Miley Cyrus Vs Taylor Lautner: Double Standard For Teen Stars?

Does Hollywood have a double standard for its shirtless teenage stars?


When Miley Cyrus posed in Vanity Fair last year, wearing but a wrap of sheet and exposing her right shoulder and the top of her back, the negative reaction was overwhelming. Critics said the 15 year-old actress and her nude-implied photo is "sexualization of a child to sell magazines."

The call to reprimand the teen star was intense enough for her to eventually make a public apology statement saying, "I never intended for any of this to happen, and I am truly sorry if I have disappointed anyone." This was despite how she expressed earlier liking to the photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz.

Now, with the New Moon movie coming to theatres in a month, there's the 17 year-old Taylor Lautner and his shirtless body blanketing the magazines, websites, and TV for the promotion of the Twilight sequel. Just like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Hautner is also a minor - a child. Unlike his fellow teen star, however, images of his shirtless body not only appeared on one magazine but on countless mass media. And unlike Miley Cyrus, no one called the shirtless photos of this teen male star scandalous.

And so Lindsay Robertson asks on Yahoo Movie Talk colum, "Does Hollywood have a double standard for shirtless teenage stars?"

Taylor Lautner trained for months to get the fit and toned body that New Moon has been showing off. But for all the shirtless images of him in circulation, there's only one major voice to raise questions about his photos. His New Moon co-star Kristin Davis says, "I feel protective, like what is he doing without his shirt on? And then I hear he's dating people, and I'm like, 'Ahh!'"


Good or bad for the young Taylor Hautner, no one is seeing his shirtless images as sexualization of a child to sell a movie. And while there's no big critic to his provocative photos, he could only hope that he never has to take his shirt off in a movie again:

"It's so uncomfortable knowing that so many people are seeing pictures of me shirtless... It's weird. It's kind of embarrassing."

Hollywood's Most Overpaid Actors

How to identify Hollywood's most overpaid actors? Simple – if they receive large amount of money for their acting project, but the project did not gain much earnings in return. The ranking is compiled by looking at a star's past three movies and dividing their total earnings by the films' gross income to get the actor's payback figure.


And guess who tops the list of the most overpaid actors in Hollywood these days? The towering Australian actress Nicole Kidman.

According to U.S. Magazine Forbes, Nicole Kidman is this year's most overpaid celebrity in Hollywood in its second annual list of least bankable stars.

Nicole Kidman's films were estimated to only earn $1 for every dollar that she was paid compared with $8 a year ago. For her film “The Invasion,” the Oscar-winning actress was paid $17 million but the film reportedly lost $2.68 for every dollar earned by the actress.

Other Hollywood actors on the list of most overpaid celebrities include Jennifer Garner who came in second and Nicole Kidman's former husband Tom Cruise whose on the third spot.

Jennifer Garner's recent movies “The Kingdom” and “Catch and Release” underperformed at the box office with a calculated earning of only $3.60 for every $1 paid to the actress. Tom Cruise's performance, on the other hand, was affected by the failure of his last year's film “Lions for Lambs” which had only returned $1.88 for every dollar paid to the veteran actor.

Completing the top ten of Hollywood's most overpaid actors were Cameron Diaz, Nicolas Cage, Drew Barrymore, Will Ferrell, and Cate Blanchett.