First of all, I don’t hate Taylor Swift because she went out with Harry Styles* Frankly he looks like he needs a good wash, and I’m obviously too young for him. I don’t even hate her because, at the age of 23, she is the Queen of an $80 million empire or because she has surprisingly beautiful hair. Nope. I hate her because of the insidious effect she has on the music industry, media, feminism, and of course, little girls. Allow me to digest.
- She goes out with men, writes songs about them and then sells them. By that logic, she is no better than this ahem, lady. Before any pseudo-feminist suggests that I’m slut shaming aul Taylor, I am not. There’s nothing wrong with going out with a bunch of men in your early twenties. But that’s ALL she seems to do. That and slating them in her songs. So little girls can be forgiven for presuming that your twenties are all about make-ups and break-ups. I can’t wait until she hits 30 and we have to listen to songs about her biological clock and freezing her eggs.
- She has won more Grammy Awards than Queen. So songs like ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’ and ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ have gained more industry recognition than the likes of ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and ‘I Want to Break Free’. Yeah, let that sink in. Sure, she writes her own songs but let’s not be silly here. We all know that every lyric is validated by a team of corporate professionals who carefully hone her image. So with lyrics like ‘I can feel my heart, it’s beating in my chest’, she has accumulated seven Grammy Awards. SEVEN. Again, let that sink in.
- She’s a little stupid. Again, I need to bring up her song lyrics for this. We all know that the best songs, films and literature ponder the transcendence of love and the meaning of life. And I suppose Swift does that, in a very juvenile, kind –of-idiotic way. To put this into perspective, let’s talk about Adele. Both are the same age, yet Adele manages to capture the pain of un-reciprocated love without vilifying the other woman. And without stating the obvious. (See lyric at #2) Adele however, has a net worth of around HALF of what Taylor has made. Despite winning more Grammy’s and awards all round, Taylor is still more marketable than Adele. Now whether this is because Taylor has the perfect cookie cutter image that the media likes to cultivate or it’s more sinister, in regards to weight, is anyone’s guess.
- She hurts men AND women. I would imagine that Jake, John, Taylor, Harry, Patrick and whoever else she’s dated, were all more than a little teed off when they realized their ex was making money off them. But not content with avenging her exes, aul Swifty hurts the male image in general too. With songs like ‘Dear John’ and ‘Cold as You’ she portrays men as uncaring, twisted and predatory. Lines like ‘Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?’ only prove my point. As for women, well, she doesn’t seem to have too much time for them either, especially brunettes. She cultivates the predictable dichotomy of brunettes vs. blondes within her songs. Brunettes are boring, plain and yet mysterious and alluring. Basically stay away from the brown-haired lasses; they’ll steal your men. Taylor on the other hand being a blonde, is always innocent and precious and just *can’t* fathom why all these awful things keep happening to her and why people are so mean and horrible. The other blonde stereotype is of course, stupidity. But I bet that’s a confessional tune she will not want to write.
- She’s ‘not about feminism.’I understand that not every woman needs to declare themselves a feminist or even believe in its motives. (I understand it but it’s not very cool.) With all her harping on about the other woman it’s fairly obvious that Taylor isn’t a feminist. But at least *know* what feminism is. In an interview last year she stated that she doesn’t think of the world as guys vs. girls because she was brought up in a home where you could be anything you wanted to be, regardless of gender. *Clears throat* Taylor? THAT’S WHAT FEMINISM IS. You wouldn’t mind if we took away all your guitars, all your brogues, and that new gaff you just bought across from the Kennedy’s? That’s grand so. I’m not saying that she needs to be Germaine fucking Greer but at this rate, little brown-haired schoolgirls will have no one to play with in the school yard having been ostracised like the witches of Salem. Men will cross the street to avoid her, worried that she may write a song about them after having ‘looked at her weird.’ Freddie Mercury is probably spinning in his grave for all we know!
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*I needed to Google his name, proving that I am not in fact a ‘Directioner’. God, I’m old.
