Miley Cyrusbegan exploring her own sexuality at an early age, which is part of the reason why she’s long been an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.
To coincide with herappearance as a guest judgeonRuPaul’s Drag Racelast week, the 26-year-old singer also recorded an interview for theRuPaul: What’s the Tea with Michelle Visagepodcast.
Opening up about growing up well-off, the singer shared that it impressed upon her a willingness to find “what you relate to” and dedicate your time to that, which in her case is the LBGTQ+ community.
“When I was a kid growing up, being from the South, and my first experience, my first kiss was with a girl in middle school. And no one could understand, in Nashville, saying that,” the singer, whostill identifies as queer, although she’s in a heterosexual relationship with husbandLiam Hemsworth.
“So I had that relationship. And I was one of the only kids on Disney that would come out and say that I supported all my gay friends,” she added of her time onHannah Montana.“No one would really say that, so that was always really important to me. To find what mattered to me.”
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She went on to share that “besides even sexuality,” she believes the LGBTQ+ community is all about “being your f—in’ self.”
“It doesn’t have to attach to who you love, it’s about you loving yourself, I think, more than who you love outside yourself,” she added.
Miley Cyrus.VH1

Cyrus has opened up about her experience coming out in the past, tellingVarietyin 2016, “my eyes started opening in the fifth or sixth grade.”
“My first relationship in my life was with a chick,” she continued. “I grew up in a very religious Southern family. The universe has always given me the power to know I’ll be okay. Even at that time, when my parents didn’t understand, I just felt that one day they were.”
“My whole life, I didn’t understand my own gender and my own sexuality. I always hated the word ‘bisexual,’ because that’s even putting me in a box. I don’t ever think about someone being a boy or someone being a girl,” she added.
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“The reason that people get married sometimes can be old-fashioned, but I think the reason we got married isn’t old-fashioned — I actually think it’s kind of New Age,” Cyrus said in a wide-ranging interview and a personal essay forVanity Fair‘s March cover story. “We’re redefining, to be f—ing frank, what it looks like for someone that’s a queer person like myself to be in a hetero relationship.”
“A big part of my pride and my identity is being a queer person,” theHannah Montanaalum added. “What I preach is: People fall in love with people, not gender, not looks, not whatever. What I’m in love with exists on almost a spiritual level. It has nothing to do with sexuality. Relationships and partnerships in a new generation — I don’t think they have so much to do with sexuality or gender. Sex is actually a small part, and gender is a very small, almost irrelevant part of relationships.”
Liam Hemsworth and Miley Cyrus.Matt Baron/REX/Shutterstock

Cyrus alsopenned a personal essayforVanity Fair, talking more about her queerness there.
The essay gave Cyrus an opportunity to describe why she kept some elements of her wedding traditional, too. “I wore a dress on my wedding daybecause I felt like it, I straightened my hair because I felt like it, but that doesn’t make me become some instantly ‘polite hetero lady,’ ” she wrote, adding in parentheses that, “PS: Straight women are badass, too.”
All in all, Cyrus made it clear that her marriage to Hemsworth hasn’t taken anything away from who she is as a person.
“My relationship is very special to me, it is my home,” she said in her essay for the outlet. “I feel less misplaced when we are in the same room, no matter where that is, but just because something changes in my relationship doesn’t mean something has to drastically change in my individuality.”
source: people.com