Taylor Swift has another interesting interview, this time with Esquire. I know a lot of you were yelling about Swifty’s interview yesterday, where she talked about how “sexist” it is that we’re like “haha, she writes blind-item songs about her ex-boyfriends.” I didn’t agree with her, but I also felt like… I don’t know, she’s trying to change. She’s maturing. Is she some amazing truth-telling feminist and we should just take her word that something is “sexist”? No, not really. But I appreciate the fact that she’s actually thinking about those kinds of things, like she’s asking herself “Is this sexism? Would they treat me differently if I was a man doing this?” I bring that up because she’s talking about sexism again, plus loads of other stuff. I edited out a bunch of same-old crap about how much she loves her girlfriends (she’s really going through a Girlfriends Phase and yes, I do think it’s just a phase). You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Why people pay attention to her dating habits: “I think with every celebrity story there has to be a “Yeah, but …” Take Beyoncé: She’s incredibly talented, gorgeous, perfect role model for girls, empowering women all over the world. Yeah, but … let’s try to pick at her marriage. I think that every celebrity has that. And predominantly women, unfortunately.”
Whether she’s a control freak: “No. The only thing I can’t control is the spin in the press. And so if I know I can’t control that, I have to let it go. In some ways, though, you can control it. I really didn’t like the whole serial-dater thing. I thought it was a really sexist angle on my life. And so I just stopped dating people, because it meant a lot to me to set the record straight—that I do not need some guy around in order to get inspiration, in order to make a great record, in order to live my life, in order to feel okay about myself. And I wanted to show my fans the same thing.”
She handwrites thank you notes to deejays: “I love writing thank-you notes. There’s something very nostalgic to me about the feel of a card and putting pen to paper. How many times in our lives are we required to put pen to paper anymore? There’s something romantic and sort of lost about it. I like things you can touch and things you can keep, because every bit of communication we have is ephemeral in nature. You can just delete an e-mail and it’s like it was never there.”
Takedown culture: “That’s what I don’t like about celebrity culture and the obsession with it, and the takedown culture that we seem to be in. You have celebrities who are pushed to the brink of a public meltdown, and so the public thinks that every person in the public eye has dirty secrets that they’re keeping, or isn’t what they seem, or is masking it and faking sincerity, faking authenticity, faking being surprised at award shows when you win a Grammy.”
Her security personnel: “I fought the idea of having security for a very long time, because I really value normalcy. I really do. I like to be able to take a drive by myself. Haven’t done that in six years. [Even in Tennessee] they have to be in a car behind me. Because just the sheer number of men we have in a file who have showed up at my house, showed up at my mom’s house, threatened to either kill me, kidnap me, or marry me. This is the strange and sad part of my life that I try not to think about. I try to be lighthearted about it, because I don’t ever want to be scared. I don’t want to be walking down the street scared. And when I have security, I don’t have to be scared.
Behind the Music: “When I was a little kid, my friends were watching Disney Channel, but I was watching Behind the Music. And I was drawing these conclusions, like the reason these people went off the rails is because they lost their level of self-awareness. They turned a blind eye to things they didn’t want to see, and all of a sudden all they were seeing were their delusions of grandeur. And I never wanted to make that mistake in my life, regardless of what my career ended up being. I take away these kind of life lessons from that show.
I think feminism is so new to Swifty that she thinks crying “sexism” is like waving a magical wand in front of the press to make everyone take her seriously. Talking about who she dates isn’t a “sexist” angle on her life when she’s parading her boyfriends around the paparazzi, organizing Us Weekly covers and cornering exes at the Vanity Fair Oscar party. And she’s still pissed off that people made fun of her near-constant OMG SURPRISE Face at awards shows. Dear Tay-Tay: you are a silly goose. Stop taking yourself so seriously!
Oh, and there’s an interesting answer when she’s asked about her background in country music – her current album is solid pop, as was the last album (although the last one still got some country radio play). Swifty talks about how she learned how to be a professional because she started in country music and hand to God, it sounds like she’s running for political office. Her answer is very Sarah Palin, like Palin’s riff on how the small towns are “real America” as opposed to the big cities.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
She has a point. She does play into the blind item thing and did it way more in the past, but the media always exaggerated with her dating/blind item thing.
