Miley Cyrus Pokes And Grinds Herself Into The Cringe Hall Of Fame With Embarrassing VMAs Performance

The Smith family pretty much summed it up perfectly with their priceless reaction to Miley Cyrus; the girl on stage twerking and licking air at the VMAs wasn't Hannah Montana, but instead some deranged, brattish 20-year-old who perhaps isn't as old and mature as she might like to think she is.

Miley tried her hardest to look like Gene Simmons all night

Miley's behaviour throughout Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards was tragic and often painful to watch, although she may have finally succeeded at casting off her Disney shadow. The way she went about doing it have irradiated the remaining ounces of respect that people may have had for her, essentially making the whole charade a pointless exercise. At least we got some good gifs out of it though.

The overall reaction to the twerk-happy, Gene Simmons-copying (but in a way that make even Gene Simmons look un-creepy) cringe-fest of an awards show performance has ensured that Miley's main aim has been a success; people are talking about her, a lot.

The second phase of the plan; earn respect and show everyone how old and unlike Hannah Montana she is now, hasn't been as much of a success. The trouble is (for Miley at least), is that phase two was the most important phase of the whole operation, and with it not being successfully executed (it was doomed from the start), her antics may have cause irreversible damage to her marketability.

It was hard to find a photo of her with her tongue away...

But here's the kicker, in hindsight, Miley's performance never broke any standards of decency that haven't already been broken already, so this big furore really is at Miley herself and not at her actions. We've all seen women gyrate on a male pop or hip-hop star, and if it wasn't Miley's over-the-top grinding then the Beetlejuice-impersonation Robin Thicke would have had someone else doing it instead, probably a few people actually. These girls may not have had the same gaping wardrobe malfunction like Miley does here (what would have happened if she passed gas?), but it's safe to say that any 'Blurred Lines' performance was likely to contain some post-watershed behaviour. The difference between Miley and hired dancers is that these girls are normally anonymous, and they probably know when to stop too, meaning stuff like this never happens.

Anyone who has been keeping up with pop music over the past decade will know that todays female pop superstars are more happy performing half-nude, or nuder, and seem to make their way by seeing who can wear the least without being called out.

Miley's cannonball into the deep-end caught us all off guard, even though she's been trying to assert this sense of rebellion for a while now, and whilst it was over the top at times, it wasn't exactly the VMA's most outrageous stunt to date.

Lets hope the fallout from her performance will give the singer some food for though on what she does next, and hopefully she'll think to take a leaf out of the night's biggest awards winner; Justin Timberlake, as a role model for how to go from tween star to pop royalty, rather than going down the Britney route.

And lets hope she made it up to Billy Ray Cyrus too; seeing his daughter like that must have ruined his birthday.

Found one!