While most of the civilized world slept last night, the Internet threw an all-night debutante ball for Miley Cyrus’s vagina: The pop star’s Eliza Doolittle had its unexpected coming out at the urging of Perez Hilton’s Henry-Higgins-in-reverse, who posted an “upskirt” pic to his Twitter feed that showed Cyrus emerging from a convertible with, as CBS and your grandmother put it, her “lady parts” exposed. Unfortunately for Hilton, Cyrus is 17 years old, which means Hilton is technically guilty of child pornography, and could potentially face serious criminal charges.
Earlier today, Salon interviewed L.A. criminal defense attorney Jeffrey Douglas, who characterizes Hilton’s actions as “suicidal,” adding, “We’re not talking about a misdemeanor.” Douglas adds that even if the image is Photoshopped—which many have averred that it is, as it seems to come from this video shoot (as reported on by NME, who's got its own creepy lasciviousness going on)—it’s still considered a crime, as “if you were to take the face of an 8-year-old and put that picture on the nude body of even an identifiable, fully-developed adult porn star, it is child porn punishable identical to if you took a photo of the actual child.” (Neat, we all learned something today.) According to Douglas, all it would take is an “enterprising attorney” who’s looking to make an example out of Hilton, and the blogger could end up facing a potential jail sentence and a lifetime of being a registered sex offender. And that’s not even mentioning the damage to his journalistic credibility.