Agreed. I would say the average twenty-something dates way more than Swift, and maybe even writes angsty little lines in their journal about their love life. Swift happens to have made a fortune out of doing it, so yea her.
I do think Taylor experienced sexism because of her dating habits. The press did not give her a hard time simply because of the blind items in her songs but implied that although she behaved/looked like a good girl, she was really a whore because she dated too much. I heard variations of this narrative on a number of talk shows. If suggesting that someone’s a slut because they’ve dated a handful of guys isn’t sexist, what is? I’m also wondering why Taylor is being mocked on this site for saying she’s a feminist and addressing sexism. If she said she wasn’t a feminist, people would be upset with her. It’s as if she can’t win. I don’t think there’s a textbook way to be a feminist. If she believes that men and women deserve equal treatment, access and rights, I have no problem with her defining herself as feminist.
She is just spouting off talking points from her new PR team. After the Harry Styles affair she changed up her PR team due to the negative press.
What I find funny is that multiple Grammy award winners like Nora Jones and Adele never had to create publicity stunts,choreographed pap walks to sell their music. Oh I forgot,those artists had actual solid talent. Taylor needs robust PR programs to push her music because her music is mediocre drivel targeted to the pre-teen Disney crowd. The Disney crowd loves mean girl tactics and Cinderella stories where pour little Taylor is the victim.
There are a lot of factors that play into whether or not there is public interest in a celebrity and talent isnt one of them, I wonder why anybody things it is one. Sure her PR team plays into the interest but interest of the magnitude that Taylor gets is impossible to cultivate. First she appeals to the exact demographic that would be trawling the net for latest postings on their idol (Adele and Nora are much older audience) and secondly, she is conventionally attractive and therefore the perfect surrogate for women looking to live vicariously. And I’m sure there are plenty of other factors but you get the gist, she may have helped the interest along but she was always going to have her share of paps and gossip column inches.
@steph +100
Every time I hear about Taylor, she comes off as a bit desperate o be in the spotlight. I know she’s promoting her new album, but COME ON. She’s the same age as me and I feel she’s much more immature than most people i know in their early/mid 20s.
Also, does anyone else think her hair (while obviously real) looks kind of like a wig? The color, straightness…
The media talked about her dating life and her blind item songs because that’s what SHE was selling. That’s how she got so rich. She used the media to sell her showmances then having made sure everyone is aware of who she was dating at what month, writes a blind item song about said showmance leaving specific hints in the song that you can ID the guy in question.
Outside of that, she has nothing else to sell about herself. Her outside life and background is not interesting enough for her to use as inspiration and she’s not talented enough to make things up to sing about. Her first hit song was about Tim McGraw for crying out loud! She learned from that success to sing about men and falling in love with a specific celebrity male. If the media stopped paying attention to her dating life, she wouldn’t be as successful.
Maybe my opinion is skewed a little bit because I look at a celebrity website, but I’m not sure her serial dating is talked about any more than John Meyer’s or Leo’s. I think it would be sexist if people were implying that she’s promiscuous, but I haven’t seen that. She needs to learn to laugh at herself a little. Life is so much easier when you can do that.
I think the difference is that with Mayer or Dicaprio it’s treated like, “Oh, boys and their supermodels,” and dismissed with an eyeroll. Maybe people are less indulgent of it now that they’re getting older but certainly in their young twenties it was seen as silly but harmless. I do feel like Taylor Swift’s dating history has been criticised more harshly. It was never, “Silly girl,” it was, “Stupid, gross, pathetic girl.” Not saying that’s the case here on Celebitchy because, obviously, this is a higher level conversation about the whole thing but on other sites the disparity would be much wider.
Maybe it’s not so much that it’s being said … but what’s being said.
I don’t think most people will say “OH Leo can’t be alone. He needs a woman to make him feel valuable” it’s more of a case “ugh, Leo’s been browsing the catalog again and found a new chick” – maybe that’s where the difference is?
