Kids, eh? It’s so hard to watch them grow up. Especially when they’re Miley Cyrus. But then again it’s always hard to watch her.

Miley Cyrus is starting to assert her independence. Until now, Miley had been doing this perfectly normally, like going out with an adult underwear model and being ludicrously rich enough to financially control her entire family, but now she’s crossed the line. How? Miley Cyrus has got her nose pierced.

So now Miley Cyrus is a punk. We’re excited to hear her raw, uncompromising new direction on forthcoming single Let’s Have A Punky Pyjama Party (Lalalalala).

Deep down, Miley Cyrus has always been a rebel. All the signs were there – the romance with the unsuitably older man, the tendency to strip off for photos at any given opportunity, the fearless mockery of arbitrarily-chosen racial groups, that song of hers that had rock guitars in it because a computer had analysed data from several focus groups in Miley’s key demographic and revealed that rock guitars would track well for her in a number of important new markets.

See? Miley Cyrus is bold. Miley Cyrus is single-minded. Miley Cyrus will not sell out – unless of course your definition of selling out involves giving away both your physical likeness and entire childhood to one of the world’s biggest entertainment companies and doing everything it orders you to do in exchange for cash, in which case there might be an argument that Miley Cyrus has sold out a little bit.

But in case you wanted some more proof, Miley Cyrus has just had her nose pierced. And it affected her dad Billy Ray Cyrus so strongly that he’s actually written a song about it, as he told Larry King:

“She said, ‘Daddy would you take me to get my nose pierced?’ I said, ‘Did you ask your mamma?’ and she said, ‘Mamma said I can do it if you would take me.’ We went to a little place in Studio City. I felt kind of nervous… You probably heard the song I wrote, Ready, Set, Don’t Go. It’s about that moment in a daddy’s life that you realise your little girl has grown up. It’s time for her to make her own decisions.”

Now you come to mention it, Billy Ray Cyrus, we think we have heard that song. Correct us if we’re wrong, but we believe it’s on the same album as the songs Don’t Forget Your Old Daddy, What Are We Going To Do For Money Once You Move Out and I Swear If You Stop Making Hannah Montana Now I’ll Be Completely Bloody Destitute (Is That What You Want?).

But anyway, it’s natural for a young girl like Miley Cyrus to want to branch out and make her own decisions. Mark our words, there’ll be a tattoo next. Unless some Disney-sanctioned focus groups decide that tattoos don’t send an appropriately aspirational message to her core markets, that is, in which case we’re probably wrong.

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