Emma Watson schools critics on what feminism actually means

Emma Watson has taken umbrage with critics who say her posing braless for Vanity Fair makes her a bad feminist.

"Feminism is about giving women choice," she said in a BBC News interview to promote her upcoming film, Beauty and the Beast. "It's about equality," she stressed. "It's not ... I really don't know what my tits have to do with it. It's very confusing."

In her Vanity Fair cover story, Watson discusses her "metamorphosis" from playing Hermione Grainger -- the true hero of the Harry Potter series -- to championing gender equality as the U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador.

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The feature also includes a high-fashion photo shoot, and in one image, Watson poses braless in a Burberry shrug.

To her detractors on social media, showing part of her breasts makes Watson a "hypocrite" and undermines her efforts to promote equal rights for women and men.

But as Watson points out, feminism "is not a stick with which to beat other women with," she said in the BBC interview. "It's about freedom. It's about liberation."

That freedom, of course, isn't limited to sartorial choices.

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More broadly, feminism is about political, economic and social equality for women and men. That means ensuring girls and boys have access to the same quality education; that young girls aren't forced to become wives and mothers as children; that workplaces and research labs don't close their doors to women; that we close the gender wage gap; that all genders are no longer constricted by stereotypes.

Scolding a celebrity for posing braless is missing the point.

"I'm always just kind of quietly stunned," Watson said of her critics.