That’s fair.
But there’s also a difference in how they approach relationships. Years after the fact Swift is still talking about and writing songs about ‘relationships’ that lasted a few weeks. She makes a huge deal out of all her ‘relationships’, even the ones where it seems like she couldn’t have spent more than 5 days total with the guy.
When you see Leo getting all hung up on every one of his supermodel’s of the week, people will start calling him clingy and pathetic too. Leo get’s flack for the opposite, for how little interest he shows in the people he dates.
I don’t know, I think that’s the underlying narrative of Leo: That he is a user, and that he looks silly, as an older man, limiting his choices of dating material based on something so insubstantial as looks only, and within a limited range of age. He’s the child-man doing fake kicks on a yacht. That’s not exactly a compliment.
Yes, I think Leo has been called pathetic, shallow, immature, afraid to commit and all sorts of names on here. But except for this site, I don’t really look at a lot of celebrity stuff so I may be missing something.
i look at this website and dlisted – and that’s the narrative about leo, as described by Kiddo. taylor appears to me to be the one to have huge relationship roll-outs, where she makes a huge deal about these dudes she’s been dating for a hot second. she needs to own that, or just be quiet about it and move past it all.
That narrative only plays on sites like this. Mainstream sites herald Leos modelising ways. He is the “eternal bachelor”, which in their minds is a good thing.
Taylor on the other hand is that girl “who cant keep a man”. They make it a point to list all her boyfriends in pretty much any article where she is linked to a man the implication being that shes been around. Its ridiculous.
The majority of people think John Mayer and Leo are immature jerks,so yes their treatment of women is affecting their image,and not in a positive way.
“it would be sexist if people were implying that she’s promiscuous, but I haven’t seen that”
you’ve obviously never searched her name on twitter. She’s called a slut literally every minute fo the day.
I loathe slut-shaming, but considering some of Swift’s most popular songs contain slut shaming lyrics, honestly I can’t make myself care in this case. She’s made money from shaming other women for having sex, which makes her even grosser than random Twitter trolls.
yikes.
No, I’m not on Twitter. For exactly that reason. Idiots are on Twitter. Idiots are on most internet sites. Celebitchy is the only celeb site I read, because I don’t want to hear from people like that.
So, if people are calling her a slut for dating multiple men, then that’s sexist and I agree with her.
Eh I think who slut shame her are trolls…the general I think the public opinion is that she is a good girl. I think people are just tired of her playing the victim over relationships that are casual and lasted a few weeks to a few months. In comparison Adele gets no shame because her album was about a long term relationship and vague. Taylor likes calling out every famous ex for “wronging her” in some way after a couple weeks. And we focus on it because she leaves obvious clues about each guy bashing song
Plus pot meet kettle because she wrote a slut shaming song about Camilla Belle because she dated Joe Jonas after her. So no I don’t have any sympathy
Jen, I am rushing out for a meeting, but I am horrified to think you may have thought I was saying you were an idiot. I meant you get a wide, random sampling of people on Twitter – certainly there are many intelligent, nice people, too, like you. Forgive my awkward, insensitive wording, please.
sorry wrong reply, ignore this!
I’ve absolutely seen people imply that Taylor is promiscuous. The running joke last year was that even though she “pretends” to be a good girl, she’s actually slutty because she’s dated too many guys. Maybe it’s because I watched a lot of daytime TV in the past year, but this perception of Taylor was certainly out there.
yup, last year even on THIS site, there were some people were commenting on the number of guys she’s “dated”, as in slept with, and were basically saying she was promiscuous and putting her down.
@GNAT I agree. But I also think she reaped hat she sowed. What did she think was going to happen after the PR floodgate of dating stories?
Also, she has never come off as promiscuous. Maybe clingy, but never ‘loose’ if you will. She needs to lighten up. But these kinds of quotes get the clicks…
She’s coming off as hyper-defensive and dredging up old stories about the press is slowly moving her into Hathaway territory. Feminism/sexism is now her tool to ward off criticism of any kind, or so it seems.
Before, it was bullying. Girl just can’t take critisim.
