The writer Jessica Grose took a more laissez-faire view, writing on Elle.com that journalists should stop asking actresses whether they’re feminists.

“It feels like a game of gotcha,” Ms. Grose, 32, said in an interview. “She’s not the enemy here.”

Whether a woman in the public eye calls herself a feminist is an exercise in semiotics, she said, and the hesitation among celebrities to fully embrace the cause is a fear that: “ ‘If I don’t say the exact right thing or express it in the right way, I’ll be rejected.’ It makes the movement seem judgmental or unwelcoming.”

Andi Zeisler, 41, a founder of the feminist pop culture magazine Bitch, said, “Just the fact that these questions are being asked shows that feminism is a lot more accepted.” The problem, she said, is that some celebrities do not know what the core values and goals of feminism are.

“I don’t care if people don’t identify as feminist,” Ms. Zeisler said. She does have a problem with misinformation and the perpetuation of the idea that feminism is “this zero-sum game that if it elevates women, then it denigrates men. That’s just wrong and has never been what feminism is about. That’s the Fox News version of feminism.”

Over the last year, feminism has achieved a certain ubiquity in pop culture. Last October, Glamour magazine published an article with the title “The New Do: Calling Yourself a Feminist.” Sheryl Sandberg, 44, the chief operating officer of Facebook and the author of “Lean In,” told HuffPost Live in April: “I embrace the word ‘feminism.’ I didn’t do it earlier in my career and I talk about why in the book, but I embrace it now because what feminism is, is a belief that the world should be equal, that men and women should have equal opportunity.”