Miley Cyrus had quite the night at the LGBT Center’s Vanguard Awards Gala Saturday evening. Not only was she honored with an award for her work with LGBT homeless youth, but she also helped raise some serious cash for the center’s Los Angeles branch.
Dressed as a rebel mermaid who washed up in Lisa Vanderpump’s rose garden, Miley commanded the red carpet in a floor-length pink gown, carrying a seashell clutch and sporting her now-signature blonde dreadlocks (please stop).
At one point, Cyrus jumped onstage to help musician Linda Perry auction off a white grand piano donated by “Orange Is The New Black” star Ruby Rose.
In typical Miley fashion, she used perhaps her most famous asset other than her voice — her tongue — to christen the instrument. The piano ended up selling for a cool $50,000.
The center honored Cyrus with a Vanguard Award for her work with the Happy Hippie Foundation, which she launched in May. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to helping homeless LGBT youth and other at-risk populations.
In her acceptance speech, Cyrus said she was “beyond grateful” for the award and spoke to the impact the center has had on her own life.
“Given the opportunity to sit in on one of the support groups, I walked away with the feeling of self-love that I had never been able to give myself before,” she said, adding, “The LGBT Center had the key to the lock on my cage and they set me free and I want to continue to do the same for others.”
She also used the opportunity to drop some knowledge about the sheer number of young homeless LGBT people and the challenges they face:
“There are more than 1.6 million runaway or homeless young people in the U.S. each year with 40 percent of homeless youth identifying as LGBTQ … And in just Hollywood where we are all sitting royally with all of our food in front of us and all of these fancy-ass clothes … there are more than 6,100 homeless people under the age of 24 on the streets on any given day and more than one in four of these people have experienced hate crimes due to their race, sexual orientation or their gender identity.”
LGBT rights isn’t the only cause Miley is passionate about these days. The “Wrecking Ball” singer recently joined author and environmental activist Carl Safina on a trip to protest a mass planned killing of wolves in British Columbia, Canada.
Go, Miley, go!
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