Pop star Miley Cyrus, who has recently been embroiled in controversy after a series of sexually explicit performances, has claimed she is “one of the biggest feminists”.
The 20-year-old singer said she thought there was a “double standard” when it came to men and women and body image.
No-one minds if a man goes topless on the beach, she said, adding “So why can’t we?”
Persona
She told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat: “I feel like I’m one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women to not be scared of anything”.
“I’m for anybody and anything, I don’t care what you want to do, what you want to look like.”
Cyrus defended her revealing outfits and provocative pop acts claiming they were just part of her on-stage persona.
Confused
But she has been widely criticised for sending children the wrong message.
Last week a head teacher warned that the pop star, who shot to fame as Disney’s wholesome character Hannah Montana in 2006, was leaving girls feeling “manipulated and confused”.
Jo Heywood, head teacher of a £30,000-a-year girls’ boarding school, warned that girls were being left confused by stars that start out on TV as clean-cut but later become something far more sexualised.
And a survey of parents revealed that most parents fear that sexually provocative pop stars such as Miley Cyrus and Rihanna are having a damaging effect on their children.
Pressure
Last month singer Charlotte Church spoke out against the pressure on young female popstars to sell themselves as sex objects, in a lecture for BBC 6 Music.
She talked about her own experience of being pushed into wearing inappropriate clothes as a young artist by industry bosses.
She said record labels are encouraging singers “to present themselves as hypersexualised, unrealistic, cartoonish, as objects, reducing female sexuality to a prize you can win”.