The Taylor-Swift-shade-throwing bandwagon is getting loaded as fuck. Long-time doubters and a newfound critical mass come equipped with sacks of negative press and gallons of political correctness, while waving the tarp of her white-washed feminist tweets. It’s about time those wheels of hate give out or something.
It’s one thing to criticize a pop star for blatant ignorance, and another to belittle her success. Why is it that when we’re done talking about a flaw in her argument, we then immediately jump to the smallest things that can destroy her faster than a sex scandal ever will? And we do it so consciously, that we deny her existence as a mistake-making, apology-seeking, pride-enabling human as much as we ignore Taylor’s legit cred.
True, she should stop trying to get into the Academy list of nominated feminists, at the same that we should stop pegging our soft-boiled feminist ideals from manufactured business models. Girl, you’re no Simone de Beauvoir! Please stop twisting girl power to fit your privileged self. However, we didn’t need to resort to a carnivorous fair of person-dissing—an inevitable downward spiral that successful women are being pushed to slide and die in.
Ever since Taylor’s rise to fame consisted of songs reminiscent of our teenage selves, a deviant minority lurks in the interwebs and in real life, waiting for the pop act to drop her sheep’s clothing. So when Taylor screwed up like a kid on the internet for the first time, we joined them in deliciously consuming the public feud as if we’ve been feeding off a decade-long drought.
More worms start crawling out of the can. Reports say that she’s the new Regina George in the block, and remains the egotistical hypocrite with horns she tries to conceal.
New words, old news—isn’t that the same tired retort we shoot back at successful women?
We’re being brought back to the Sheryl Sandberg pool of sexist success circa 2013. When the Facebook Chief Operating Officer wrote a book to inspire women to lean in, she was met with both acclaim and a chunk load of criticism. Sure, her argument is imperfect, but she didn’t deserve the baseless doubts of her riding off “Mark Zuckerberg’s coattails.” More people just seemed to hate her character even with her past Google post and unbelievable resumé.
What is it about seeing self-made women succeed that puts our panties in a twist? It would be a weak assumption to say that we’re insecure. (We’re not sure of what even: that Taylor stopped being the relatable outcast she once was? That Sheryl stopped being the anonymous pushover?). But there certainly is a sexist instinct to bring down women on top.
When Hollywood’s man-of-the-moment Benedict Cumberbatch called black people “colored” on live TV and apologized, it saved his publicist a lot of time since people were quick to forgive. But when Taylor tweeted her regret, she met more hate for her virtual apology. Apologize in person, bitch! Yeah, try doing that on the fly when you have tours and dinners with Calvin Harris.
Taylor ain’t no victim. But whether or not she knew less about feminism than you do, she—like other women, successful or getting there—deserves fairer judgment when she slips out of her “role model” self.
Speaking of judging, here’s something to side-eye: We parade girl power when women like Taylor and Sheryl are praised, but we also easily regress to our paparazzi selves when magnifying on their mistakes. We’re no better than vultures when we pick on the decaying remains of someone’s human flaws.
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