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" I was eight years old when Miley Cyrus made her debut on Disney Channel&amp;#039;s Hannah Montana and beginning my senior year of high school when she delivered the VMAs performance that single-handedly butchered the teddy-bear industry. Since then, a flurry of think pieces and open letters have declared Miley to be either the blind victim of puppeteering managers or a maniacal genius of publicity. All seem to agree that her recent reincarnation is just ex-child-star protocol, a\u0300 la Britney Spears or Justin Bieber, and/or the sign of a mental breakdown. The concern at the heart of it all was for young women my age who grew up with Miley and probably would be brainwashed into a massive army of hypersexual copycats.  I flew to Phoenix in February for an interview with Cyrus and a night of her Bangerz tour. She spoke a mile a minute, eager to impress and to set the record straight, though not with-out claiming repeatedly that she does not give a fuck. She wore a silk John Galliano robe printed with newspaper headlines and did not break eye contact once.  Cyrus is neither a lost train wreck nor completely sure of her place in the world. She&amp;#039;s just searching for it on an extreme scale, and, actually, in a much more unique, unprecedented way than her critics might think. She didn&amp;#039;t become a sex kitten or a bombshell but instead a stoner with an androgynous haircut and a proudly boyish frame. She didn&amp;#039;t follow in the footsteps of young female stars who play sexy for the benefit of the audience but have no sex life of their own (at least not that they&amp;#039;d admit to); instead, her performance of sex is goofy and inaccessible, intended only for her own pleasure and fun (Terry Richardson collaborations aside). She is more self-possessed than skeptics think she is, but maybe not as self-possessed as she thinks she is. Not in any dangerous, downward-spiraling way, though. She just carries the same conviction that I and every one else in our age group share, that as recent survivors of adolescence, we know what is really important to us. Related: Why Sinead O&amp;#039;Connor (and Most People) Are Wrong About Miley Cyrus The Bangerz show\u2014one of 60 concerts over four months\u2014is a parade of innuendo-infused graphics and Chuck E. Cheese furries. At one point, Cyrus sat on a giant bed with her dancers, everyone feeling each other up as a giant neon flower bloomed behind them. For the encore, she rode out on a humongous hot dog through a door in the middle of a sky-printed Jumbotron, resembling the ending of The Truman Show. I danced during &amp;quot;Party in the U.S.A.&amp;quot; with a stranger my age, because I am a human person with feelings, and because, like me, this girl had come alone. When I asked her what she liked about Cyrus, she passionately replied: &amp;quot;Everything she stands for. Self-expression, being true to you, growing, and finding yourself.&amp;quot; My diva cup runneth over.  Tavi Gevinson: This is a huge tour, with more than 50 shows. How do you make sure you can always access that emotional, creative zone to give a strong performance every night? Miley Cyrus: Sometimes when I&amp;#039;m in the studio I feel so much but don&amp;#039;t know how to express it. You&amp;#039;re just in like a cave\u2014life goes on without you. I started my album, and then when I ended my album everything in my life was different. I lost a lot of friends, &amp;#039;cause my friends didn&amp;#039;t understand why I was so 24-7 and only knew how to say what I wanted to say through music. I&amp;#039;m not a good communicator. I get it from my dad. On tour, I&amp;#039;m obsessed, because it&amp;#039;s such an investment. Honestly, like, I&amp;#039;m not making any money on this tour\u2014I put all the money into the tour. My managers all think I&amp;#039;m bat-shit crazy, but I think it&amp;#039;s good for me in the long run. It&amp;#039;s a really weird life, because you&amp;#039;re working, but nothing that I&amp;#039;m doing I have to; usually it&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;cause I want to. Most of my fans are young; they pay for their own tickets and work really hard to be able to come, and so I want to give all of them the best show\u2014the same show in Mississippi