Miley Cyrus's fans grew up with her; now

she's rebelled, they love her more

Society's prurience about young people is far weirder than anything Cyrus could do in her

provocative stage show. Zoe Williams , The Guardian,

'I don't understand why people can't just not like Miley Cyrus, without

having to build a case against her," said David Bates, 22, on his way into

Manchester's towering arena for the world-beating tour, Bangerz. "Yeah,"

said his friend Luke Davies. "People say: 'I don't like her, therefore you

need to see my PowerPoint on why I don't like her.' And you're, like:

'Well, I've already bought my ticket.'"

They're both at Salford University. Aren't they worried, at all, that they're

going to get inside and be standing next to a party of 12-year-olds? "I'm

wearing a Mohican that flashes," says Luke, beaming. "They should be

embarrassed about standing next to me."

Two homeless people were working the same patch as me (they wanted

to stay anonymous). "Who is Miley Cyrus?" one said to the other. "Well,"

said the other. "Have you ever seen Hannah Montana?"

It's a classic story of Disney golden girl turned wild child; freed from the

contract under which she had to maintain the decorum of a nine-year-old,

Cyrus plunged into adulthood with the desperate enthusiasm of someone

escaping solitary confinement. Hard to say when her behaviour first

started to trigger the PowerPoint presentations; some people date it to

when she went from long hair to her current pixie cut in 2012. However,

more likely, it was the Wrecking Ball video, where she swung naked on

said ball, or the twerking (sexually suggestive dancing), which culminated

in the release of the song Twerk

"She just doesn't care," said Sarah, 20, on her way in with her friend

Ryan, 21. "We grew up with her," he says, "but now she's gone all rebel,

we love her. Our motto is, what would Miley do?"

I can't tell you how often this comes up, the rebellion, the fact that she

marches to her own drum. Until I saw her perform, I didn't really

understand what they meant. That she smokes?

Inside, the age range runs from a two-year-old with some Beats

headphones up to a load of mums in their mid-to-late 40s. Those were

the chaperone mums; the rest were waiting outside on the steps, looking

like they'd been tied to the handrail like dogs outside a pub.

The venue is decorated agelessly, anonymously. It could be a gig or the

CBeebies roadshow. Cyrus's giant face appears on the screen; a huge

tongue comes out of it in 3D. Cyrus herself slides down it. It is comical

and messianic and a little bit shonky, like it might fall apart.

That's the thing, isn't it? Before the twerking, she was famous for sticking

her tongue out. It was sexual more out of determination than anything

else. She rarely wears anything but a leotard, and is constantly grabbing

her genitals. I'm in favour of this. Men do it; it seems about the right time

in the century for a woman to start. There's something energetic but

perfunctory about it, like a masturbating fitness instructor.

Often she's flanked by giant furry animals, or dancing next to a dwarf in a

Britney Spears mask, with a Madonna conical bra on. That last bit is

pretty self-explanatory – she's marking her place in the pantheon of

rebellious women.

It's possible that she hasn't done due diligence on all her messages. ("But

why am I being spanked by a giant blue fluffy dog? Is this meant to be

sexual? Or have I transgressed in dog world? While I mime having sex

with the car, am I supposed to be aroused by the actual car?") We can

have an argument about whether she was celebrating or commodifying

her sexuality in 20 years. Right now, tonight at least, inescapably, the

important thing about her is how beloved she is.

"She is just herself," said Laura Williams, 24. Her sister, Emily, 16, says:

"She's real." Laura continues: "It's not like people outside the limelight

don't do what she does. Society is far too squeaky clean. You should just

be yourself, and that's what she does."

Sarah and Ryan, incidentally, are training to be primary school teachers,

and for their course did a presentation recently on Cyrus as role model,

which most of their peers "did not like at all".

The idea of the role model is one that is mainly defined in its negative:

people who should be a good one but aren't, people who used to be one

but then did some undesirable thing. It's really just a way of asserting a

moral code in a post-taboo landscape: we disagree with you simulating

sex with a pretend car, not on principle, but in case one of your young

fans should try it. I don't even buy it as a question about sex; it's using

sex to leverage adult control. The cultural prurience around young people

capering about, the refusal to see lightness in it, is far weirder than

anything Cyrus could possibly do.

Zofia Slater and her best friend, Nina Telford, are 15 and 14 respectively,

and go to the East Lancs School of Dancing, which is run by Zofia's

mother, Claire. So of course we have a conversation about twerking.

"Would you teach them how to do it?" "No, they come in and teach us

how to do it. Then we have to say 'that's really inappropriate'," Claire

says, laughing. Zofia chips in: "We figured out how to do it in acro-class,

so we were doing handstands and trying to figure out how to twerk in a

handstand. It's really hard."

She's just herself. She speaks her mind. She's her own person. She does

what she wants. The way people talk about Cyrus, you'd think we were

living in the 1950s, all twitching curtains and chastity belts, and that the

Beatles had just arrived. "I hear you guys are even sluttier than

Americans," Miley says to the arena, when the mood feels like it's flagging

a little bit. "The dirtier you all get, the more chance you got of getting on

that screen." Girls start snogging one another furiously, then notice by

the fizzle of their surroundings that they've made it on to a giant screen.

Successively, the same snapshot appears: two girls in the middle, with

the same sheepish expression of having got what they wanted, but also

having now got off with their best friend; and a crowd around them, all

their features obscured because they are holding their phones in front of

their faces, trying to get a picture of themselves on a giant screen. It

happens every time.

Is Cyrus the end of the line for pop rebels, the death knell for cultural

reserve? Could she finally have pushed it as far as it will go? Who knows?

I like her. I agree with Alan Bridge and his cousins, Heather and Laura

O'Reilly: "We didn't like her when she was normal. We only like her now

she's gone wild."