Miley Cyrus did not give the Met Gala the gift of her presence this year. She stayed off social media on Met night, keeping her exact whereabouts and activities private.

The singer last attended fashion’s biggest night in 2019 with her then-husband Liam Hemworth. She went big for the event, wearing a black and green striped Saint Laurent minidress for its “Camp: Notes on Fashion” theme.

That same year, Cyrus spoke to ELLE about how she was coming into her power as a woman. She explained the name of her record, She Is Miley Cyrus: “‘She’ does not represent a gender. She is not just a woman. ‘She’ doesn’t refer to a vagina. She is a force of nature. She is power. She can be anything you want to be, therefore, she is everything. She is the super she. She is the she-ro. She is the She-E-O.”

She also touched on why she hates the word “selfish,” particularly when it is thrown at women. “Why are we trained that love means putting yourself second and those you love first? If you love yourself, then what? You come first,” she said.

A few years later, in British Vogue, she spoke candidly about her fame and the public’s perception of her during her Bangerz era in 2013, “I was creating attention for myself because I was dividing myself from a character I had played. Anyone, when you’re 20 or 21, you have more to prove. ‘I’m not my parents.’ ‘I am who I am.’

“I carried some guilt and shame around myself for years because of how much controversy and upset I really caused,” she continued. “Now that I’m an adult, I realize how harshly I was judged. I was harshly judged as a child by adults and now, as an adult, I realize that I would never harshly judge a child.”