(Cover) - EN Showbiz - Miley Cyrus is happy be seen as a sex symbol.

The singer-and-actress has grown up in the spotlight after appearing on the Disney TV show Hannah Montana. Miley is now 19 and proud to flaunt her toned figure on the red carpet.

"If people find that [I am], I take it as a compliment," Miley said on US TV show The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet. "Thank you for thinking I'm sexy!

"People are so scared of seeing a woman being like, 'This is who I am and you're not going to change it.'"

Miley showed her desire to shed her clean-cut image by releasing the raunchy single Can't Be Tamed. She claims the backlash to her image shows that people are uncomfortable seeing her develop into an adult.

"Even just the title of that, for a woman to say she can't be tamed for a woman in the world with my face saying 'I can't be tamed' when that's really all people wanted to do, I think proves how sexist people still really are," she said.

"I feel I was so trained in my interviews to be All-American or whatever. I just got so set in the way of saying the same things I did when I was 12 years old I don't have to be smiling all the time and always have the perfect answer." (C) Cover Media