Miley Cyrus on The Conversation with Amanda De Cadenet (Season 1, Episode 4 – July 4, 2013)

I have to say that I love this series of couch conversations with Amanda De Cadenet. In this post-feminist kind of society where people are constantly trying to find, utilize, represent and fight for their voices, this space given to women that allows them to talk about what they truly feel, want, desire and experience is, in a way, liberating and empowering.

Highlighting celebrities, humanitarians and any lesser-known individuals making an impact, I have to say that, as any other 20-something teenage girl growing up with Miley Cyrus on Disney Channel and witnessing her life post-Disney, I’ve always loved this girl. The media, if forced upon anyone, can make anyone go a little crazy, especially when the adults are trying to make you something you naturally are growing apart from.

As she talks about the growing pains of growing up at just 19 during this interview, she reveals she is a lot more aware of society’s expectations of her when she’s just trying to find herself.

“I feel I was so trained in my interviews to be All-American or whatever,” she reveals. “I just got so set in the way of saying the same things I did when I was 12-years-old… I guess I kind of realized that my whole life isn’t one giant press junket. I don’t have to be smiling all the time and always have the perfect answer.”

Although she expresses a lot of her own beliefs on sex, image, kids and TV with all the confidence in the world, she still admits she has felt the pressure around her.

“I’ve lost [my sense of self] a lot. There’s times that you hear what you should be so much that you lose what you actually are, and that’s really hard.”

As any young girl transitioning into womanhood and trying to find our place in this world to make a difference in whatever it is we feel drawn to, I feel that it is our jobs, if we want it, to change in order to make our futures what we want it to be.

“If you make your past your present, it’s inevitably going to be your future,” she expresses.

And that couldn’t be any more true.

Continuing: As sex can often be used as a currency for success, it’s interesting to see how Miley–in recent years–has been able to leverage her image to “put it in the media’s face.”

“For me, what I do, that’s not the point. You’re not sitting there trying to be sexy. If people find you sexy, take it as a compliment.” She adds, “People are so scared of seeing a woman saying, ‘This is who I am. You’re not gonna change it.'”

Later, she reveals she had a conversation over dinner the night before on “the girls that really base how much they’re worth on the sexual favors that they can do for somebody. And that makes me really sad.”

Listen in at the video above or visit The Conversation with Amanda De Cadenet.