No Regrets, Go Fuck Yourself

April 2008: Miley Cyrus is fifteen, photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair, wrapped in a satin sheet and not much else. American parent groups lose their minds. Disney PR scrambles. And Miley, rather than performing the expected contrition, issues a half-apology she’ll spend the next decade methodically walking back.

What followed is a ten-year record of committed refusal to perform remorse. Legs spread onstage. Peeing in the street. Riding a wrecking ball naked in a music video that accumulated more views than almost any piece of criticism written to condemn it. Every controversy met with roughly the same energy: and? The outrage machine needed her to be ashamed. She wasn’t, and that drove the outrage machine absolutely insane.

Ten years on from the Vanity Fair shoot, someone asked if she had any regrets. Her answer, posted to Twitter, was two sentences. No regrets, and an invitation to go fuck yourself, addressed to no one specifically and everyone who needed to hear it. Which is the correct answer. The only answer, really.

I don’t have a complicated relationship with Miley Cyrus. She’s always known exactly what she is, and she’s never once performed a version of herself designed to make anyone else comfortable. That sounds simple. It isn’t.