Miley Cyrus is not worried about yesterday, and she’s seemingly ready to move past her retracted apology for a 2008 semi-nude photo.
The “Malibu” singer, 25, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live Tuesday night, where she opened up about why she took back her apology for a controversial Vanity Fair photo shoot nearly 10 years later.
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“I think a lot of things have changed, and I think the conversation has changed a lot. Something that I really thought about was, ‘Sure, some people thought that I did something wrong in their eyes.’ But I think it was really wrong to put on top of something that this is ‘my shame’ and that I should be ashamed of myself. That’s not a nice thing to tell someone they should be ashamed of themselves,” Cyrus said.
On Monday, the 25-year-old retracted her apology for the controversial Vanity Fair photo shoot, shooting back at critics with a tweet reading “I’m not sorry. F– you,” alongside an image of the front page of the 2008 edition of the New York Post that was headlined, “Miley’s Shame: TV’s ‘Hannah’ apologizes for near-nude pic.”
The star issued a lengthy apology at the time, though she explained to Kimmel that “somebody told” her to.
“I’m sure somebody told me to. But you know what? That’s why I don’t do what people tell me to anymore, because that idea sucked!” the pop star, who had been starring in Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana at the time the photo was released, said.
“I think at that time I just wanted this to go away, and I think I also was trying to balance and understand what being a role model is. To me, I think being a role model has been my free spirited-ness and sometimes my unapologetic attitude for decisions that I feel comfortable with. At the end of the day, it’s like anything else.”
While the photo in question was relatively tame in comparison to some of Cyrus’ later sexualized photo shoots — her latest featured her dressed as a sexy Easter bunny — music videos and performances, at the time she was just a 15-year-old Disney Channel star. As a result, parents lashed out at Cyrus for what they felt was her being a bad role model for her younger fans. Disney Channel even went so far as to publicly criticize Vanity Fair for the shoot, saying that created a situation “to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.”
Eventually Cyrus herself had to put out an apology over the photo.
“I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic,’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed,” she said. “I never intended for any of this to happen, and I apologize to my fans, who I care so deeply about.”
