Miley Cyrus’ raunchy image caused her relationships to “fall apart.”
The 32-year-old singer recalled how she had a “hard time” in 2013 after causing controversy with her naked appearance in her “Wrecking Ball” video and twerking on stage with Robin Thicke at the MTV Video Music Awards, and she found it hard to date because potential partners didn’t like her sharing her “sexual expression” with the world.
Miley, whose engagement to Liam Hemsworth ended that year before they reconciled three years later, said on the Wondery podcast Reclaiming With Monica Lewinsky: “I lost everything during that time in my personal life because of the choices I was making professionally.
“If I kept dressing or acting a certain way, my relationships fell apart. No one wanted to date me because they didn’t want to be with a woman [whose] sexual expression was not for them. It was like, shared with the world.
“So, like, guys, when I would try to date, when I was dating, or who I was engaged to at the time, that didn’t work out because I was sharing a part of myself that men wanted to be saved for them only.”
And Miley, who has siblings Brandi, 38, Trace, 36, Christopher, 33, Braison, 31, and 25-year-old Noah, admitted her siblings felt “humiliated” by her public persona.
She said: “That was the time where I just got hit so hard and I was so embarrassed.
“There was even a time where my brother and sister didn’t want to go to school because of how humiliated they were to be related to me.
“I remember my brother at one point he was saying, ‘I don’t judge you, but you could understand how hard it is for me to go to school, and you be my sister.’ I was a hard sibling to have as a little girl, so I was like ‘All right we’re even.'”
The “Flowers” hit-maker also found it hard to “go home and see my dad and like look him in the eyes and not feel super embarrassed.”
Miley recently hit out at the criticism she received over that time period.
Asked what she sees when she looks back on that period, she told The New York Times newspaper: “I see adults not acting like it. I would never look at someone that’s 18, 19, 20, 21 years old and judge them as an adult, because they’re not yet.
“At one point, there was even a petition. It was like ‘Millions of Moms Against Miley’ or something.
“Isn’t that crazy, this petition? In 2013, maybe that performance felt really shocking, but when you watch it back, it really wasn’t that wild. I was dressed as a teddy bear.”
Photos of Young Miley Cyrus at the Start of Her Career
Look back at these pictures of a fresh-faced Miley Cyrus during her Hannah Montana days in the mid-2000s.
