The Trouble with Taylor...

I'm a terrible person. I knew I hadn't updated this blog for a while, but... sheesh! I didn't realise it had been that long! (I am working on future Princess books, which leaves me less time for blogging...)

But if anything can bring me out of hibernation, it's Taylor Swift. I have been agog since the first snakes began creeping across social media, and since #LWYMMD dropped I have been obsessed. It's just so FUN to see Taylor turn into the ice-cold bitch princess we've always known she could be. (And I mean this in the nicest possible way.)

For someone tall, slim and pretty enough to be a model, Taylor has always been something of an underdog in the public eye. That might sound a strange word to describe someone who has been phenomenally successful since her teens, but her "perfect" life seems to be the very reason people hate her. No matter what Taylor does, she gets criticised for it. Crossing over from country to pop (and mastering both)? Ooh, we weren't sure about that. We like people to stay in their boxes. Dating lots of men? Time to slut-shame! (Never mind that the men in question were also known for their well-publicised love lives.) When people laughed at Taylor's dancing, she good-humouredly made a video showing herself dancing badly in LOTS of different ways, but that got her slammed for racism.

Weird how a million other white singers have made similar videos without 
anybody noticing / caring about the racial politics of dancing or dressing in this tyle...

She got into more trouble a year later with her Wildest Dreams video; shooting in Africa with storyline centred around a retro movie set became "romanticising colonialism".The fact that some of the "actors" milling about in the background WERE black suggests that the videomakers were deliberately trying to avoid excluding people of colour, but it wasn't enough. 

Meanwhile in a One Direction video released around the time of Shake It Off:

Nobody cared about the cultural appropriation of Niall dressing up and joining in with a tribal dance, or the inexplicableness of Zayn chucking yellow paint over sumo wrestlers. So why does Taylor get picked on? Why is she always held to a higher standard than other superstars?

Perhaps it's the idea that people who are pretty and clever and popular shouldn't get to be happy and successful. We're sold the idea that the high school nerd will become the next Bill Gates, that the ugly duckling will become a swan. If someone appears to have been a swan right from the start, it's tempting to pick holes in them. Oh, Taylor has lots of hot boyfriends? Well she can't hold onto them! (Here's a thought – maybe she didn't want to.) Taylor has lots of friends? Well, calling them a "squad" is racist. (Let's ignore all the times other people say "#squadgoals" with literally zero backlash.)

We can't even comfort ourselves with the idea that she's just a manufactured pop puppet, because she writes her own songs and according to LWYMMD video director Joseph Kahn, takes an active role in the planning of her videos too: "These are true collaborations... We talk about every shot, we discuss every set-up as we’re doing it and there’s nothing that happens without literally both of us putting our brains together about it.”

But that's another problem for critics – Taylor unashamedly uses her own life for inspiration, so if you're involved with her, you're likely to find parts of your story written into her lyrics. But isn't this what every great artist does? When Beyoncé's husband cheated on her, she took the lemons of her own misery and literally made Lemonade from it. Taylor is doing the same thing in turning her feuds with Katy Perry and Kimye into the most deliciously bitchy comeback single EVAH. 

A Regina George in Katy Perry's clothing?

Taylor Swift was "exposed" by Kim Kardashian last year, although looking back it seems it was more a case of her leaving out some details (ie that Kanye had called her to talk about the song) rather than an actual lie, because there is no evidence that she knew about the "bitch" lyric. Kim described how Taylor had been totally on board, gleefully looking forward to telling the media that she had been in on it the whole time (which DOES sound very much like something Taylor would say) but then denied all knowledge when the song actually dropped. Kim waited until "snake day" to post the now-classic snapchat video, Taylor's denials suddenly seemed shady, and with her reputation in tatters, she was declared officially dead.

And this is why her comeback has struck such a chord. She proves that there's no mistake you can't come back from, no insult you can't turn to your advantage. If you call her a snake she'll make them the central theme of her comeback and make herself QUEEN of the snakes. If you call her a mean girl she'll sample music from the movie and make fun of lyrics you wrote about her (karma and receipts, anyone?) Like an expert in Judo, she uses her opponents strength against them and she SLAYS.

Of course, that doesn't stop critics pulling apart her new single(s) – this article sums up some of the harshest barbs. But guys, you know that Taylor isn't taking any of this seriously, right? If LWYMMD has proven anything, it's that this girl has a wicked sense of humour.

