The headline at the top of this blog post is not a figure of speech. It’s not an exaggeration. It’s not the ol’ Stereogum Fake News machine kicking into gear. It is the simple truth: Miley Cyrus hates paper. She can’t be around the stuff. She says it’s a phobia. She doesn’t like Christmas because it involves wrapping paper. When Cyrus talks about paper, she gags, like she’s going to barf.
Miley Cyrus has other things going on in her life beyond her abhorrence for wood pulp rolled into thin strips of material. (That’s what paper is, right?) Miley recently got engaged to the musician Maxx Morando, who did a lot of work on her underrated recent album Something Beautiful. Also, her song “Dream As One” is in the new Avatar movie. These are presumably the reasons that Cyrus was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night. But once Cyrus mentioned that she hates paper, those other concerns went out the window. Jimmy Kimmel was not move on. Would you? No. You would want to know more about this famous lady’s disgust for virtually anything made out of paper. Cyrus was happy to elaborate.
Here are some of the things that Miley Cyrus has to say about paper:
• “I hate paper.”
• “Looking at that [Kimmel’s cue card] makes me wanna vomit.” Then, Kimmel touches the cue card and asks, “This?” She responds by theatrically gagging while kind of screaming, “Don’t even do it!” Kimmel is like, “Should I move it away?” She gags louder, and she’s like, “That’s worse!”
• “The real problem for me with paper is when [gags again] when people have [gags] dry [gags] dry hands and they touch paper and then it’s Christmas and it’s cold and everyone’s hands are dry and they’re all touching paper!”
• “When someone sends me, like, a lovely letter, I just don’t even open it. Just don’t even — I love text messages, no paper. Email, no paper. Phone call, no paper.”
• Can she read the newspaper? “[Gags again] No!”
• What about rolling papers? She answers before Kimmel even gets the question all the way out: “That’s fine!” Her hands, she insists, are not dry, and neither are rolling papers because you have to lick them.
• “I love that you’re all about the improv because if you had to pick that up [points at the cue card again], I would die.”
• “It’s getting worse, and so there does need to be some sort of intervention, and I am going to look into some sort of maybe EMDR or being hypnotized about it because it is affecting my everyday life.”
• “Like, OK, someone gets an Amazon box? I’m sick. The cardboard is the worst of it all. It’s extra-dry, and there’s packaging within it. So that’s really why I got engaged — I just make my fiancé open all the packages outside.”
• “Wax paper? Anything that’s got, like a smooth surface? That’s better.” She’ll sign her marriage certificate because “from the last marriage, I think I remember that the paper is wax.” (Kimmel says, “It’s not wax.”)
• “Anything that I want [for Christmas] is usually pretty small, and it can fit perfectly fine within a silk stocking. No paper. I prefer silk. No dryness.”
• “My brothers used to traumatize me, and I’m looking at them. My mom at one point wanted to be a flight attendant, but then she got another phobia, kinda like this. She hates to fly… So then, she made us drive everywhere, and my dad worked in Canada. So every weekend, from Nashville, Tennessee, we would drive to Toronto, Canada — like 14 hours, and there’s five kids all in the car and a German shepherd. My mom would be driving, and it would be complete chaos ’cause all of us would fight for the entire 14 hours, and to really torture me, they would rub paper together while I was in the backseat.”
• “So, books? [Kimmel asked her about books.] I was so happy when they had a Kindle, when the Kindle was invented ’cause that solved a lot of problems for me. The iPad solved a lot of problems for me. But again, as long as they’re not dry. When I write my book, wax paper.”
When Jimmy Kimmel threw to commercial, Miley Cyrus acted playfully miffed that they’d just been discussing paper rather than her Avatar song. They went on to talk about things like Kimmel’s chances of ever becoming an officially recognized Disney Legend like Cyrus. (Kimmel thinks he’s cost the company too much money.) I’ll be honest, though. I kind of tuned out when they stopped taking about paper. I might go so far as to say that Miley Cyrus’ hate for paper is now the most interesting thing about her.
