It’s been eight years since Miley Cyrus twerked on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards, however, as the pop star recently shared she is still “scarred” from the body shaming that came after.
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On Saturday, June 5, Cyrus shared a risqué video to her Instagram feed, intended to promote her upcoming appearance at Summerfest Music Festival this September. While doing so is nothing new for the former Disney Channel starlet, this particular post proved to be more triggering than expected. Reminding her of the viral memes that mocked her for supposedly looking like a turkey while she danced at the 2013 VMAs.
“Made ya look,” Cyrus wrote alongside a clip of herself wearing a barely there black bodysuit. “Now buy tickets to @summerfest.”
Shortly after posting the video, Miley shared another pic in the same outfit to her Instagram stories, this time exposing her backside. “Y’all scarred me w that turkey butt s***,” she wrote over the photo. Keeping things light in most Miley of ways, she also included animations of a skeleton eating turkey, a speech bubble that says “gobble gobble,” and a chicken shaking its butt.
For those of you who have gotten this far and till have no idea what we or Miley are referring to, let us enlighten you.
Close your eyes (metaphorically of course) and think back to a simpler time. It’s 2013 and Miley Cyrus’ highly controversial VMAs performance, which featured her wearing a teddy bear costume which she tore off to reveal a nude latex bikini has just taken place. Besides the overall shock and awe, and the birth of neck bangs, let’s just say Miley twerking all over the stage, as well as on fully grown man and singer Robin Thicke, didn’t go over very well.
At the time, Miley was just introducing her Bangerz era and in the middle of transitioning from a wholesome Disney Channel star to a confident and unapologetic pop star, something that many people clearly weren’t ready for. But what Cyrus couldn’t possibly have prepared for were the body-shaming comments she received immediately after the show aired.
In fact during one of her quarantine time Bright Minded: Live With Miley Instagram Live talk show episodes, Cyrus spoke to Demi Lovato about how hurtful those comments comparing her body to a turkey’s were. “I stopped wearing skirts on stage, all this s*** because after the VMAs and I had on my cute little nude bodysuit, everyone started comparing me to a turkey and putting a turkey on my outfit,” Cyrus explained. “I was just so skinny and so pasty and they kept putting me next to this turkey, and I was feeling so bad on myself that I did not wear a bikini for like two years.”
Ultimately, the negativity about her body helped Miley realize that she wanted to use her platform “for a bigger purpose.” But at the same time those body shamers made her feel like she was lying to the world about who she was. “The worse thing that I would feel like I would be to my fans is lying or a fraud,” she told Lovato. “I felt like having this persona of being the most confident girl on the planet was actually kind of fraud because I was so insecure on the inside that in my personal life I wasn’t even wearing bathing suits and shorts.” To which Lovato could relate to and so could pretty much everyone else, in there own way.
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