I feel sorry for the haters, not just because they are so full of negativity whish spews out at regular intervals, but because they're doomed to listen to music they hate, or avoid radios for at least the next fifty years – Taylor isn't going anywhere.

There's more to pop stars than sexuality... probably

                                 Why does Jay-Z never strike this pose?

So I was listening to Beyoncé's song Flawless, which features parts of a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a prize-winning Nigerian writer. Part of the speech says "We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about our sons' girlfriends, but our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid."  

How many times have you heard men joking about the fact that they'll "never" let their daughters date? Partly because they can remember all too well what they were like as teenage boys, and the thought of their daughters meeting anyone like that scares the crap out of them.

But along with protectiveness, there's a bit of competition mixed in; it's not that your average father doesn't want his little girl to grow up and have a happy relationship with a man who loves her; it just gets to him that he won't be number one any more. It's not only dads who feel this way – as we can see from these creepy / hilarious entries from STFU parents, there are plenty of mothers who wish they could marry their sons. 

The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speech is worth listening to in its entirety because it's full of interesting and important points. But when the frame of reference is a Beyoncé song, cutting the line to say that girls "cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are" strikes me as disingenuous. OK, so we know that Miley gets ridiculed every time she swings around naked and licks a hammer, Rihanna is generally considered every parent's worst nightmare, and everyone from Demi to Selena to Lady Gaga gets criticised for dressing in skimpy outfits or dancing suggestively. But are their male counterparts really allowed to be sexual without fear of reprisals? We'll probably never know, because the difference is that they don't do these things. 

The gender difference when you take to the streets to dance. Also, Yoncé's crew spend quite a lot of the video looking like they want to have sex with her, an element notably missing from Bruno and Mark's gang.

The video for Blurred Lines was infamous for showing fully-clothed men but near-naked women. In  Beyoncé's Drunk in Love video, she writhes around in a bikini while her husband just stands there, fully-clothed. Her video for Yoncé is basically nothing but close-ups of red lips and female flesh from different angles, to the point where it starts to be quite bizarre. Can you imagine Justin Timberlake or Bruno Mars creating the equivalent lollipop-sucking, butt-shaking, crawling-on-the-ground piece of film? Then there's Partition, which is hypnotically beautiful to watch, but doesn't really support the idea that there is more to women than their sexual allure; the same goes for Rihanna's Pour it Up. I suppose the nearest male equivalent to pole-dancers would be hen party-style strippers, but I don't see Drake or Justin Bieber adding this to their repertoire any time soon. 

The closest match I could find to these ladies' overt sensuality was Jason Derulo, because he likes taking his clothes off, too. His Want to Want Me video has shades of equality; he's in his underwear in bed, and so is his lady friend... oh but there she is in a basque, watching him perform in a suit. We have several admiring close-ups of her buttocks, while he is shown having a little workout. The message is that his body DOES stuff; it's strong as well as sexy. Hers just looks good, and that's all it needs to do. 

 

We're constantly being told that women aren't allowed to be sexual because of the "slut" double standard. Maybe this was true 30 years ago, but today I think the reason people get their knickers in a twist over the likes of Miley twerking on Robin Thicke is because they're wondering WHY?  

Call me a feminazi, but I'm not sure how empowering this is. 

WHY do you feel you need to do that? Why don't you let your talent, your voice and your personality speak for you? Are you so insecure that you think getting more and more sexually explicit is the only way you can keep the world's attention? (Incidentally, he was criticised too; because you can only work that "dirty old man" act for so long before people get turned off).

We know that Bey, Miley, Gaga et al are talented ladies who can write songs, contribute to political debate and make their own choices. Beyoncé doesn't NEED to slink around in her underwear; she's just as attractive in jeans and a t-shirt (singing with Eddie Vedder at the 2015 Global Citizen Festival). In defence of her stripper-style antics, she's undoubtedly proving that motherhood doesn't meant the end of hotness, she's talking openly about being a feminist, and her music videos have enough variety to prove that sexuality is just one small part of her repertoire.

But looking at the music industry as a whole... maybe it's time to forget proving how sexual we are and start showing the world all the other stuff we can do. 

Failing that, true equality demands that the men need to strip off too. Who's with me?