Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift…They Were All Feminists in 2014

Two-thousand fourteen was a year-long debate among female celebrities about what feminism was and how it effected their lives. They may not have agreed with each other on the definition of feminism—or whether they even were—but in the process of refusing to be meek and sharing the realities of their lives, they showed what they do have in common: that they’re all strong, unapologetic, independent women.

Miriam Weeks defends her choice to work in porn to afford her tuition.

Take the fallout from the photo hack of celebrity nudes last September, where we all got to get a look Kirsten Dunst, Kate Upton, and Jennifer Lawrence’s pubic grooming regime. Instead of being embarrassed or apologizing for taking private naked photos or doing anything to express that she was at fault, Lawrence rightly fought back in Vanity Fair, saying the act was not a scandal, but a sex crime. “Just because I’m a public figure, just because I’m an actress, does not mean that I asked for this,” she said. “It does not mean that it comes with the territory. It’s my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting.”

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On a similar note, when Miriam Weeks, a Duke University student, was outed as the porn star Belle Knox, she defended her choice with passion and eloquence as a way to afford the $60,000 per year tuition to her dream school.

Nicki Minaj in “Anaconda”

Other celebs showed how powerful and bad-ass they were by doing whatever pleased them as they stuck to their own visions. Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” song and video was a celebration of the ample behind. Miley Cyrus rang in her 22nd birthday dancing topless at a party in Hollywood that was decorated with sex toys, marijuana leaves, and a mechanical bull in the shape of a phallus, which she rode.

At least they all pretended not to care. Madonna, always trying to stay on top of the latest youth-oriented trends, tried to make the hashtag #unapologeticbitch become a sensation on Instagram, adding the word to describe everything from home décor to a hairdo she wore while visiting Africa.

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And it’s hard to imagine newlywed Kim Kardashian doing anything without thinking of her record-breaking 22 million-plus Instagram followers. She bared everything for Paper magazine in a cover that promised to #breaktheinternet. Meanwhile, Kendall Jenner wore a sheer top sans bra on the runway for Marc Jacobs and Kylie Jenner posted a bevy of suggested selfies on Instagram.

Baring oneself in general was a move that many famous women pulled to show how daring and carefree they were. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Cara Delevingne, and Rihanna (or shall we say, badgirlriri) all wore the same Tom Ford pasties to various events. Perhaps they were making a statement about #freethenipple, the campaign to bring light to the double standards rampant on social media. Scout Willis, the 20-something daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, shared topless photos of herself in New York as her endorsement of the campaign.

Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer in an episode of “Broad City”. / Everett Collection

Others took to baring all through their books. The omnipresent writer-director-actor-Vogue cover girl Lena Dunham wrote an unvarnished account of rape in Not That Kind of Girl and Amy Poehler was brutally honest about the pain of divorce and her own past drug use in Yes Please. 2014 was a banner year for women in comedy, with Broad City showing that a pair of female slacker-stoners is just as funny as Seth Rogen and James Franco. Amy Schumer was a lightning rod of the female experience on her show “Inside Amy Schumer,” joking about “gym bummers” and guilty snacks, while Chelsea Peretti spoofed the pretty girls of Instagram who dare to make “ugly” faces (Cara Delevingne, we’re looking at you) on her standup special. Comedy by women went way beyond Cathy-style humor about hormones and dating to be as delightfully weird, profane, hilarious, and accepted as anything by men.

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Behind all of this take-me-as-I-am sentiment was the notion that famous women don’t have to act a certain prescribed way to be beloved anymore, which is a deeply feminist notion at its heart. But there was still much talk this year about who was and was not a feminist. In early 2014, Amy Poehler told Elle that some celebrities “feel like they have to speak to their audience and that word is confusing to their audience. But I don’t get it. That’s like someone being like, ‘I don’t really believe in cars, but I drive one every day and I love that it gets me places and makes life so much easier and faster and I don’t know what I would do without it.’”

Shailene Woodley created a maelstrom when said in a Time magazine interview last spring that she wasn’t a feminist. “Because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance.”

Emma Watson at the UN #HeForShe Campaign Launch. / Getty Images

But not all young actresses rejected the term. Emma Watson made a rousing speech at the UN for the #HeForShe equality campaign, Taylor Swift revealed that she’s a proud feminist, saying, “for so long it’s been made to seem like something where you’d picket against the opposite sex, whereas it’s not about that at all.”

Perhaps real feminist MVP was Beyoncé, who spent the year rising above divorce rumors to do one big victory lap in the name of gender equality, starting with the late 2013 release of her self-title album, which sampled the TED talk titled “We Should All Be Feminists” given by the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and includes a quote from it: “Feminist: the person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.” Just to make sure there wasn’t any confusion on where the pop star stood she danced in front of a backdrop that read “feminist” at MTV’s Video Music Awards.

Beyonce at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. / Getty Images

Women of 2014 were many things: they were rebels, they were feminists, they were breaking the Internet and freeing the nipple. They didn’t all agree with each other or act as one, but that was the point. What they had in common was that they were women. The rest was up to them.