as I do in L.A. TG: Do you struggle with coming down from the high of performing? On a much smaller scale, I always need time to adjust when I go back to school after working and being in control. MC: People treat you almost like you&amp;#039;re an adult, and then you go back and it&amp;#039;s hard to connect. Like at night I have to go on vocal rest, which for me is the hardest thing ever. &amp;#039;Cause I&amp;#039;m 21, I want to be out there drinking and hanging out, but I can&amp;#039;t. And being on tour is totally like a drug\u2014you&amp;#039;re really high off the energy and then you just crash\u2014you go from 20,000 people screaming like, &amp;quot;I love you, I love you!&amp;quot; and then you&amp;#039;re just in your hotel room by yourself, quiet. Related: Miley Cyrus&amp;#039; Complete Style Evolution TG: The show displays a kind of self-awareness about what you&amp;#039;ve come to mean as a public persona. You enter on a slide that&amp;#039;s supposed to be the tongue from a giant graphic of your face. Where did that idea come from? MC: People have made me seem like a character. So now I&amp;#039;m just enjoying playing a character of myself. People&amp;#039;s mouths drop when I dance, but my friends are like, &amp;quot;You dance like that in the kitchen!&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m always pretty much joking. In the show, I do this really horrible wave, like the Queen. It&amp;#039;s so dumb, because everyone waves back at me like that! It&amp;#039;s almost like abusing the fact that I&amp;#039;m a little bit of a trendsetter. People ask me how I stay happy and sane: I never google myself. TG: It&amp;#039;s the kiss of death.  MC: I mean, journalism, what it&amp;#039;s become\u2014people literally write whatever they want, and it&amp;#039;s not real. They don&amp;#039;t ever talk about the fact that I put so much money into this tour. I don&amp;#039;t understand how most pop stars live this life being told what to do, what to wear, all the time. Maybe money does mean more to some people.  TG: Did you feel that limitation under Disney? MC: You know, I&amp;#039;m really thankful that I started on Disney. I got the most intense training. There&amp;#039;s times where I wish I could have just started as a new artist, but the world has kind of allowed me to do that. I feel really lucky\u2014a lot of kid stars get all crazy or stuck in what they were, so they can&amp;#039;t actually become what they&amp;#039;re meant to be. When I went through a really intense breakup\u2014you know, I was engaged\u2014and when I was with him or when I was on Disney, the thing that gave me the most anxiety was not knowing what to do with myself when Disney wasn&amp;#039;t there to carry me anymore or if I didn&amp;#039;t have him. And now I&amp;#039;m free of both of those things, and I&amp;#039;m fine. Like, I lay in bed at night by myself and I&amp;#039;m totally okay, and that&amp;#039;s so much stronger than the person three years ago, who would have thought they would have died if they didn&amp;#039;t have a boyfriend. TG: Many people assume, though, that you just went from Disney telling you what to do to other guys in suits telling you what to do.  MC: I always tell [my managers]: &amp;quot;The reason that I have you guys is because I need to be protected so that for the rest of my life I&amp;#039;m not only not making any money.&amp;quot; Sometimes my managers say, &amp;quot;Why do you ask us questions if when we start to answer it....&amp;quot; And I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;I hear what you say and I&amp;#039;m gonna do the opposite of it. Because you&amp;#039;re old and you&amp;#039;re a man, and I&amp;#039;m young and I&amp;#039;m a girl and I know that&amp;#039;s right.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ve just got to make sure that I&amp;#039;m the voice of my generation. I think that I&amp;#039;m allowing girls to be really free with their sexuality. When I was [on tour] in Vancouver and in Washington, it almost made me feel like I was the Beatles. Girls were throwing bras and underwear at me, and, like, totally turned out. And it&amp;#039;s funny because some people act like I&amp;#039;m pushing my fans away by what I do, but\u2014 Related: Over-Analyzing Miley Cyrus&amp;#039; New Haircut: What Does it All Mean? TG: They&amp;#039;re making the same discoveries.  