Ask the people in your life to name a good woman with wealth, beauty, talent, and true love, and I’d bet at least a few of them would name Taylor Swift.
Ms. Swift, the 34-year-old pop icon, who made history last Sunday as the only musician to win four Grammy Awards for best album, checks a lot of important boxes. She is white, thin and blonde in a world that continues to privilege whiteness, thinness and blondeness. She’s a billionaire with an enviable real estate portfolio, a loyal coterie of girlfriends and, for the past five months or so, a handsome, happily goofy NFL player boyfriend who seems smitten with her. On Sunday, she might take a break from her Eras world tour and come from Japan to see him play in the Super Bowl. Blessed hashtag, right?
But if you spend 10 minutes on . She does too much, except when she doesn’t do enough, and she always does it badly.
I’m not the first to observe that a pretty blonde dating a handsome football player should, at least for white people of a certain age, evoke all the simpler vibes of yesteryear (Friday night lights, two-straw milkshakes , letterman jackets) that conservatives might want. Except — oops! — the pretty blonde supports the Democrats. And Travis Kelce, the football hero, appears in commercials for vaccines (bad) and Bud Light (sort of worse).
And why does she monopolize the attention during her matches? She is Yoko Ono who curses him and brings bad luck to his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, except when she misses a game – and continues, in one way or another, to bring bad luck to the team, which still reached the Super Bowl, proof there, in one way or another, of a vast left-wing conspiracy.
Of course, anyone subjected to this much distilled caveman fury should be loved by the opposing team, people with dye in their hair and pronouns in their online bios, right?
Think again.
Environmentally conscious critics have branded Ms Swift a climate criminal for frequently flying by private jet. In 2022, she topped a list of «famous emitters» who accused her plane of releasing 8,293.54 metric tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere. (A spokeswoman told the Washington Post that those numbers were misleading, since Ms. Swift regularly loaned the plane to others.) They became even angrier when her representatives sent a cease-and-desist letter to a student at Florida which followed and publicized this incident. data.
If the jet is a problem, the money needed to finance it is even greater. Summarizing many online discussions, an article from Australian media outlet SBS asks: who makes Ms Swift’s products? “Are they working reasonable hours and being paid properly? Did she really need to release so much merchandise? Are his tickets sold to fans at a reasonable price?
Ms. Swift gave her Eras tour staff $100,000 bonuses, for a reported total of more than $55 million, and she quietly made large donations to food pantries in the cities the tour passed through. But for these critics, an ethical billionaire is a contradiction in terms, and Ms. Swift is responsible for trying to reach the top of oppressive power structures when she could instead be trying to dismantle them.
Of course, race is also part of the debate. Some people are angered by Ms. Swift’s failure to condemn her recent ex Matty Healy, the lead singer of British band The 1975, who was filmed on stage giving what appeared to be a Nazi salute. In interviews, he hurled vile insults at rapper Ice Spice and talked about watching pornography that was degrading to black women.
“Whether she’s dating Healy or the whole thing is an elaborate PR ploy,” Kelly Pau wrote in Salon, “Swift has revealed herself to be yet another white woman who claims to be an ally, claims Black Lives Matter and calls herself a feminist — but only as long as it serves her. Others point out that Mr. Kelce’s former girlfriend is black, and that in some circles his relationship with Ms. Swift is celebrated as a kind of glorious homecoming. reason.
As Brittany Packnett Cunningham noted, some people seem to view Ms. Swift as a “symbol of pure whiteness.” Writing on Threads, the MSNBC analyst said, “in their ‘replacement fears,’ to defend it is to defend whiteness itself. »
But wait, there’s more. Some fans are disappointed that Ms. Swift attended a Brooklyn stop on comedian Ramy Youssef’s More Feelings tour, an event that raised money for Gaza relief efforts. “She owes Israelis and American Jews an apology,” said talk show host Megyn Kelly. Meanwhile, fans using the hashtag #SwiftiesforPalestine demanded Ms Swift call for an immediate ceasefire, cut ties with Israeli businesses and publicly support the Palestinians.
Disabled fans complained that Ms. Swift’s accessible ticket sales were a disaster — and that her concerts didn’t offer enough ADA-compliant seating.
Even Ms. Swift’s affection for cats has been criticized. In particular, critics say, his affection for his two Scottish Fold cats increased the breed’s popularity, leading unscrupulous opportunists to over-breed them, leading to unfortunate genetic mutations.
A racist ex! A private jet spewing pollutants! White feminism! The sins of capitalism! Mutant cats! It’s all his fault!
It’s a story as old as time: it’s impossible for a woman, whether a superstar or a mere mortal, to do things right. This is a monologue from “Barbie” (Taylor’s version):
You have to have money, but you can’t ask for it because it’s rude. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be too powerful. You have to be a career woman but not ambitious.
You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you report it you get accused of complaining.
But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. You should never grow old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall, never fail, never show your fear, never think outside the box. It is too hard! And it actually turns out that not only are you doing everything wrong, but it’s also all your fault.
Even though she won almost everything, it seems Taylor Swift can’t win.
But in this sea of TikToks and X-rated posts, of open letters, of petitions and demands, something encouraging is also happening.
When I was a teenager, I’m not sure it would have occurred to me to think about how whiteness might have been at work in the pop charts or to demand that Debbie Gibson seizes the means of production. It’s encouraging to see Ms. Swift’s young fans talking about race, power, privilege and gender.
And it’s hard to imagine that these critics wouldn’t also think about their own lives, their own feminism and their carbon footprint, the positions they take, the pets they choose. By demanding that Taylor Swift do better — even if there’s no consensus on what «better» looks like — a lot of Swifties might end up doing better themselves.
Jennifer Weiner is a novelist. His most recent book is “The Breakaway”.
Source photograph by Caroline Brehman/EPA, via Shutterstock
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