Miley Cyrus wanted to "normalise" trans women
Miley Cyrus in 2015
The 24-year-old singer staged a number of raunchy shows two years ago, in which she wore fake breasts, a unicorn horn, and a dildo and she has insisted her controversial appearances were "political" and part of her work with her charity, Happy Hippie.
Miley is a big supporter of the transgender community
Asked her motivation behind the shows, she said: "It's more that it's funny, and I think that it's also normalising. [I wore] the unicorn dildo to normalise women with penises because there are women with penises and [normalising that is] a part of [my charity] Happy Hippie.
"And that's a part of allowing people to be sexually free and not having to hide from their sexuality, whether it's the way that they were born [or] the way that they transitioned. So that was, in a way, political rather than provocative."
However, the 'Malibu' singer has toned down her image for her new album 'Younger Now' and thinks doing things such as wearing 'male' clothes in the video for the record's title track have helped to "normalise" gender fluidity in a more accessible way than her outrageous antics around the release of her 2015 record 'Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz'.
She told NME magazine: "I got to normalise it a little bit more. I did it in a less aggressive way where it was subliminally allowing all audiences to be a part of it and enjoy it.
"From the outside, '...Dead Petz' wasn't a record for everyone ... I think it ended up shutting some doors in the way of people making themselves less mentally available to listen. They think, 'I'm already p***ed off so I'm not listening to that, she's crazy.' "
Miley - who is in a relationship with Liam Hemsworth - thinks her latest album has allowed her to express her own gender fluidity more than ever before.
She said: "I still really want to be an entertainer and show up in my own way and I don't want to look like anybody else.
"With the short hair thing, it was an androgynous, sexy feeling, which is what I want people to feel like. I don't wanna be over-feminised, but I'm not masculine either - I'm just myself.
"[What] people don't really understand [about] gender fluidity is by feeling nothing, I feel everything.
"So I feel like this record is expressing that more than ever. I really can wake up one day and feel like 'Malibu', but then I can also feel like I want to be Roy Orbison."
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