Teen queen Miley Cyrus — who posed nearly naked for a 2008 Vanity Fair shoot; dated an older underwear model and mocked Asian people, for which she was later criticized — realizes kids look up to her.
But she says she isn't responsible for how they act.
"My job is to be a role model, and that's what I want to do, but my job isn't to be a parent," she tells the February issue of Harper's Bazaar. "My job isn't to tell your kids how to act or how not to act, because I'm still figuring that out for myself. So to take that away from me is a bit selfish. Your kids are going to make mistakes whether I do or not. That's just life."
Cyrus, 17, says most people tend to focus on the negative when it comes to her life.
Take those provocative Vanity Fair photos, for instance.
"Here, my parents are thinking they're seeing a beautiful photograph by a major photographer, and the people of America want to see something dirty in that?" she says. "It doesn't make sense to us because [my family] doesn't look for negativity. But people don't want to say 'What a great performance' or 'What a great shot."No one wants to look at something like that and see the positive because it doesn't sell a magazine."
Cyrus insists she is just like everyone else, insecurities and all.
"I used to ask everyone all day, 'Do I look pretty?' I probably asked that question about as many times as I blink," she says.
She says it wasn't until she began shooting her upcoming drama, The Last Song, in Georgia last year that she "started feeling beautiful," she says. "It's just because I was comfortable [there]. I was so used to the paparazzi and the cameras and the 'What are you wearing?' and having people stare at me."
