Will Miley Cyrus Be a Total Disaster at the VMAs? A PR Expert Weighs in

This Sunday at 9pm EST, Miley Cyrus will get her tits right out on live TV. Maybe.

The annual MTV Video Music Awards constitute a rare instance of actual music programming on MTV, and a just-as-rare-these-days draw of big viewer numbers. This year it feels like the network is courting controversy more desperately than ever. Accordingly, MTV has appointed Miley Cyrus as the event's host, making a huge deal about her having "carte blanche" and "free reign" to do what she wants, while also reminding viewers they've got a delay on the live broadcast so they're "ready for Miley." Promo videos feature Cyrus with dolphins for breasts, crying pills from her eyes, and tonguing the new Moon Man, redesigned by Jeremy Scott for 2015. The implication of all this is clear: "we don't even know what craaaaaazy thing this naked, sexy hippie will get up to next, you'll have to TUNE IN to SEE FOR YOURSELF!"

With Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj already Twitter-beefing about the "Video of the Year" category, Kanye West accepting Michael Jackson Vanguard Award, and poor old Justin Bieber attempting a comeback with a performance of his new single, "What Do You Mean," this year's show feels more than ever like MTV setting up a bunch of dominoes and hoping for an earthquake. Enter Cyrus.

She already knows how to use the awards show for publicity. Her 2013 VMA performance was a spectacle and a scandal, but it was also the introduction of her new, hyper-sexual pothead persona. While the scandal faded, Cyrus' pasties stayed firmly taped to her nips. While thinkpieces about slutshaming erupted from the earth with a horrible vengeance, the whole affair was actually something of a coup for Cyrus. "People are still talking about that performance and she gained a whole new fan base," said Amanda K. Ruisi, Founder & President of AKR Public Relations. Cyrus set herself up as a fully-fledged pop star, born writhing and twerking from the stuffed base of a giant bear. She described the experience to the New York Times as "stepping into her happiness." After the performance and subsequent media frenzy, Cyrus was relatively quiet, exploring sex and drugs and music on her own terms.

Last year, Cyrus returned to the VMAs to accept the "Video of the Year" award for "Wrecking Ball," she brought homeless youth Jesse Hart as her date, and had him accept the award on behalf of the "1.6 million runaways and homeless youth in the United States," as well as Miley's newly-formed Happy Hippie Foundation, a non-profit that works with at-risk and homeless youth. Cyrus had tears in her eyes while Hart spoke. It was both moving to watch and an impressive PR move. In just two appearances at the VMAs, Cyrus had recreated herself exactly as she wanted to be seen: a sex-positive, drug-friendly party girl with a heart of gold. "I think people really appreciated this because she let someone else have her moment and it was something you could tell she was genuinely passionate about," Ruisi said."The public doesn't tolerate anything they deem disingenuous."

This is where Cyrus and MTV appear to have gotten themselves into a mutually beneficial, everyone-wins arrangement. MTV wants controversy, but they want it to be (or at least feel) real. Cyrus courts controversy simply by being herself. She recently burned Taylor Swift for being too violent in her "Bad Blood" video, then suggested Kendrick Lamar got away with things in his music that she can't, because she's a woman. Yesterday, she told the New York Times she doesn't watch MTV or know who any of the nominees are, then called Nicki Minaj "impolite" for suggesting she'd been overlooked for best video due to racism and/or sizeism. There's been a thing with her, Zayn Malik, and Taylor Swift. She went on Jimmy Kimmel last night with her tits out, cupping her boobs and saying "you can show the jug part."

But the ultimate winner of this arrangement is Miley. After the show is over and John Legend has been made into a .gif rolling his eyes at Demi Lovato, MTV will still be a struggling network with a declining viewership and unclear mandate. Despite the "what will she do next" marketing, if something goes poorly on Sunday night, it won't be on Cyrus' head. "With something as big as the VMAs there is never one person who will take the fall," Ruisi said. "She isn't alone in this and if anything will probably gain more fans." Sure, Cyrus has people talking in the leadup to the VMAs, but they're mostly talking about her. In casting Cyrus as host, MTV is trying to sell itself as spontaneous, dangerous, and young, all thing's it's not. Their host's just being Miley.