Another month, another sexual orientation for pop star Miley Cyrus.
Just two short months after Cyrus revealed that she came out as bisexual to her parents at age 14, the 22-year-old singer told Elle magazine she now identifies as pansexual.
“I’m very open about it – I’m pansexual,” the former Disney Channel star told the magazine. “But I’m not in a relationship. I’m 22, I’m going on dates, but I change my style every two weeks, let alone who I’m with.”
Dr. Debbie Herbenick, associate director at the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, tells Yahoo News that pansexuality “generally means that somebody is open to either falling in love and or being sexually attracted to people of all genders.”
That includes people who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming, Dr. Herbenick explained.
In a June interview with Paper magazine, Cyrus detailed her own gender fluidity.
“I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting and doesn’t involve an animal and everyone is of age,” she told the magazine. “Everything that’s legal, I’m down with. Yo, I’m down with any adult — anyone over the age of 18 who is down to love me. I don’t relate to being boy or girl, and I don’t have to have my partner relate to boy or girl.”
Dr. Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me and a psychology professor at San Diego State University who has studied millennials, explained to Yahoo that blurring gender lines among this generation has led to an increased awareness of sexual fluidity.
“Labels around gender are becoming more fluid,” Dr. Twenge told the outlet. “This fluidity around gender has an impact on sexuality as well. If we’re not going to have strict gender categories, then we’re not going to have strict sexual categories either.”
Cyrus has long been an advocate for the LGBT(P) community; in May, the singer founded the Happy Hippie Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating teen homelessness with a particular emphasis on helping LGBT teens. Cyrus was reportedly inspired to start the nonprofit after she sent 22-year-old homeless man Jesse Helt to collect her award on her behalf at the MTV Video Music Awards last year.
Cyrus is set to host the MTV VMA’s this Sunday, August 30.
Check out more of Cyrus’ interview for Elle‘s October cover story here.
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