Pop star Miley Cyrus opened up about her first kiss in middle school that she had with another girl.
The 26-year-old singer has been open about her queer sexual identity and has long been an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. Cyrus recently appeared as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race last week and took part in the RuPaul: What’s the Tea with Michelle Visage podcast where she opened up about her first kiss.
“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, who still identifies as queer despite being in a heterosexual relationship with husband Liam 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 on Hannah Montana. “No one would really say that, so that was always really important to me. To find what mattered to me.”
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.
Back in 2016, Cyrus told Variety that “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.
The “Wrecking Ball” singer recently opened up about her traditional wedding despite her queer identity.
“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 for Vanity 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,” the Hannah Montana alum 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.”
In addition to the interview and podcast, Cyrus also penned a personal essay for Vanity Fair where she spoke more about her queerness and marriage.
“Being someone who takes such pride in individuality and freedom, and being a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, I’ve been inspired by redefining again what a relationship in this generation looks like,” she said. “Sexuality and gender identity are completely separate from
partnership .”“I wore a dress on my wedding day because 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.”
“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.”
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