How proud can we be of our society when our focus is on the scandalous dancing of Miley Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards?

For those who missed it, Miley Cyrus sang “We Can’t Stop” and performed alongside Robin Thicke for “Blurred Lines” on Sunday Night at the VMAs, which included Cyrus sporting a nude bikini and twerking on stage.

Back in her Disney days, everyone saw her as a Disney darling, the girl who was acceptable to look up to. For the first few years after her Disney career, everyone let her off by simply saying she was “rebelling.” But how many years of rebelling does it take before someone steps in?

If it was publicity she was looking for, she received it. After the performance, she tweeted proudly about how many people were talking about her and watching the video. Is there a point when Miley Cyrus could look in the mirror and say, “I don’t like who I have become,” or is that just something people have to keep telling her?

I worked with 13-year-old girls all summer — in between singing old Miley Cyrus songs, they thought twerking was hilarious. It was something that I could laugh and smile about at the time, but now it makes me cringe. I couldn’t imagine any of my girls acting like that, and I hope they learned enough from me that they respect their bodies enough to never put themselves in that place.

Oxford Dictionaries Online just recently defined “twerk” in the dictionary as a “dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.” The ODO adds words that are modernly used in the English language and “twerk” was added with words like “selfie” and “emoji”. All of these are words that accurately portray the younger generation in our society.

It isn’t just dirty dancing that has made its way into popular culture. Music plays on the radio with words I would hate to explain to children and references on television leave me speechless. I would find some of these funny with friends my own age, but what do you do when it’s a child sitting beside you or singing the words?

We complain about children growing up too fast, but if this is the world they live in, then how can we expect them not to? What we find acceptable today isn’t what was acceptable even 10 years ago. I remember ‘N Sync on stage when I was little, and their performance was exactly what I remembered. However, it still looked outdated compared to new entertainment with in-your-face behaviors.

Yes, the VMAs are on MTV where everyone expects limits to be tested, but that doesn’t excuse what we find on public airwaves or television channels. As years continue to go by, when will we finally cross the line of what is appropriate to show the public, or have we already crossed it?