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Miley Cyrus, now 32, recently appeared on Monica Lewinsky’s podcast, Reclaiming and looked back at her early 20s, especially around 2013, when she was going through some major changes both personally and professionally.
At just 21 years old, Miley said she started to “act out,” but not in the way people often assume. She was trying to find herself after stepping away from her Disney past (Hannah Montana days), and in doing so, she began expressing herself in bold, unapologetic ways, like showing more skin, being provocative on stage, and being more experimental with her music and image.
But it came at a cost.
Without naming names, Miley said that this new version of herself, confident, bold, and free, ended up pushing people away, especially men she was romantically involved with. That includes her then-fiancé, Liam Hemsworth.
“When I was dating, or I was engaged at the time,” Miley shared, “but that didn’t work out because I was sharing a part of myself that men wanted to be saved for them only.”
She was referring to the idea that men expected her body, her sexuality, and even her freedom to only exist for them, and when she didn’t fit into that mould, they couldn’t handle it. She added that people didn’t want to date her because of how she dressed or behaved publicly.
At that time, Miley had just released her album Bangerz, which was wild, loud, and unapologetically sexy. The music, the VMAs performance, the nudity in “Wrecking Ball,” it was a whole era. But behind the scenes, she was struggling with how it was affecting her relationships.
Let’s rewind a bit: Miley and Liam met in 2009 on the set of The Last Song and fell in love, and got engaged in 2012. By 2013, after all the headlines and backlash surrounding Miley’s transformation, they broke up. They later reunited in 2016, got re-engaged, and married in 2018. But by January 2020, they were officially divorced.
Now, looking back, Miley seems to be acknowledging that her growth and self-expression didn’t fit into the box her relationships, especially with Liam, seemed to demand. And that mismatch cost her more than just romance. It made her feel unlovable at times.
But it also taught her a lot about being true to herself, about how society treats women who break the “good girl” mould, and about the pain of losing love while trying to stay authentic.