The interview that accompanies this amazing cover of Paper magazine was released today, and in it, Miley Cyrus is showing a tremendous amount of self-awareness and wisdom that completely reaffirms my love for her. I can’t help but have respect for the path she is carving out for her career and personal life—especially when thinking back to the old Hannah Montana days, as she has gone from family-friendly tween pop starlet (seemingly likely to follow the career path of many other young blonde pop stars) to quite an unconventional yet totally brave and inspiring young woman who is aware of her privilege, who wants to do great things, and inspire others to follow suit. Here are 5 of my favorite excerpts!
“I can’t drive by in my fucking Porsche and not fucking do something,” she says. “I see it all day: people in their Bentleys and their Rolls and their Ubers, driving past these vets who have fought for our country, or these young women who have been raped.” She pauses. “I was doing a show two nights ago, and I was wearing butterfly nipple pasties and butterfly wings. I’m standing there with my tits out, dressed like a butterfly. How the fuck is that fair? How am I so lucky?”
She recalls confessing to her mother, at age 14, that she had romantic feelings toward women. “I remember telling her I admire women in a different way. And she asked me what that meant. And I said, I love them. I love them like I love boys,” she says. “And it was so hard for her to understand. She didn’t want me to be judged and she didn’t want me to go to hell. But she believes in me more than she believes in any god. I just asked for her to accept me. And she has.” These days, Cyrus only wants to grant others the same clemency.
“I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting and doesn’t involve an animal and everyone is of age. Everything that’s legal, I’m down with. Yo, I’m down with any adult — anyone over the age of 18 who is down to love me,” she says. “I don’t relate to being boy or girl, and I don’t have to have my partner relate to boy or girl.”
As for the next record, she’s moving forward on her own terms, despite some nail-biting from her camp: “They’re like, ‘Don’t make it too weird, don’t make it avant-garde; you can’t go from Miley to Björk!'” She’s recording at all hours in a studio she recently built out of her garage in Los Angeles. “I don’t have to have writers, I don’t have to have fuckin’ producers in there. Mike Will will text me a beat, and I’ll go in my studio and work on it by myself.”
“As long as you’re not hurting anyone,” she says, “your choices are your choices.”
See the full feature here!
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