MC: They&amp;#039;re going through it, yeah. When I do things that would get someone old to shake their head, my fans go ape shit. Like when we bend over or take our shirts off, we&amp;#039;re giving them that freedom. And that&amp;#039;s what rock &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; roll always was. Like, people snuck out to go see Joan Jett, and their mothers would be pissed. And I&amp;#039;m honored to be that girl that gets people out of their comfort zone. I tell a lot of people this, but I don&amp;#039;t give a fuck. I think most people would&amp;#039;ve done the VMAs and then been like, &amp;quot;Oh, I&amp;#039;m sorry, I didn&amp;#039;t mean to piss everyone off.&amp;quot; No, I&amp;#039;m not sorry\u2014I made a conscious decision to do that. There were so many things I have had to say sorry for that I wasn&amp;#039;t sorry about.  TG: Like the Annie Leibovitz photo of you wearing a sheet that ran in Vanity Fair from when you were 15.  MC: When I was a kid, yeah! I didn&amp;#039;t think I was being sexy, but the person&amp;#039;s mind went to that\u2014like, who&amp;#039;s the perverted one? I definitely wasn&amp;#039;t sorry about that, but someone had to write something that said I was. I don&amp;#039;t want to do that anymore.  TG: I wonder, though, if that kind of sexual freedom isn&amp;#039;t extended to your backup dancers. Your VMAs performance\u2014 MC: Somehow a lot of people thought I was exploiting black culture. The reason why I hired those girls for the VMAs is because they&amp;#039;re not white, skinny girls\u2014they&amp;#039;re healthy-looking girls. Like, moms\u2014usually they hate me\u2014but they come up and they&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;Thank you so much for having girls that look like my daughter dancing for you.&amp;quot; Those girls have danced together since they were six years old\u2014I could never be like, &amp;quot;Hey, I&amp;#039;ve got to break you up &amp;#039;cause it&amp;#039;s politically correct to throw a white bitch in here.&amp;quot; I was on the Disney Channel, where you need to make sure there&amp;#039;s, like, an Asian girl and a black girl and a Puerto Rican girl in every scene. And that isn&amp;#039;t life!  TG: Critic Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote that your performance reminded her of being hit on by drunk white people &amp;quot;ironically&amp;quot;\u2014the joke being that, as a black woman with a stereotypically thick body, she wasn&amp;#039;t actually sexy. MC: I&amp;#039;m definitely not making a joke of it. Those are literally my friends. And by the way, you can ask me anything\u2014I&amp;#039;ll never be offended. A lot of people who have made those comments are older\u2014they were living in a world that was more defined by color. Now that isn&amp;#039;t black culture\u2014that&amp;#039;s just culture in general. That&amp;#039;s pop culture; that&amp;#039;s the way we dance. These pissed-off moms on the Internet\u2014they don&amp;#039;t understand that when you go to a club now it&amp;#039;s not about being black or white or heavy or thick. I&amp;#039;m shaking my ass because I want to shake my ass, not &amp;#039;cause &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m dancing like a black girl!&amp;quot; Even in the fashion industry people are accepting bodies, and I think Kim Kardashian&amp;#039;s done that for a lot of girls. It&amp;#039;s kind of why I was excited for you to be interviewing me\u2014I sit with a lot of old people that try to get me to explain culture. I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know how\u2014you&amp;#039;re just not living in the same world I&amp;#039;m living in.