Miley Cyrus is bringing the "Free Love" movement back to the future. After revealing in Paper magazine that she's had romantic relationships with women as well as men, the Happy Hippie Foundation founder, 22, opened up to Time about her past dating experiences, and how different people brought out different things in her.
Guys, for example, seemed to have an "overly macho energy" with her. "That made me feel like I had to be a femme-bot, which I'm not," the "Wrecking Ball" singer told the mag. "And then when I was with a girl, I felt like, 'Oh s–t, she's going to need someone to protect her, so I'm going to need to have this macho energy.' And that didn't feel right either."
Cyrus (whose male exes include Liam Hemsworth and Patrick Schwarzenegger) doesn't want to be limited by those kinds of gender stereotypes in a relationship. "I don't associate men and protection necessarily," she mused. "I think that's what's given me the openness of sexuality. Not that my dad [Billy Ray Cyrus] wasn't an awesome protector, but I trust my mom [Tish] to save me. She's the prince. I never had that fairy tale."
In part because of her parents — who reconciled in 2013 after a brief split — Cyrus doesn't have a specific idea of what her "happily ever after" will look like. But she does know what it won't look like.
Recalling a recent Valentine's Day, the former Disney star told Time, "All the women in the restaurant were with these older, fat men that had just let themselves go. They were just being drunk bastards. And then the women were sitting there, trying so hard just to look good. And they're ignoring them the whole time."
Seeing that, she said, she started to cry. "And I thought, 'I'm not living like this,'" she remembered. "If I end up in a straight relationship, that's fine — but I'm not going to be with f—ing slob guys who are watching porn, making all their girls feel ugly."
Which is not to say that physical attraction is the most important thing in a relationship. "F—ing is easy. You can find someone to f–k in five seconds," she told Time. "We want to find someone we can talk to. And be ourselves with. That's fairly slim pickings."