Miley Cyrus Says When She Twerks She Is Just Playing a Character

On the heels of releasing her new “Adore You” video, Miley Cyrus spoke with The New York Times, and she sounds like herself. Annoying. The pop star says she is a feminist, doesn’t want to glamorize drugs, didn’t turn Joe Jonas onto weed — lolz at the Disney beef — and draws inspiration from Kurt Cobain and at least one thoughtful moment from Nelson Mandela’s passing. OK, that last one might be a stretch, but here are the high points:

On feminism and the popular reaction to her now infamous 2013 VMA performance:

People got a rise out of me saying that I was a feminist, but I am. I’m telling women be whoever you want to be.

Miley’s learned nothing from the innumerable appropriation conversations, op-eds and angry tweets about her VMA performance’s dancing black women and twerking teddy bears because THE FUTURE GUYS:

No, I never let that change me. My grandma, who is alive, was living in a time where there was no way in hell that she would’ve ever thought there would’ve been a black president. I mean, never. And my grandma’s like, not even 80, so this is in a short period of time that things have changed so much. I really thought about it a lot when Nelson Mandela passed away, because I couldn’t even imagine living this life and seeing how much it’s changed. So, you know, I look forward to when I’m older, my kids being like, “What do you mean people ever even talked about what color your dancers were?”

On Miley Cyrus being a character, she doesn’t really pop molly all the time:

I went from people just thinking I was, like, a baby to people thinking I’m this, like, sex freak that really just pops molly and does lines all day. It’s like, “Has anyone ever heard of rock ‘n’ roll?” There’s a sex scene in pretty much every single movie, and they go, “Well, that’s a character.” Well, that’s a character. I don’t really dress as a teddy bear and, like, twerk on Robin Thicke, you know?

On Joe Jonas calling she and Demi Lovato drug pushers:

If you want to smoke weed, you’re going to smoke weed. There’s nothing that two little girls are going to get you to do that you don’t want to do.

On whether Anna Wintour really did snatch her Vogue cover as punishment for the VMA dancing black women and twerking teddy bears kerfuffle:

I was kind of going to have to do this trade-off, and I wasn’t willing to. Right now, me doing any kind of cover for anything that’s like, a Seventeen or Teen Vogue or whatever, the way that I talk isn’t the way that people that are 17 really understand. There was a thing that Kurt Cobain said, something like, “There’s a special place in hell for people that glamorize drugs,” and I never want to be that person that’s, like, talking to 16- and 17-year-olds and being like, “Smoke weed.” I’ve got a little sister. I don’t want her to smoke weed, and it’s not because I think weed is bad, but …

she’ll make the choice. Or even, like, my language. I don’t know how to not talk the way I talk. I would rather have everything I do be 100 percent honest. I just want to be who I am.

So wait, Miley does dance with molly often because she caaaaan’t stop and that’s just who she is man or she really just sits around reading quotes from Cobain and reflecting on Mandela’s life? I’m so confused. Actually, no, I don’t care.