Miley Cyrus

As anyone who’s followed Cyrus’ career over the years — and as the mother of two girls, believe me, I qualify — could tell you, Cyrus has had a bumpy road to adulthood. The girl who became a star at age 13 has seen her rump shaking and salvia smoking horrify parents. Her vocal support of gay rights shocked conservative Christians. And as her fan base hit middle school, she was instantly rendered uncool to an entire generation.

And while growing up is awkward for everybody, it can be downright brutal when you’re one of the most famous entertainers in the world. Cyrus’ every move is scrutinized, every mistake is front-page news. “Every 18-year-old explores sexuality and experiments and tries things,” she says. “For me there’s no reason to change that,” a notion that fans who still think of her as a face on lunchboxes will just have to get used to.

Cyrus may become one of the lucky ones like Drew Barrymore and Justin Timberlake, performers who transitioned from youthful idols into respected adult performers while also making it OK to be sexy. But along the way, she may well make some terrible movies or bust some awkward dance moves or make some truly dubious sartorial choices. That’s what being famous and 18 tends to involve. And as a trade-off, she’ll have to deal with the fact that “People see me as this perfect Disney star, and the moment I put out a record that says ‘I’m not 11 years old anymore,’ people look down on me.”

Little girls, as Maurice Chevalier once lasciviously pointed out, get bigger every day. And the smiling Hannah of just a few years ago is now Miley in a revealing halter top and sultry bob on Prestige’s cover. Deal with it, America. As she says she’s told her 11-year-old sister, “Don’t put yourself in a situation where people are going to think of you as only one thing. You’re going to change a lot. It interferes with your growing up if you’re not strong enough and you’re not sure who you want to be.”

Now, Cyrus has expressed her feelings a little more permanently, flaunting an equality tattoo on her ring finger and tweeting this weekend that “All LOVE is equal.” And when a Christian fan took offense, she promptly snapped, “where does it say in the bible to judge others? Oh right. It doesn’t. GOD is the only judge honey. GOD is love.”

Cyrus has been getting inked almost as long as she’s been singing. She has several other tattoos, including a “Just breathe” motto under her ribcage in honor of a friend who died of cystic fibrosis. And adorned on her fingers like little rings, she has a heart, a peace sign, the word “karma,” and more. Now this. A tattoo is not exactly the world’s most articulate statement of support for a cause, nor is it always the wisest long-term way to express your feelings. You’ve got to wonder if she had to do it all over again, if Kat Von D would get Jesse James’ face plastered on her ribcage. Yet there’s something undeniably, sweetly sincere — and unmistakably youthful — about hopeful solidarity nonetheless.

To superficial observers, Cyrus has long appeared just another prefab teen pop star, an artificial creation designed to sell lunch boxes. But Cyrus has long bucked that image, sometimes with truly terrible music videos and sometimes by taking genuine creative and personal risks. Her outspokenness about LGBT rights and in particular, same-sex marriage, set her apart from the usual pack of bland young celebs too afraid of alienating their fan base to take a stand on anything.

It’s easy for those of us who are older and who inhabit the Godless Sodoms of America to take for granted something as seemingly innocuous — and frankly crudely done — as two little lines on a ring finger. But for Cyrus, it’s something else. She’s not Gaga, with a more adult and sophisticated image and audience. And though the sexy dancing at the Teen Choice Awards might be vaguely scandalous, it can be a real career game-changer for a girl to risk alienating a mighty Christian and conservative fan base. Cyrus is aware of this — in 2009 she took a Twitter sabbatical, in part, she says, because of the anti-gay hostility she found aimed at her there. And sure enough, she has bashers criticizing her today for “supporting a perverse life style.”

Yet bless her young heart, she’s still at it. Her gestures may still seem clumsy, but here’s a reminder — it’s impossible to have it all figured out neatly at 18. And maybe those two lines on the finger of one teenage girl don’t seem like a whole lot toward the cause of equality, but it’s a gesture of support nonetheless. More important, it’s a challenge — not to the hipsters and the already liberal, but to the little girls who like to Party in the U.S.A. To fans who consider themselves Cyrus’ fellow Christians. If it plants a notion in those heads, if it makes fans who hadn’t considered LGBT rights before have a conversation about it and open their minds, then it’s a little tattoo that makes a big statement.

But Cyrus had more to say. Taking aim at hipster douchebag retailer Urban Outfitters, which made headlines recently for yet another in their long line of controversies over allegedly ripping off designs, Cyrus tweeted, “Love that everybody is hating on Urban Outfitters…. Not only do they steal from artists but every time you give them money you help finance a campaign against gay equality. #SHADYASHELL” and “‘IF WE ALLOW GAY MARRIAGE NEXT THING U KNOW PEOPLE WILL BE MARRYING GOLD FISH’ – Rick Santorum UO contributed $13,000 to this mans campaign.” [sic]

Cyrus, bless her teenage heart, is correct about Urban Outfitters. The Philadelphia-based company’s founder Richard Hayne has contributed a fortune to the hyperbolicSantorum’s political action committee over the years. And three years ago, the company did a hasty 180, pulling an “I Support Same Sex Marriage” shirt off its shelves after just one week because it was causing “too much bad press.”

If she’s looking for an inexpensive T-shirt chain that’s more politically evolved this summer, Cyrus may prefer to throw her love behind Old Navy. This week the retailer debuted a line of four pride-themed shirts, with 10 percent of the proceeds from sales going to the brilliant “It Gets Better” project. The shirts, unfortunately, are only available in a mere 26 of Old Navy’s more than 1,000 stores, and not for sale online, suggesting a very timid first foray into the equal rights biz. But in a world where kids can still be suspended from school for wearing a shirt that expresses support for something as controversial as love and equality, and celebrities can be chastised for their “moral values” of tolerance, it’s encouraging to see such mainstream, middle-of-the-road American icons as Old Navy and Miley Cyrus speaking out. It offers the hope that, one T-shirt, one tweet at time, it really is getting better.