"Older Men" Told 11-Year-Old Miley Cyrus How To Dress

Miley Cyrus is back, even though she'll tell you that she never really left. Covering Harper Bazaar's August issue, the 24-year-old singer talks a lot about her changing style, her refined past-times (that means no more pot — for now), and everything she's had to endure in order to reach this state of bliss, alongside her fiancé Liam Hemsworth and their bevy of pets.

Cyrus tells the magazine that one of the things that frustrates her most, in addition to people asking for the "old Miley," is hearing that fans and critics were "shocked" by her behavior when she was in her early 20s. She counters that people had no idea what she had been through during her tween and teen years. When she hit her 20s, she was finally free from the guidance (and creepiness) of men trying to tell her what to do.

"People were so shocked by some of the things that I did," she told the magazine. "It should be more shocking that when I was 11 or 12, I was put in full hair and makeup, a wig, and told what to wear by a group of mostly older men. I didn’t want to become any sort of man hater because I love all humans; I am a humanitarian." She continued, "Beyoncé said, ‘Girls run the world,’ and that was an important thing to say because I think subconsciously we are beaten down to believe that it isn’t true our whole lives. It’s no wonder that a lot of people lose their way and lose who they really are because they always have people telling them who to be."

On the topic of telling people who they should be or how they should feel, Cyrus also talked about speaking up for trans rights and how much she educated herself on the topic in order to be a helpful ally.

"When I started speaking up on trans rights, I spent hours on the phone every day talking to experts, so I was able to speak about it from a knowledgeable place," she said. "I think my connection with trans people is: You should be able to change and be who you are at any time. Like, you should not be glued to gender, to age, to race; those things should not define you. We are born as a blank canvas, and your job on this planet is to take the time to paint it the way you want, and you can fucking scrape it off and start over again as many times as you want."