Will we ever quite understand what happened to Miley Cyrus? The singer and her strange antics continue to make daily headlines. When she’s not twerking nude, her tongue is usually stuck outside of her mouth, hanging there annoyingly coupled with an “I’m a bad-ass” facial expression. Now, the singer has tried to explain her annoying tongue habit, which seems to pop up in every second photo of her. Why is her tongue so often on display? She says it’s simply because she hates smiling in photos and she even believes her new attitude is empowering:
“I just stick my tongue out because I hate smiling in pictures. It’s so awkward. It looks so cheesy. Now people expect it — like, ‘Put your tongue out!’ It’s just easier that way. Taking pictures is so embarrassing. But there’s also something about it that I think is cool. Every other girl is so serious — like this is my moment on the red carpet, I’m in my ball gown, looking pretty. There’s something empowering about what I’m doing right now. Especially having ‘short hair don’t care.’ I think it’s empowering for girls. Because there’s not one thing that defines what beauty is.”
On how people have reacted to her, especially since her racy VMAs performance, Miley believes it isn’t all fair or true, but simply websites looking to use her as a scandalous marketing tool to draw in visitors (what a novel idea!). She also believes it’s just a passing fad for people and most have moved on already:
“I think it’s all marketing. If a website is like, ‘We love Miley’s performance!,’ I don’t think people are gonna click on it. ‘Miley’s cute performance with teddy bears!’ – no one is gonna click on that. So I think it’s the media riling up the people, rather than people riling up the media. And what makes me kind of sick is, Trayvon Martin’s trial didn’t happen more than two months ago. It got talked about a lot — but it still got done being talked about a lot quicker than the VMAs. And that’s really sad. For about two days, it was on Twitter and everything, everyone had their pictures as Trayvon — and then two days later, where was it? Who cared anymore? It slips your mind. We go on to the next thing, our next problem. It’s like, ‘Why are we not still dealing with that? Why are we not still mourning that loss?’”
