Miley Cyrus + Article on her

Free to be Miley

Miley Cyrus is in the midst of making a heated point about animal rights, and she's getting so worked up about it her cheekbones are jabbing the keypad of the telephone, punctuating our conversation with errant beeps. She's calling from "the middle of the jungle" or, more specifically, a tiny island in the Caribbean, where she's on vacation with her family. "If you could see where I am right now, you would be laughing so hard," she says. "I feel like I'm in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, and something is about to zap me into nothingness." Cyrus almost immediately starts talking about how she decided to become a vegan last year. She was touring the world in support of Bangerz, her platinum 2013 album, when her beloved dog, Floyd, an Alaskan Klee Kai, was mauled by a coyote. She quit consuming animal products almost immediately. She hasn't spoken much about the switch, but she says that she's finally ready to be held accountable to be an example. It turns out Cyrus is deeply interested in accountability. At 22, she's perhaps her generation's most unlikely social activist, and also one of its most powerful. Now she's harnessing that influence to counter what she sees as an unacceptable reality: young people being persecuted and cast out for their sexuality.