How Hannah Montana became an unexpected icon for marginalized kids

2026-03-26 - 02:42

On a cool, wintry afternoon in early March, a crowd of people streamed towards New York’s Washington Square Park for a Miley Cyrus lookalike contest. Many in the audience were die-hard Hannah Montana fans, including Iranian-American cousins, Sophia, 23, and Ariana Parizadeh, 22. Growing up the children of immigrants in strict households, they remembered childhoods