As Miley Cyrus racks up another hit on the charts thanks to jumping on a remix of The Kid LAROI’s 2020 hit, “Without You” (not to be mistaken for Mariah Carey’s classic 90s song of the same name), it bears noting that it happens to be, in spite of appearances, a track in direct contrast with her “anti-convention” message most recently promoted on Plastic Hearts, particularly “Bad Karma” featuring Joan Jett. It is here that she declares, “I don’t give a fuck, I don’t believe in luck/That’s why I do what I wanna do, yeah.” This seems to be the shared millennial and Gen Z copout as they so often renege on the things they once “wanted to do” as nothing more than a symptom of youthful folly.
One wonders if Cyrus might feel that way about “Without You” in the future. For, like the “nail polish episode” of Good Girls, Cyrus emphasizes an already damaging cliché. Even despite the fact that the song is an attempt at showcasing that a “liberated” woman can’t ever really be tamed (as Miley already said before on, what else, “Can’t Be Tamed”). This, to be sure, is meant to be “empowering” via the most recognizable line from the single, “So there I go, oh/Can’t make a wife out of a ho, no.” Yet, undercuttingly, it has the exact opposite effect. Indeed, uttered by her, it just makes it sound like a woman with too “robust” a sexual history can’t be deemed “worthy” of “conventional monogamy” a.k.a. marriage somewhere down the line. With the song in its original form, that sentiment merely portrays The Kid LAROI as a patent misogynist.
With Juice WRLD (dead at twenty-one) formerly being The Kid LAROI’s mentor, it makes sense that the latter, too, would relish the chance to create a song that addresses so-called “love-hate” relationships (which always, ultimately, just mean hate). For one of the last songs Juice WRLD would ever be part of was Ellie Goulding’s 2019 song, “Hate Me,” on which she taunts, “Hate me, hate me, still tryna replace me/Chase me, chase me, tell me how you hate me/Erase me, ‘rase me, wish you never dated me/Lies, tell me lies, baby, tell me how you hate me.”
But at least those jeering expressions were more honest in tone than the “levity” evinced in this song, which seeks to write off a woman incapable of committing as nothing more than a puta who can’t keep her snatch to herself (let alone to one man). That The Kid LAROI is still a mere seventeen—sorry, Billie, there is at least one famous musician out there who’s younger than you—only adds to the incongruity of referencing marriage at all. Of course anyone in his age group ain’t gonna meet the “purist’s” demands about what monogamy is supposed to be—including, regardless of how antiquated the practice is, marriage.
And, speaking of Billie Eilish, she might have talked a lot of bullshit in her British Vogue interview, but perhaps one accurate assessment was calling out the specific term that appears in this song: “Can’t make a wife out of a ho.” Eilish stated, in turn, “Everybody’s like, ‘You can’t make a wife out of a ho’—and it’s like, you’re attracted to that person, though. You created that person…” We’re guessing she means “created that person…in your head.” Projected so many expectations onto them that they could never possibly live up to any of those ideals—are bound to disappoint in some way. Especially a girl who might suddenly be seen as too much of a trollop when a guy finds out her “number.”
Eilish adds to her unwittingly anti-“Without You” statement, “Suddenly you’re a hypocrite if you want to show your skin, and you’re easy and you’re a slut and you’re a whore. If I am, then I’m proud. Me and all the girls are hoes, and fuck it, y’know? Let’s turn it around and be empowered in that. Showing your body and showing your skin—or not—should not take any respect away from you.” Nor should it mean that you’re deemed as somehow “unmarriageable.” Nonetheless, so continues the time-honored stigma against “hos” being anything more than just that: a “thing” for guys to have fun with before they opt for the Madonna in the “Madonna/whore complex” as a wife (that entire “syndrome” being the reason behind why Trey [Kyle MacLachlan] in Sex and the City “can’t get it up” for Charlotte [Kristin Davis]—she’s “too virginal” to allow himself to be aroused by).
No matter how far we’ve allegedly come in the twenty-first century, the fact that women themselves still buy into this idea that they have to project some modicum of “chastity” is part of why even “pansexual” Miley can’t break down the barrier, so much as perpetuate it. A film as recent as Promising Young Woman also accents that point in the character of Madison McPhee (Alison Brie), who tells her former college friend, Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan), at lunch, “When it comes down to it, all guys want the same thing: a good girl.” Cassie replies “jokingly,” “I don’t seem to remember you were that much of a good girl at school.” Pouring another glass of wine, Madison shrugs, “Well Fred didn’t know me at school…” A prime elucidation of how much women feel they need to hide about their “sordid past” from the man they end up “landing.” Lest he be disgusted with her and decides to change his mind about whether or not she’s “wifey material.”
Another oddness to the entire “intent” of this song aiming to prove that some girls are too “wild” to be a wife is the overt age difference between LAROI and Cyrus. Just over a full decade older than The Kid LAROI, Miley fulfills an inevitable prophecy of her own future in playing the “Mrs. Robinson” role in this dynamic as the two “canoodle” on picnic blankets, sidewalks and the hood of a truck outside a McDonald’s together. It’s all very “L.A. trash” by design—for Cyrus herself directed the video. And it’s almost like, more than playing his no-good love interest, she’s portraying his mentor; showing him how free-spiritedness is done. Of course, if LAROI wants to sow his oats for the duration of his twenties and contract all manner of STDs, that will surely be fine. He’ll still end up finding a wife who is “non-hoish” enough for his tastes—just look at Justin Bieber.
So while these lyrics are expected from a seventeen-year-old Aussie, one had sort of hoped for more from Miley. For her to know better, at her more “advanced” age, the true fine print of this song that serves as nothing more than yet another microaggression against women who are “whores.”