&amp;quot; Related: Newly-Minted Actress Tavi Gevinson Tells Us She&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Not Looking For That College Experience&amp;#039; TG: What about people who feel you&amp;#039;re appropriating &amp;quot;ratchet&amp;quot; culture to look cool without acknowledging the race and class implications? Do you really think they just give you a hard time because they&amp;#039;re old, and not because these are their lived experiences? MC: We actually stepped away from &amp;quot;ratchetness&amp;quot; for that reason. For us, it was meant to describe an aesthetic, like ratchet nails or ratchet whatever. I&amp;#039;m not, like, making fun of a culture. You just do it &amp;#039;cause that&amp;#039;s just a weird title, it&amp;#039;s like selfie. That was just a word that was popular last year. I don&amp;#039;t even love it when girls call each other slut, like, &amp;quot;Hey, slut&amp;quot; or whatever, but it&amp;#039;s your intention and the way you say it [that matter]. I call it the Selfie Generation, what I&amp;#039;m in\u2014you too. I just think old people\u2014I feel bad that I call them old, &amp;#039;cause they&amp;#039;re probably in their thirties or forties\u2014but they just don&amp;#039;t understand it.  TG: Everything you&amp;#039;re experimenting with is normal for people our age, but what does it mean to do it for the world to see? MC: A lot of people like a year or two ago, when I started this transition in my life, encouraged me to be very free. But when I started to free myself, they very quickly wanted to put me back in my cage again. They were like, &amp;quot;Okay, well, fly\u2014but don&amp;#039;t fly too far; don&amp;#039;t get too high.&amp;quot; I had to finally make a choice, and my fans helped me. I use myself as, like, a sacrifice for my fans, to be like, &amp;quot;Look, I am like you!&amp;quot; My life has been recorded so much that I never think about it too much. The only thing I ever really think about is with relationships, because you&amp;#039;re getting to know someone and it gets thrown off. It becomes this thing\u2014it becomes really embarrassing. Like, if you&amp;#039;re trying to have a normal date and then you&amp;#039;re getting flashed and [in the tabloids] it&amp;#039;s like &amp;quot;Mystery Man.&amp;quot; So it kind of turned me into a hermit, which my dad is\u2014like, borderline socially unacceptable\u2014and I never want to become like that. I grew up on a farm where we had no neighbors because my dad didn&amp;#039;t want to deal with people. And as a kid, I&amp;#039;d be totally pissed, like, &amp;quot;I want to go to the movies! Why won&amp;#039;t he take us?&amp;quot; But now I understand. I&amp;#039;ve gotten good about not letting it affect me, but it gets weird with dudes sometimes.  TG: What do you mean to your fans now that there&amp;#039;s no middleman like Disney? MC: I have guys and girls that come out, and they&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;The only reason I&amp;#039;m able to admit that I&amp;#039;m gay is because you&amp;#039;ve made me feel like that&amp;#039;s okay.&amp;quot; That is so intense, because that is a part of this generation\u2014it wasn&amp;#039;t always accepted\u2014and I feel like I am a big part of that change. Or they know that I&amp;#039;ve struggled with depression, and that helped them get over theirs. That gives me a big purpose\u2014a reason to wake up in the morning that&amp;#039;s bigger than to put on my fucking feathers and my little outfits. TG: I didn&amp;#039;t know you&amp;#039;d dealt with depression.  MC: It&amp;#039;s more of an issue than people really want to talk about. Because people don&amp;#039;t know how to talk about being depressed\u2014that it&amp;#039;s totally okay to feel sad. I went through a time where I was really depressed. Like, I locked myself in my room and my dad had to break my door down. It was a lot to do with, like, I had really bad skin, and I felt really bullied because of that. But I never was depressed because of the way someone else made me feel, I just was depressed.  TG: It&amp;#039;s a chemical thing.  MC: And every person can benefit from talking to somebody. I&amp;#039;m the most antimedication person, but some people need medicine, and there was a time where I needed some too. So many people look at [my depression] as me being ungrateful, but that is not it\u2014I can&amp;#039;t help it. There&amp;#039;s not much that I&amp;#039;m closed off about, and the universe gave me all that so I could help people feel like they don&amp;#039;t have to be something they&amp;#039;re not or feel like they have to fake happy. There&amp;#039;s nothing worse than being fake happy.  