It was the finger seen 'round the world. Or at least, the finger that broke the 2013 internet.
If you were anywhere near a screen in August 2013, you remember the image: Miley Cyrus, stripped down to a nude-colored latex bikini, tongue out, wildly gesturing with a giant, oversized miley cyrus foam finger. She was 20 years old. She was desperate to kill off Hannah Montana. And honestly? It worked.
But looking back at it now from 2026, the story isn't just about a "raunchy" dance move. It's about a highly calculated marketing pivot that spiraled into a massive cultural debate about race, appropriation, and the literal invention of the foam finger itself.
The Performance That Nobody Could Ignore
The setting was the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the MTV Video Music Awards. Miley started the set emerging from a giant teddy bear to sing "We Can't Stop." Everything was relatively "Miley-level" weird until Robin Thicke walked out in a Beetlejuice-striped suit to perform "Blurred Lines."
That’s when the foam finger made its debut.
She didn't just wave it like a sports fan. She used it as an extension of her body, a prop for twerking, and a pointed message that the Disney Channel days were officially dead. The reactions were immediate. The Smith family (Will, Jada, Willow, and Jaden) was famously caught on camera looking completely stunned—though later reports suggested they might have just been reacting to the spectacle in general.
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People weren't just shocked; they were confused. Was it art? Was it a breakdown? Miley herself told MTV News just three days later that people were "overthinking it." She compared herself to Madonna and Britney, saying, "You're wanting to make history."
Who Actually Made the Finger?
Most people assume the prop was just a random buy from a party store. It wasn't.
The specific miley cyrus foam finger used in the performance was designed by Lisa Katnic. Katnic had actually created the prop for an editorial shoot about a year prior, but it never saw the light of day. It briefly appeared in the "Blurred Lines" music video (which Katnic styled) before Miley decided it was the perfect "weapon" for her VMA arsenal.
Interestingly, there were options. Katnic had made versions with gold glitter nails and French manicures. Miley went with the classic red-nailed version.
The Inventor’s Outrage
While Miley was happy, the man who actually invented the foam finger was... less than thrilled. Steve Chmelar, an Iowa native who created the original "No. 1 hand" prototype in 1971 to support his high school basketball team, was vocal about his distaste.
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He told FoxSports at the time that she "degraded an honorable icon." He felt the prop was meant to encourage team spirit, not whatever happened on that stage. It’s a bit of a hilarious footnote in pop culture history—a man in his late 50s defending the "honor" of a piece of polyurethane foam against a pop star.
The Darker Side: Cultural Appropriation
While the tabloids focused on the "shock factor," a much more serious conversation was happening regarding cultural appropriation.
Miley's Bangerz era was heavily criticized for using Black culture as a costume. Critics, like Haley Zblewski for The Spectator, argued that Miley was reducing Black women to "props." She was twerking with a foam finger while surrounded by Black backup dancers, often in ways that felt like she was "playing" at a culture she didn't belong to.
She eventually addressed this years later. By the time her Younger Now and Endless Summer Vacation eras rolled around, Miley admitted that she didn't quite realize the weight of what she was doing at 20. She has since shifted her focus toward activism, specifically through her Happy Hippie Foundation.
Was She High?
For years, the rumor was that Miley must have been on something to be that erratic.
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She cleared that up during a Carpool Karaoke segment with James Corden in 2017. Surprisingly, she was stone-cold sober. "I can't smoke before I go on stage, I get too scared," she admitted. The performance wasn't a drug-fueled whim; it was a sober, intentional choice to blow up her image.
The Lasting Legacy of the Foam Finger
So, why do we still talk about a piece of foam from over a decade ago?
- The Death of Hannah Montana: This was the final nail in the coffin. After this, no one saw her as a Disney kid ever again.
- The Social Media Milestone: This performance surpassed Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime show in terms of tweets per minute at the time. It was one of the first truly "viral" moments of the modern social media era.
- The Pivot to Activism: Miley credits the backlash with making her realize that if the whole world was going to watch her, she should probably give them something worth looking at.
If you’re looking to understand the mechanics of a "rebrand," the miley cyrus foam finger incident is the ultimate case study. It was messy, it was controversial, and it was undeniably effective.
If you want to revisit the moment yourself, the footage is still all over YouTube, though as many critics said at the time: you can't unsee it. For a deeper look at how pop stars use "shock" to transition their careers, checking out the documentaries on Madonna’s Like a Virgin era or Britney’s 2001 VMA snake performance provides the perfect context for what Miley was trying to achieve.
Next Steps for Deep Dives:
To truly understand the impact, look into the "Blurred Lines" copyright lawsuit that happened around the same time, or research the history of the Happy Hippie Foundation to see how that VMA night actually funded a decade of LGBTQ+ advocacy.