Miley Cyrus is not a 'tween. 'Tweens are the not-quite teens that marketers "discovered" in the '90's. Miley Cyrus is a teen. She's marketed to 'tweens, but she isn't one herself.

Here's another thing that Miley Cyrus is not: the first average kid/rock star character in a sitcom that has weird parallels to real life.

Ms. O'Roarke is only in her early thirties, so she may not remember The Partridge Family. I loved that show. Every week, I tuned in to watch that dreamy Keith Partridge, the regular-high-school-kid-rock-s­tar. He was played by a real rock star, David Cassidy. David Cassidy was nothing like the product packages as Keith Partridge. His mom on the show was played by his real step-mom, Shirley Jones.

Of course, even David Cassidy wasn't the first kid on a sitcom who was a musician in both real life and on the show. Ricky Nelson and Desi Arnez Jr. also come to mind. (And their folks on their TV shows were also really their parents.)

So, what's the difference with Miley/Hannah? Is it because she's a girl? There might be something to the gender difference. Too bad the article didn't focus on that difference.

Instead, the article assumes that Disney is giving us something new, and that today's 'tweens have an interest in celebrity that previous generations did not. With just a little research, there might have been an interesting article.

I think the photo's were very well done, and would be acceptable if she was 18 or older. What disturbs me is her photo laying across her father. It looks a little too intimate to me, like it is something that should be more with a boyfriend and not a father.

To each their own how they want to present their children to the world one persons morals differ from anothers. What one considers wrong another does not but personally I would not want my 15 year old daughter posed in the way that Miley was in that picture appearing naked from the waste up under a sheet. Career or not this is their child that they are presenting to the world and how exactly do they want the world to view her? Whether they or anyone else likes it when you present yourself without your shirt on draped in a sheet that brings up sex to the mind. I would never want to portray my 15 year old daughter in any way that would bring up sex in anyone's mind but that's just me, like I said in the beginning, each to his own.

Yeah. I remember swooning over David singing "I think I love you" - and some of the songs were pretty catchy.

I also think you are onto something about gender issues here. But, I think there is another factor-the glorification of glitz and fame as viable career options. The Partridge Family focused on the day to day life of the Partridges much more so than the performance aspect of things. From what I read in this column (I have never seen the show. My 5-year old has not discovered HM in any sort of substantive way), the stories center around the glitziness of beign a "Rock Star."

I think it is also that many of us have exceeded saturation with all the crap out there for girls designed to glorifiy a hypersexualized feminine ideal-Bratz dolls etc. Also, and this REALLY creeps me out. Target carries a line of padded training bras. Yich!

Within the last year, we bought the first season of The Partridge Family on DVD. For the first season, at least, the series spent a lot of time focusing on the show biz aspect. Unlike Hanna Montana (I watch with 'tweens), the Partridges spent a lot of time on tour. In later season, they spent more time at home than on the road, but show business was still a big factor.

If anything, the Miley/Hanna character spends more time focusing on things like going to school, dealing with friends, and getting crushes on boys. The fact that she has a duel life means that there has to be some focus on non-showbiz stuff.

That said, I am more upset that the little girls I know are upset because the press decided to make a huge deal out of some Vanity Fair photos. The sitcom rock stars of the past had much larger transgressions, but, then, they were boys.

Thank you, Meghan and Slate for mentioning that materialism is also a problem. I'm really sick of everyone getting so up in arms with sex when there's glaring selfishness, high consumption, and greed running amok. There should be much more of an outrage about the tween sitcom's glorification of shopping and expensive things than one tastefully done photograph. That photo is not explicitly sexy, but the sex police have to make it so.

Everyone needs to chill and think about doing something good for the needy. That will make everything better.

Stories centering around the glitziness of being a rock star....reminds me of a little show I loved when I was growing up in the 80s: Jem. She was a regular girl by day, rock star by night. I don't think people got up in arms about the fact that Jem didn't present real-life issues. Maybe little girls can recognize that cartoon shows aren't real better than they can live-actor shows, but I don't think the larger-than-life nature of the Hannah Montana premise will have much lasting damage on young girls. I watched Jem all the time and not once did I seriously expect to grow up and be a rich rock star with fabulous clothes and a green and pink roadster...just like the boys in my class didn't really think they'd grow up to be Batman.

And on second thought, so what if kids want to be a rock star when they grow up? I imagine that by the time it really matters what they want to do in the future (high school) they'll have outgrown wanting to be like Hannah Montana.