Miley Cyrus is a really curious — if also often frustrating — creature to me. Her sudden disclosures of feeling gender fluid and identifying as androgynous are not without heartfelt spirit and an air of honesty, and I am pretty sure I believe her. But she as a PERSON does pull at my cynical triggers, because she’s such a creature of the media that I keep wondering with ANYTHING she says if she’s simply reacting to what’s buzzy. And/or trying to muscle her way to the front of the caravan, all in the name of being the loudest voice in any given room. (And I must clarify: I take gender fluidity and feelings of androgyny themselves totally seriously; it is MILEY I am not sure if I should take seriously. Not because of this, but in general. She makes it hard to tell.) But then she’ll say stuff that’s smart, or savvy, or self-aware — or all three. Such as, to Time:
Now 22, Cyrus isn’t worried about offending anyone. “Someone said the other day to me, ‘Should you ask your advisor?’” she says. “I’m like, ‘If I have an advisor, they should have been fired two years ago.’”
And then this, which made me laugh and also like her:
“All the women in the restaurant [on Valentine’s Day two years ago] were with these older, fat men that had just let themselves go. They were just being drunk bastards. And then the women were sitting there, trying so hard just to look good. And they’re ignoring them the whole time. And I thought, ‘I’m not living like this. If I end up in a straight relationship, that’s fine—but I’m not going to be with f-cking slob guys who are watching porn, making all their girls feel ugly.”
The last quote here, I initially read with the Beyonce bit pulled entirely out of context, so it felt more like shade than it perhaps is intended — but I still think it’s an interesting point, because as much as people get annoyed when Taylor Swift stands there in her front-row seat and dances and sings along, it at least has a camaraderie to it that you wouldn’t see from a lot of people.
She recently went to the finals of RuPaul’s Drag Race, but says she’s not particularly interested in attending award shows. […] She responds better to the unbridled, flamboyant support that RuPaul’s contestants gave one another as they performed. “Beyonce would never be down in the front row cheering on Katy Perry,” she says.
And thus, my complicated relationship with Miley. Like the bratty attention-vortex little sister who makes you roll your eyes and even scream, but she’s not a bad egg and in fact makes you proud sometimes.
[Photos: Getty]
