One month afterward, people were clutching their pearls again when Miley stripped nude for her “Wrecking Ball” music video.

And the star reflected on all of the scrutiny that she faced during this point in her career in an interview with British Vogue last year.

“I carried some guilt and shame around myself for years because of how much controversy and upset I really caused,” she admitted at the time. “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.”

Miley also confessed that she had been purposefully trying to distance herself from her Hannah Montana character, explaining: “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.’”