Hannah Montana Never Looked Like This

Terry Richardson put Miley Cyrus in front of his camera with no top on, and she leaned into it like she’d been waiting years to make this exact point. For C☆NDY Magazine, she went full nude—topless cop, weed-smoking celebrity, leather-strapped dominatrix. The whole spectrum. No apology tour attached.

There’s something genuinely funny about watching a former Disney property methodically dismantle every assumption people made about her. Miley Cyrus has always been a little ahead of the audience—pansexual before it was a trending hashtag, confrontational before anyone thought to call it feminist. She stuck her tongue out at the camera so many times it became a logo, and now Richardson has shot her the way she clearly wants to be shot: unfiltered, slightly unhinged, deeply pleased with herself.

The photos are good. Not in a high-art way—more in a she-actually-looks-like-she’s-having-fun way, which is rarer than it should be. Some of her old fans are probably horrified. I find that more entertaining than anything else about it. The issue is available at C☆NDY—try to keep the pages from sticking together.