Taylor Swift is not happy with recent comments/jokes made about her during awards season. In the April 2013 issue of Vanity Fair, cover girl Swift talks about how annoyed she is with persistent media coverage of her alleged dating life. She tells VF‘s contributing editor Nancy Jo Sales:
“If you want some big revelation, since 2010 I’ve dated exactly two people. […] 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.”
She also goes on to say that she was not happy with the way Tina Fey sent her up at the Golden Globes back in January. To refresh your memory, Fey said:
“You know what Taylor Swift? You stay away from Michael J. Fox’s son,” referencing Swift’s tendency to date men and then write songs about them and her recent penchant for dating younger guys. Fey also added, “No, she needs some me time to learn about herself.” Fey later semi-apologized for her remark at the SAG awards: “I just feel like it was just a little joke, like two of your aunts, two of your old lady aunts teasing you at the Thanksgiving table, that’s all it was.”
Swift has not accepted this apology, and goes on to say in the VF interview: “You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people. Because she said to me that 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 boy. Okay, it’s understandable that Swift is upset about the scrutiny surrounding her love life. However, since she’s made fun of herself in the past for her habit of writing about her failed relationships, and now that she’s trying to pull the “people are being mean to me, I think it’s sexist so therefore, they’re anti-feminist!” card, I’m crying foul.
I don’t want to say “how dare she try and be a feminist!” It must be annoying as hell to be painted as a marriage/baby hungry woman in the popular media, but at the same time, I don’t think Swift has really been helping herself. I feel it’s too little too late for her attempts to lash out at the “mean” Tina Fey and her critics. Honestly, I don’t think anything Fey said was an attack. If anything, Fey was saying things other comedians and news outlets had already said about her.
Swift is also a very public figure who has made a career singing songs that slut shame and allow her to play the victim under the guise of empowerment. She’s twenty-three years old, yet her songs sound like they’re taken from the diary of a sixteen-year-old. Also, it wasn’t that long ago when asked if she was a feminist by The Daily Beast, her response was “I don’t really think about things as guys versus girls. I never have. I was raised by parents who brought me up to think if you work as hard as guys, you can go far in life.”
Okay, fine, maybe she learned from that debacle, and she’s finally realizing that people past the age of seventeen aren’t taking her seriously. But honestly, it pisses me off that she’s throwing around a brilliant Madeline Albright quote as a way to play the victim yet again. She wants to be taken seriously? Stop writing fairy tales, stop playing the victim, stop acting like you’re a wounded bird when you’re actually the mean girls you claim to dislike, and for Pete’s sake, grow up. You’re twenty-three years old. You’ve been selling the same schtick since you were seventeen. Enough is enough.
So, LivLunatics, is Swift standing up for herself, or is this a misguided attempt to get blogs like ours to shut up? Does Swift have a point, or is she overreacting?
Kathleen H. Furey 