Miley Cyrus Says She's Just Playing A Character, Doesn't Want To Glamorize Drug Use

It was a big jump from Disney darling to a tongue-wagging, molly-endorsing sexpot, but Miley Cyrus may not have really made the leap after all.

In a candid interview with the New York Times, Cyrus proves she not only doesn't understand why her VMAs performance was dubbed a "minstrel show," but contends that her controversial image is really just an act.

"I went from people just thinking I was, like, a baby to people thinking I’m this, like, sex freak that really just pops molly and does lines all day. It’s like, 'Has anyone ever heard of rock ’n’ roll?' There’s a sex scene in pretty much every single movie, and they go, 'Well, that’s a character.' Well, that’s a character. I don’t really dress as a teddy bear and, like, twerk on Robin Thicke, you know?"

Still, Cyrus seems amused by her new wild child reputation, revealing that other image-conscious stars have asked her to delete photos she's taken of them.

"I’ll get someone to, like, flash me, and they’ll be, like, 'You have to delete it!' I had to do that when I was 14 or 15, but even then I didn’t care," she explained to the Times. "Like, if someone was videoing me ripping a bong, I didn’t care, so it’s just funny to me. I’m like: 'Dude, you’re 30. Like, why can’t someone see a picture of your [breasts]?'”

Is that a final admission that the singer's so-called salvia scandal -- which caught the then-18-year-old star of "Hannah Montana" taking a giant hit off a bong -- was really a cover up for smoking good old-fashioned weed? It would be hardly surprising, since Cyrus has long-since gone public with her love of marijuana, and even contested Joe Jonas' recent claim he was peer pressured into smoking weed for the first time by Cyrus and fellow former Disney star Demi Lovato.

"If you want to smoke weed, you’re going to smoke weed. There’s nothing that two little girls are going to get you to do that you don’t want to do,"she explained. "I thought maybe he was saying that like it was going to make him look badass."

Cyrus has openly discussed her drug use, telling Rolling Stone that she's not into cocaine ("It's so gross and so dark. It's like what are you, from the '90s? Ew."), and that she likes "happy drugs -- social drugs" like molly. Now, however, Cyrus says it's not her intention to promote drug use either.

"There was a thing that Kurt Cobain said, something like, 'There’s a special place in hell for people that glamorize drugs,' and I never want to be that person that’s, like, talking to 16- and 17-year-olds and being like, 'Smoke weed,'" she explained to the Times. "I’ve got a little sister. I don’t want her to smoke weed, and it’s not because I think weed is bad, but [when she’s old enough to make that choice]."

For more with Miley Cyrus on why she's not racist and believes she's a true feminist, head over to the New York Times for the entire enlightening interview.