Miley Cyrus: "Sex Is A Beautiful Thing"

Miley Cyrus has received a lot of flak over the past few years for growing up too fast, and trying to be too sexy, too soon, but still, the 19-year-old starlet doesn't apologise.

"I feel I was so trained in my interviews to be All-American or whatever. I just got so set in the way of saying the same things I did when I was 12-years-old… I guess I kind of realized that my whole life isn’t one giant press junket. I don’t have to be smiling all the time and always have the perfect answer," she said on a recent episode of Lifetime's The Conversation With Amanda de Cadenet.

The singer, who made headlines at the Billboard Music Awards on May 22 for her revealing outfit, also got candid about sex and how too many young women value themselves based on their sexual interactions.

"Sex is actually really beautiful. It's the only way we create, and it's the only way the world keeps going.

"It's ignorant not to talk to your kids about it or [not] make it seem as magical or cool as it actually is," she explained.

"Sex, it's a beautiful thing, and it is magic, and it's when you connect with somebody. And it isn't how much you're worth. Your worth isn't based on that, your worth is based on how you feel about yourself."

"The girls that really base how much they're worth on the sexual favors they can do for somebody, that makes me really sad," she said.

"For me, what I do [being sexy] is not the point. You're not sitting there trying to be sexy. If people find that [I am], I take it as a compliment," she told Cadenet, quickly adding that she knows that some people disapprove, but says it's just who she is. "People are so scared of seeing a woman being like, ‘This is who I am and you’re not going to change it.’”

Though Cyrus sounds as if she knows who she is and what she believes in, she admits that growing up on television and in the public eye has taken its toll on her.

"I've lost [my sense of self] a lot. There's times you hear what you should be so much that you lose what you actually are, and that's really hard," she said.