“Prostitute” and “crazy”. These two words ignited what has been a month-long celebrity feud between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor and contributed to public mental health and slut shaming.  Like all good celebrity feuds, it all started on the Internet with an open letter on a personal blog and a snarky tweet.After remarking to Rolling Stone that her “Wrecking Ball” music video was inspired by O’Connor’s Prince cover, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Cyrus suddenly drew the “concern” of O’Connor.Instead of taking the compliment that her work had inspired Cyrus, O’Connor — in what she called the “spirit of motherliness and with love” — gave the young star a serious lecture about her responsibility as a role model to other women and girls and accused her of being “prostituted” by her record label.“I repeat, you have enough talent that you don’t need to let the music business make a prostitute of you,” O’Connor wrote on her blog. “You shouldn’t let them make a fool of you either. Don’t think for a moment that any of them give a flying f–k about you. They’re there for the money… we’re there for the music.” While women should be valued for more than just their sexuality, they should also be allowed to express their sexuality openly and freely without judgment. O’Connor’s motherly love is nothing more than one so-called feminist shaming her younger predecessor’s choices based on her own moral constructs. It is counterproductive.Miley Cyrus’ body is already both fetishized and criticized in the media. O’Connor’s implication is Miley’s naked body is shameful and that Miley is naive, weak and being taken advantage of by men.This is a disservice to her intelligence. Cyrus is far from naive. From Cyrus’s Rolling Stone article it’s clear she is the one fiercely in control of her image – even if she is still experimenting and figuring things out. Her prerogative is to not take herself too seriously. She points out to the Rolling Stone reporter that she knows what sexy is and it isn’t what she was doing at the VMAs with her tongue wagging and tiny strange pigtails. She jokes to Rolling Stone, “Now people expect me to come out and twerk with my tongue out all the time. I’ll probably never do that sh-t again.”Amanda Palmer, a punk-rock cabaret singer who is infamous for her own forays into nudity, penned O’Connor her own open letter in response. In her letter, Palmer made the point that women need to be free to express themselves however they want without facing the judgment of other women. “There needs to be room on the vast playing field for Adele to wear a conservative suit, room for Lady Gaga to do naked performance art in the woods, room for PJ Harvey to wear high-collared 18th century jackets on stage, room for Natasha Kahn to pose boldly naked on the cover of her last record, and room for Miley to rip a page out of stripper culture and run around like a maniac for however long she wants to,” Palmer wrote.With a vicious entertainment media that tracks every pound a woman loses or gains and has something to say about every outfit female performers wear, women in the public eye should hold each other up, not knock each other down.   Unfortunately, both of these strong female performers decided to knock each other down. Cyrus’s reaction to O’Connor’s letter was to mock her ongoing battle with mental illness – something that is inexcusable in any situation. Cyrus called O’Connor ‘crazy’ on the Today Show and tweeted screen caps of tweets O’Connor made two years ago while having an erratic mental breakdown that almost led to her suicide.Though Cyrus’s one tweet was her only reaction to O’Connor, mocking anyone based on their public battle with mental illness and suicide is inhumane. O’Connor wrote a torrent of reply letters. The five letters first berated Cyrus’s lack of humanity, then coldly said Cyrus would hear from her lawyers, and finally beseeched Cyrus for an apology and stated if and when Cyrus has a public mental breakdown, O’ Connor will be the first one to defend the pop starlet. Cyrus has not responded since her original tweet.When powerful women in the public eye openly judge one another, even with the “best” of intentions, it sets a precedent for all women to continue to be jealous, catty and misunderstanding of each other’s differences. At this point, neither O’Connor nor Cyrus is a very good role model for young women.