Miley Cyrus Bangerz Tour News: Singer Says She Doesn't Degrade Little People
Miley Cyrus is refuting claims about her exploiting dancers on her Bangerz tour.
Cyrus, 21, has been the face of controversy lately as a singer who has seemingly prided herself on her provocative appearance more than her music. While some are scrutinizing her tour for its vulgarity, others believe the singer may be misusing little people by the way she uses them as her dancers.
However, Cyrus dismissed those claims in an interview with Ronan Farrow that recently aired on his MSNBC show.
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"It's really funny how serious people take it. And they're like, you're racist. And I'm like, 'Really?'" she told Farrow. "Literally, we're like a bunch of kids dancing around in, like, bears, but we don't do choreography."
She defended her use of little people in her show.
"If you met Brittany, she's like one of our amazing little people who is with us," Cyrus told Farrow. "We're all about lifting her up and making her feel so sexy all the time, and having her dance, because she's actually an awesome dancer."
While a number of people spoke out against the singer's performance, one of the dancers on the stage with Cyrus was left feeling degraded. Hollis Jane, a 24-year-old "little person" who dressed up as a bear while on stage performing with Cyrus last year may regret taking part in the controversial MTV VMA performance that garnered the singer a lot of attention.
"I had never been in a performance where I was purely meant to be gawked or laughed at. I will never forget that performance because it is what forced me to draw my personal line in the sand," she wrote on her personal blog, last year. "After our first dress rehearsal in the costumes with the crew, publicists, performers etc watching us, I walked out of the Barclay Center shaking and crying."
Jane said performing with Cyrus made her feel like less of a person than she was.
"They were waiting for me and I walked up to them and broke down. I love being the center of attention, but that was something different," Jane wrote. "I was being stared and laughed at for all of the wrong reasons. I was being looked at as a prop…as something less than human."
