In the newest issue of Paper, Miley Cyrus—who recently launched the Happy Hippie Foundation to serve at-risk, homeless, and LGBTQ teens—talks about her own gender and sexuality, saying, “I don’t relate to being boy or girl, and I don’t have to have my partner relate to boy or girl.”
Paper reports:
She says she has come to consider her own sexuality — even her own gender identification — fluid. “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.” She says she’s had romantic entanglements with women that were just as serious as the ones (Liam Hemsworth, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Nick Jonas) that ended up in Us Weekly. “I’ve had that,” she admits. “But people never really looked at it, and I never brought it into the spotlight.”
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.
She also discussed what’s motivated her to give back.
Eventually, she says, the problem of homelessness became impossible for her to ignore. “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?”
Right on, Miley.