Swift, one of the savviest businesswomen/empire-builders of our time, gets away with all of it. She knows*we think she looks like a goofball when she dances at awards shows, and her choice to just lean into that giddy awkwardness is what saves her from the same anger that got hurled at Miley. Miley used black dancers to look “edgy,” Swift to highlight her own ungainly dancing by using talented people, of all schools of dance, as a foil. She’s self-aware and it kind of makes her more likeable than she has ever been– certainly more likeable than she was when, in “You Belong With Me,” she tried to make anyone believe that she was too unpretty and poorly dressed to be liked.
The only un-self-aware part of “Shake It Off” comes at the very beginning, when she sings “I stay out too late / got nothing in my brain / at least that’s what they say.” This is something that literally no one has ever said about Taylor Swift, a songwriting prodigy turned twenty-something homebody who spends her free nights havingslumber parties with supermodels*or*watching*Law and Order*with her cats.
Oh, as for the song: good luck not listening to it, not dancing to it, and not singing it to yourself as you psyche yourself up for some important but intimidating event in your life. This girl. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/201...-shake-it-off/
Even if it's true, it will NOT be accurate for the new era, she will party A LOT...IN PUBLIC