Story Archive

Thicke with Meaning

The “twerking” performed by Miley Cyrus with Robin Thicke on the MTV Video Music Awards made headlines and was the talk of the Internet, thanks to the sexual nature of the performance by the 20-year-old singer — as if the performance was actual news. But no one was more put out than Steve Chmelar, who created the “Number 1 Hand” like the one Cyrus used as a prop. Chmelar came up with the giant hand-shaped foam glove with the index finger extended to create a “We’re number 1!” gesture in 1971, when he was 16, for his high school basketball team. He complains that Cyrus “took an honorable icon that is seen in sporting venues everywhere and degraded it.” But the VMA show wasn’t the only place The Finger got attention last week. The Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, the minor league baseball team associated with the Philadelphia Phillies, gave away 3,500 of the foam fingers at a game — in honor of Prostate Cancer Awareness Night. (RC/Fox News) ...So clearly, Cyrus wasn’t the only one bending over.
Original Publication Date: 01 September 2013
This story is in True’s book collections, in Volume 20.

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