Member Since: 9/17/2012
Posts: 9,591
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Taylor Swift: Crimestopping Chanteuse.
This an excerpt from an article published by NY Magazine suggesting that Taylor Swift can be a Girl-On-Girl Crimestopping Chanteuse:
Taylor Swift, Girl-on-Girl Crimestopper
By Kat Stoeffel
A recent U.K. survey of Twitter misogyny by the think tank Demos came to a surprising conclusion. "Women are almost as likely to use '****', '*****' and 'rape', both casually and offensively, as men," group research director Carl Miller reported in Wired, aghast. His findings were less surprising for those familiar with the genre of study that finds women are behind their gender's misery often for evolutionary-based reasons beyond their control. I've come to think of these as "Mean Girls" studies, because they remind me of what Tina Fey's character tells her female students at the end of the movie: by calling each other ****s, they give guys permission to call them that. The implication, here, is that women are in part responsible for the perpetuation of sexism. Never mind that it's still only women who get called ****s. Maybe those ****s will get ahead once they stop being so catty to one another.
I'm wary of any sexism fix that is so quick to let men off the hook for a power dynamic that largely benefits them. But Taylor Swift, of all people, makes a very good case for the power of sisterhood in the face of ****-shaming.
Coincidentally, Fey seems to have set that in motion when she teased Swift about her ex-boyfriends at the Golden Globes. In response, Swift told Vanity Fair there was a special place in hell for women who don't help other women. At the time, we teased Swift for mis-attributing the quote to Katie Couric; but lately, it seems like she's onto something.
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Read the rest here (due to the don't-poste-whole-articles rule), but if you're too lazy, read the summary below:
The writer then goes on to mention how Lorde initially criticized a horde of female singers including Taylor ("flawless unattainable") and Selena Gomez and thenpublicly apologized to Taylor, made friends with her and started hanging out together while slightly implying that their relationship might be fake/PR, which lead her to a certain question: "Is forging individual alliances the only solution to ****-shaming?".
She then talks a bit about how society evaluates women according to their relationship to men and the attention the media gives to Swift's dating life (while acknowledging that she may have brought on herself due to her confessional songwriting and coded liner notes)., and ends the article with these paragraphs:
Quote:
Regardless, she might be the most high profile case study in the social conditions that make women internalize misogyny and ****-shame one another: The notion that women are first and foremost competitors for male affection.
If that changes anytime soon, I think Swift will deserve some credit. In the past year, she hasn't made a single public appearance with a guy, opting instead for high profile dinner dates and vacations with other young, female celebrities: Selena Gomez, Hailee Steinfeld, Karlie Kloss, Lena Dunham. What's really radical about this is that celebrity news outlets have been compelled to cover Swift's BFFships with the same granular diligence they did her romantic relationships with men, no cryptic song lyrics required. The message, if media choreographed, is clear: There is a world outside of what men and what they think of you, and it is great. There are parties and fashion tips and road trips and matching preppy outfits that you swear you didn't plan. Who would risk all that just to call another girl a ****?
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