Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Taylor Swift Wants to Have Her Feminist Cake and Scorn It Too

So Taylor Swift has got everyone all a-buzz with her recent comments to Vanity Fair. In short, she basically called out Amy Poehler and Tina Fey for poking fun at her at the Golden Globes. In response to a question about their comments, she said, "You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people, because she said to me she had heard a quote that she loved, that said, 'There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.'"

Oh...so then there's a special place for you, Taylor? I shared this article on Facebook and my friends and I had quite the nice time picking apart how incredibly hypocritical this is of her to say. So many of her songs invoke slut shaming and/or put her forth as a special snowflake who is way better than all the other girls. Doesn't sound much like helping other women, does it?

I've also seen a quote circulating Tumblr from the same interview. She said,
“For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that’s taking something that potentially should be celebrated—a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way—that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist.”
You know...she kind of has a point here. Kind of. There is a lot of sexist backlash against Swift, I get that. When people make fun of her breakup songs and how many boyfriends she's had and blah blah blah...it's not great. But the BIG problem I have here is that Swift has NEVER been an ally against sexism (in fact she's been a promoter of it) but when she's feeling personally attacked, she suddenly wants to talk about gender equality?

Please excuse me but fuck that noise. I just don't think it's fair to scorn feminism one day and expect it to have your back the next. If she wants to take a moment to examine her work and persona and get on board the F-train express, great. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

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