Though still her winking, emoji-abusing, tongue-wagging self, Miley Cyrus is now using her popularity as a force for good. Even at the recent VMA awards, when she wasn't surprising us with a new album, she promoted her charity, the Happy Hippie Foundation, featuring members of her #InstaPride Squad at the event, Brendan Jordan, Precious Davis, Leo Sheng, Tyler Ford, Gigi Gorgeous, Mariana Marroquin, Alexander Schmider, Myles Brady, and others.
"These things I do get all this attention, but then what do I do once I have that attention?" Cyrus pondered in an interview with Out in May. Here answer was to start her nonprofit that focuses on helping homeless LGBT youth. "I'm fighting for people I don't know, but also people I do know, and people I'm close to," she explained, noting that this was also an opportunity for her to promote transgender visibility, which she's been passionate about since the suicide of Leelah Alcorn.
"I don't want another story like that to be a blurb people hear about and then it just goes away," she said. Cyrus , who had her own struggles with gender conformity growing up (which she's been explaining in various magazine profiles), chose her cause when she learned that a high percentage of LGBT youth are homeless. "We just ignore it because we're used to it," she said. "You're looking at your phone, but you never look at someone who's sitting there and needs help."
