Miley Cyrus speaks on people saying she’s exploiting black culture.

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Miley Cyrus speaks on people saying she’s exploiting black culture.

“Somehow a lot of people thought I was exploiting black culture. The reason why I hired those girls for the VMAs is because they’re not white, skinny girls—they’re healthy-looking girls. Like, moms—usually they hate me—but they come up and they’re like, “Thank you so much for having girls that look like my daughter dancing for you.” Those girls have danced together since they were six years old—I could never be like, “Hey, I’ve got to break you up ’cause it’s politically correct to throw a white bitch in here.” I was on the Disney Channel, where you need to make sure there’s, like, an Asian girl and a black girl and a Puerto Rican girl in every scene. And that isn’t life!”

Critic Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote that your performance reminded her of being hit on by drunk white people “ironically”—the joke being that, as a black woman with a stereotypically thick body, she wasn’t actually sexy.

MC: I’m definitely not making a joke of it. Those are literally my friends. And by the way, you can ask me anything—I’ll never be offended. A lot of people who have made those comments are older—they were living in a world that was more defined by color. Now that isn’t black culture—that’s just culture in general. That’s pop culture; that’s the way we dance. These pissed-off moms on the Internet—they don’t understand that when you go to a club now it’s not about being black or white or heavy or thick. I’m shaking my ass because I want to shake my ass, not ’cause “I’m dancing like a black girl!” Even in the fashion industry people are accepting bodies, and I think Kim Kardashian’s done that for a lot of girls. It’s kind of why I was excited for you to be interviewing me—I sit with a lot of old people that try to get me to explain culture. I’m like, “I don’t know how—you’re just not living in the same world I’m living in.”

What about people who feel you’re appropriating “ratchet” culture to look cool without acknowledging the race and class implications? Do you really think they just give you a hard time because they’re old, and not because these are their lived experiences?

MC: We actually stepped away from “ratchetness” for that reason. For us, it was meant to describe an aesthetic, like ratchet nails or ratchet whatever. I’m not, like, making fun of a culture. You just do it ’cause that’s just a weird title, it’s like selfie. That was just a word that was popular last year. I don’t even love it when girls call each other slut, like, “Hey, slut” or whatever, but it’s your intention and the way you say it [that matter]. I call it the Selfie Generation, what I’m in—you too. I just think old people—I feel bad that I call them old, ’cause they’re probably in their thirties or forties—but they just don’t understand it.
WORDS By Tavi Gevinson FROM ELLE