Stop what you’re doing. Whack up the volume on Taylor Swift. Throw whatever-the-hell dorky dance moves you want. A revolution is stirring. As one fantastic female role model after another emerges and shows the world what being a girl can, and should, really mean, teenage girls are starting to win. It is a wonderful thing to witness.

When Emma Watson (Women’s Goodwill Ambassador for the UN) launched the HeForShe campaign in September, she was not just addressing a bunch of high-level bureaucrats and diplomats. In fact, out of all those listeners the actor’s message reached, the batch of suits in New York was probably the least important. Because, although the speech was directed at men, its real beneficiaries were girls.

For so long, ‘feminism’ has been seen as a dirty word, and its supporters have been labelled as misandrous fringe-dwellers. So for a celebrity of Watson’s stature, with her a place in the childhoods and hearts of so many young girls, to stand up and declare to the world, “I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me,” is a huge deal. Yes, she was urging men not to shy away from the term, but she was doing the same for girls too, and her speech was an unambiguous show of solidarity with each and every one of them.

Following this revelation came the moment that caused all those dwelling in the area of overlap on the feminism/Taylor Swift Venn diagram to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Finally, the singer previously quoted as saying “I don't really think about things as guys versus girls” when asked whether she considered herself a feminist, had got it. In the horrifying – yet utterly predictable – backlash which followed Emma Watson’s UN speech, Swift voiced to Canadian Tout Le Monde En Parle what so many women were thinking: “I wish, when I was 12-years-old, I had been able to watch a video of my favourite actress explaining in such an intellectual, beautiful, poignant way the definition of feminism. Because I would have understood it.” "Hurrah!" we formerly-conflicted feminist Swifties shouted, immediately scrawling ‘I heart TayTay’ on our foreheads with eyeliner and dancing round our bedrooms to ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’. "At last, we are vindicated!"

Beyond easing grown women’s consciences, however, this was, once again, a victory for teenage girls. Taylor Swift has just under 45 million followers on Twitter and is currently the highest-grossing artist in the music industry. In other words, she's hella popular. When she speaks, millions listen, and her message is a valuable one: through her recent feminist awakening, she has told thousands of young girls that she is on their side, that they are worth just as much the boys in their class and that feminism is for them.

And Emma Watson and Taylor Swift aren't the only ones: Lorde, Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham… the list of out-and-proud celebrity feminists is, mercifully, a wonderfully long one at the moment. Hell, even Karl Lagerfeld is at it – or, perhaps more accurately, the Chanel creative director, famously quoted as saying that Pippa Middleton “should only show her back” and that Adele “is a little too fat”, has spotted a trend and set about monetising it. Indeed, the image of a crowd of models, including Cara Delevingne and Kendall Jenner, walking the runway, shouting feminist slogans and waving banners reading ‘women’s rights are more than alright’, is momentous. While surely among the most insincere demonstrations for women’s rights ever, it was significant nonetheless because it signalled – just like Emma Watson and Taylor Swift’s contributions before it – that feminism is  finally gaining a place in popular culture.

We are at a strange point in our journey towards gender equality: most of the necessary legislation is already in place, yet sexism is still as deeply entrenched in our society as ever. What we are now attempting to do is change attitudes, and that is much harder. We cannot go on strike until people stop seeing women’s bodies as commodities. Politicians cannot vote on the division of household labour. And I doubt protesting against catcalling outside the Houses of Parliament would be very effective.

But that does not mean it cannot be done, and the solution lies – in part, at least – in popular culture. Like it or not, everything we do and think is influenced in some way by what we see on our screens, hear via our earphones and read in our magazines. What Watson, Swift, Lorde, Kaling, Dunham, even (dare I say) Lagerfeld, and many others are doing is showing another – feminist – way of doing and thinking. And, as a result, thousands of girls are surely now examining themselves afresh, locating their metaphorical vocal chords, dusting them off and using them to make their voices heard. And it’s about time.