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2013 was the year that Prince George was born, Margaret Thatcher died and Edward Snowden claimed to have stolen thousands of government documents. But more importantly, it was the year that celebrities started decided to start sending open letters to each other.
It started when Miley Cyrus took to the stage at the VMAs in a nude latex outfit and twerked all over Robin Thike, just after she’d released the video for Wrecking Ball where she rode naked on an actual wrecking ball.
Sinead O’Connor wrote in The Guardian: ‘I wasn't going to write this letter, but today i've been dodging phone calls from various newspapers who wished me to remark upon your having said in Rolling Stone your Wrecking Ball video was designed to be similar to the one for Nothing Compares … So this is what I need to say … And it is said in the spirit of motherliness and with love… ...I am extremely concerned for you that those around you have led you to believe, or encouraged you in your own belief, that it is in any way 'cool' to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your videos. It is in fact the case that you will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped, whether its [sic] the music business or yourself doing the pimping.’
She concluded the letter (which, reading six years later, does come across quite a lot like slut-shaming), by writing: ‘Whether we like it or not, us females in the industry are role models and as such we have to be extremely careful what messages we send to other women. The message you keep sending is that it’s somehow cool to be prostituted … it’s so not cool Miley … it’s dangerous.’
Miley took the letter about as well as you would imagine any 20-year-old millionaire taking being told to put their clothes back on by their erstwhile hero. She retweeted some of Sinead’s tweets from a period of her life where she was experiencing mental instability, seemingly mocking them. Sinead then wrote another open letter, telling Cyrus that this wasn’t acceptable. Cyrus replied: ‘Sinead. I don't have time to write you an open letter cause Im [sic] hosting & performing on SNL this week.’
Amanda Palmer did however have time to write an open letter, so she wrote one to Sinead O’Connor, defending Miley’s right to lick hammers and ride wrecking balls (and taking apart the concept that famous women have an obligation to become role models).
Other celebrities decided to also write an open letter to Miley, who at this point was basically the open letter post office. Sufjan Stevens got in touch to point out that she had used the lyric ‘I’ve been laying in this bed’ when she meant ‘lying’.
Before we knew it, you couldn’t open your laptop without reading an open letter from someone to someone else, on all manner of topics. Ed Miliband wrote one to Lord Rothermere to object to the publication of his private letters in the Mail on Sunday. Edward Snowden’s father wrote an open letter to an NSA whistleblower, then Edward Snowden wrote an open letter to the entire country of Brazil. An Australian writer named Jerrie Demasi wrote one to Prince Harry, offering him sex on his upcoming tour down under (as far as we know, he did not respond.) It seemed that everyone had forgotten how to write a letter which was, well, closed.
By the end of the year, O’Connor had written a total of four open letters, but by the time we’d got past the second one, the conversation between O’Connor and Cyrus had lost its sparkle and we rather lost interest. The Guardian published a piece titled, ‘an open letter to everyone who has written an open letter’ and then 2013, the year of airing your feelings towards a celebrity via an open letter, drew to a close.