TG: Seeing the show put a lot of the album in context for me. How much of pop music do you think is more about performance than sound? MC: Me flying away on the hot dog matters equally as the way that I sound. Even my band, they really take pride in the fact that there&amp;#039;s no fucking tracks. If I fuck up, I fucked up. Some artists, it&amp;#039;s more about them being entertainers. But I grew up as a singer first. I&amp;#039;ll just write a verse and chorus, just to get me through the day. Sometimes pop artists, it&amp;#039;s all about clothes and pyro. My thing is about my band. And [on this tour] I have people that have worked on The Wall and so many intense tours. I try really hard to impress those dudes. I don&amp;#039;t want them to think I&amp;#039;m some dumb pop bitch. Related: The Eight Best Parts of Tavi Gevinson&amp;#039;s Epic Interview With Lorde TG: Your dad told GQ in 2011 that he wished Hannah Montana had never happened. How did it feel to hear him say that? MC: You know, that was a really hard year. I think for a minute he let the show get the best of him. Like, would you really have been happier if you were sitting on a farm in Nashville, completely isolated? I remember reading that and being super pissed off, like, I tried to make my family&amp;#039;s life better, to get everyone out of Nashville. You get to a point where you just want people to listen\u2014that was maybe my dad&amp;#039;s way of wanting us to feel that pain. TG: This year&amp;#039;s Country Music Awards were sprinkled with jokes about you abandoning that community. What did that feel like? MC: I didn&amp;#039;t watch it, but country music never accepted me or my dad because we didn&amp;#039;t fit the standard. My dad wouldn&amp;#039;t wear a cowboy hat and boots; my dad wore cutoff T-shirts and Reeboks. So it&amp;#039;s funny now to hear them act like I turned my back on them\u2014like, you guys never embraced me at all, because I wouldn&amp;#039;t wear cowboy boots and a skirt to here and, like, twirl around and just be happy about everything. TG: When you go through these changes, is it tempting to throw away the past altogether? How do you know which pieces of your former self to hold onto? MC: It&amp;#039;s hard. I didn&amp;#039;t even watch my show when I was on my show, so I don&amp;#039;t really know that person. When I look at &amp;quot;Party in the U.S.A.,&amp;quot; that was really who I was then, so I don&amp;#039;t think you can be too ashamed of anything as long as you were being yourself. I think why people feel, um, so entitled over me is that they&amp;#039;ve watched me grow up. But that&amp;#039;s a blessing and a curse. TG: They act like you owe them something. MC: I worked more when I was a kid than I&amp;#039;d ever allow myself to do now. What is it from The Sixth Sense [sic], where he&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy&amp;quot;? That was totally me. I have a lot of energy and that sometimes got masked as a kid. Like, why was I wearing more makeup when I was 16 than I do now? When I was younger I didn&amp;#039;t have the balls to be like, &amp;quot;Yo, I&amp;#039;m a kid. I need this day off.&amp;quot; Now, I kind of demand that people respect the fact that I&amp;#039;m a kid. I almost feel like I&amp;#039;m living out my rebellious teenage whatever now because I couldn&amp;#039;t when I was younger. TG: And then instead of becoming a sexy bombshell like Britney or Christina, you became a stoner with a short haircut. What&amp;#039;s shaped your new style and ideas about sexuality? MC: Oh, yeah, I&amp;#039;m not really trying to be sexy. I try to explain to girls that you don&amp;#039;t have to have long blond hair and big boobs. It&amp;#039;s sexual\u2014it is. But in a different way. TG: I read that you consider yourself a feminist. What does that mean to you? MC: I&amp;#039;m just about equality, period. It&amp;#039;s not like, I&amp;#039;m a woman, women should be in charge! I just want there to be equality for everybody. TG: Right! And that&amp;#039;s what feminism is. MC: I still don&amp;#039;t think we&amp;#039;re there 100 percent. I mean, guy rappers grab their crotch all fucking day and have hos around them, but no one talks about it. But if I grab my crotch and I have hot model bitches around me, I&amp;#039;m degrading women? I&amp;#039;m a woman\u2014I should be able to have girls around me! But I&amp;#039;m part of the evolution of that. I hope. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a12/miley-cyrus-may-cover-story/>