley's raw number is about an 8.5. She has an abundance of God-given beauty: blue eyes, nice smile, good body, symmetrical. A pixie haircut is an automatic half-point deduction.

One thing revealed by the photos is the countless tattoos Miley has on her body. She has at least twenty of them. It's like the advertising signage plastered around a minor league baseball park. It cheapens her.

There is a dreamcatcher that covers most of her side ribcage. Both of her arms are completely covered. At least she doesn't have a tramp-stamp. The tattoo that women get right above their ass is the biggest detraction from beauty and distraction from pleasure since body-piercing became popular.

It used to be that only sailors got tattoos. It was considered utterly non-conformist. Today, getting a tattoo is about the most conformist thing a young person can do.

It's all about in-group signaling. In the animal kingdom, some animals mimic other animals to try to trick them. A spider may mimic an ant that he wants to eat. Some snakes have coloring that marks them as dangerous when they are not. And "the fork-tailed drongo tricks meerkats into abandoning their prey by feigning meerkat alarm calls."

Which group is Miley signaling to, and why? Does she believe that branding herself like a piece of cattle will signal to interested males that she is sexually adventurous? Possibly, though it's worth keeping in mind the evolutionary reasons that males have long preferred women who guard their virtue. Such women were seen as less likely to seek sex outside the marriage, and males would have a higher degree of certainty that the children he was pouring resources into belonged to him genetically.