Singer Miley Cyrus admitted this week that her time on the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana first introduced her to the issue of body standards.
Cyrus, who is on the cover of the September issue of Marie Claire, told the magazine that she came to question her physical appearance after four years of so many years of being, “told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on that show.”
“I was made to look like someone that I wasn’t, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn’t on that show, it was like, ‘Who the f--- am I,’ “ said Cyrus according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Popular ideas of what a pop star was supposed to look like affected how Cyrus thought she was supposed to look on Hannah Montana. “From the time I was 11 it was, ‘You’re a pop star! That means you have to be blonde, and you have to have long hair, and you have to put on some glittery tight thing,” said Cyrus. This, however, was extremely far off from how she actually felt. “Meanwhile,” she said, “I’m this fragile little girl playing a 16-year-old in a wig and a ton of makeup.”
The pressures that Cyrus felt as a teenager led her to not want to conform to what society thinks are traditional beauty standards.
“I’m probably never going to be the face of a traditional beauty company unless they want a weed-smoking, liberal-ass freak,” said Cyrus. “But my dream was never to sell lip gloss. My dream is to save the world.”
Photo Credit: Dara Kushner/INFphoto.com