It's hard to know who to blame in this situation. A so-called innocent 15-year-old actress is cajoled into taking her top off for a prestigious photoshoot. She's eager to please the famous professionals around her, not least the celebrity photographer who's coordinating the shoot, and does exactly what she's asked. Later, when the images are released, the scandal unfolds and soon the apologies come. "The pictures were silly," she pleads. "I never intended this to happen."

It's so tempting to roll your eyes, flick the page and find something a little more interesting to read. So what? you think. Hollywood has claimed another victim. Miley Cyrus, aka Disney character Hannah Montana and daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, the country musician with the Achy Breaky Heart, has forgotten her age for a day and tried to act like an adult. Surely there are more important things going on in the world? A global economic crisis, to name one?

But, of course, this isn't just a picture. With her tousled hair, pale skin, dark shadowy eyes and red lips, little Miley looks positively post-coital in this widely-lamented photograph, with a touch of heroin chic thrown in for good measure. It's a shocking change from the happy, shiny Hannah Montana character kids (and their now indignant parents) are used to watching on TV. She certainly doesn't look like a 15-year-old girl. Or better put, she doesn't look like the kind of 15-year-old girl we're comfortable with.

The picture itself, taken by famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, looks reminiscent of fine art. It appears to have been retouched and now looks distinctly like a sixteenth-century master's painting of a life model, not a contemporary portrait of a young Disney star. Is it a good photo? Most definitely. Does it do its subject justice? Difficult to say. Is it attention grabbing and product selling (in this case Vanity Fair magazine)? Of course.

And that is where the inevitable hypocrisy lies. While we all might bleat and moan about our abhorrence of this image and discuss how Miley's "mistake" might lead to the corruption of our nation's young girls, we have heard the same things said in the past, of similar images, and similar girls, in similar situations. Leibovitz herself defended the shot as "a simple, classic portrait".

Take Brooke Shields, for example. Just 15 years old when she posed for the Calvin Klein jeans campaign with the slogan "nothing gets between me and my Calvins", yet now that same photograph has become an iconic image of the 1980s. Britney Spears's decision, at 16, to wear a short school girl's uniform was met with nothing more than a few smutty remarks and a stampede to the record store.

There are plenty of young modern celebrities just like them. Lindsay Lohan has been to rehab, and openly consumed alcohol before her 21st birthday (the legal age limit in the US), while Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen went from being the wholesome twins to fragile waifs, accused of promoting bad body images. The difficult transition from child star to adulthood has been causing famous young girls problems for years - Drew Barrymore's teenage drug addition is a perfect case in point. Miley's photo, uncomfortable as it might feel right now, is nothing new.

Of course that doesn't make it right. Far from it. But the real issue here isn't that this image sends the wrong message to young girls, it's that Miley has been exploited by the whole situation.

Leibovitz and Vanity Fair should have known what they were doing when they asked Hannah Montana to pose in such a seductive manner. It's textbook stuff: sell yourself some magazines. What's more worrying is that her mum and dad were also on set to oversee the proceedings.

If the finger of blame has to be pointed then it ought to be aimed at Leibovitz. Grand reputation or not, she should not have taken that photo, or even suggested it. In the abstract the image might be a great piece of art, but consider the details and it becomes depressing and mundane: another cheap marketing trick at the expense of an embarrassed young girl.