I like that dress with those shoes. That’s all I’ve got.
Oh, so it’s “sexist” now, to point out how her supposed “love life” is a laughable charade designed solely to attract attention to the insipid pop pablum she’s intent on feeding us?
Name me ONE GUY, just one male singer who turns every maple latté into a pap walk into a blind-item song and then we’ll talk.
Bull&$@& she is not a control freak! She controls every aspect of her image, everything about her is managed for maximum effect. And people talk about her relationships because she made them the focal point of her public image. I will give her credit she is trying to grow and mature but I am sorry there is little self awareness about what she has presented to the public over the last several years
This new, mature image is just that. She is a control freak and kudos for the interviewer bringing it up.
Mehh. .. A lot of her songs could just be generic love songs about anyone but the media is continually trying to attribute them to one of her exes. Weren’t people trying to claim one was about Harry Styles when it was released before they got together? !
Because we know she writes from experience (as do most song writers?) there will be that speculation. You could do the same with other singers but people rarely do. It’s unfair. She didn’t help herself with a few of them but the continued attention on “who is it about” is tired and unnecessary.
But she plays coy with the press about the subjects. Like, paraphrased, “Well, you have to guess, I’m not saying”. Just answer that the lyrics are based on a conglomeration of relationships and not any one specific person. She carries a carrot on a stick luring everyone in, and then she hits them with the stick, for being lured in the first place.
‘I knew you were trouble’ was about Harry Styles. They dated in the spring first and broke up because he cheated on her. After her Kennedy relationship ended, they started dating again. She had admitted it was about Harry.
“Then there’s the song that sets a new high-water mark for Swiftian faux secrecy – a sexy Miami Vice-sounding throwback about a guy with slicked-back hair and a white T-shirt and a girl in a tight little skirt that is called – no joke – “Style.” (She allows herself a satisfied grin. “We should have just called it ‘I’m Not Even Sorry.'”) ”
– From her recent Rolling Stone interview.
She likes to put the blame on the media for focusing on who the songs are about while still pulling the same old crap. She does a lot of talking but none of it matches what she actually does.
I was watching her ‘Shake it off’ video earlier this evening and honestly can’t believe she hasn’t been snapped up by a major cosmetics/fashion house for one of their campaigns yet. She is very pretty and carries off all those different looks in that video perfectly. By all accounts she’s a lovely person, too. We need more of her and less of the other airheads that are making the news for all the wrong reasons at the moment.
She’s done Covergirl and she has her own fragrance.
Sorry, but she is no mensa candidate; these interviews are scripted and marinated – she is no genius by any means, musical or otherwise – her team is just first rate, and knows how to present her for max selling to her tone deaf tweener/soccer mom audience –
She sells out big time, and you don’t do that if you’re not part of a ruthless money grubbing corporate machine. Like her music if you want, but behind that public sweetness is a steely pursuit of dollars.
I have no shade for Taylor Swift. Sure, she dated a lot and turned a lot of it in to a pap walk. But look at how she’s handled herself and her career compared to someone like Miley or Lindsay.
She recognized that the message she was sending was harmful (that you need a boyfriend to be complete and happy) so she changed the narrative. I like her. Swift gets a pretty open pass from me.
I have this cat that is such a sweet kitty and I love her to death. But this cat does this thing where she rubs up against you, pats your hand to get you to pet her, meows for attention. The minute you give her the attention she suddenly freaks out and runs.
This is Taylor Swift.
Pay attention to me!!! Pay attention to me!!!
Hey!! Stop paying attention to what I’m doing!!! How dare you!!!
My cats are actually less coy than Swift.
Does she run with your money?
It would be so funny to add on “aka Taylor Swift” to this kitty’s name.
It’s bugging me but I feel a lot of women are now using sexism to avoid accountability for their actions. I mean I do see what TS is saying that it’s really none of our business who she dates and how she dates. But that has little to nothing to do with sexism and I find it pretty offensive that she connects herself with feminism so conveniently.
“But that has little to nothing to do with sexism”
How so?
I don’t feel she was any more or less criticized or publicized for who she was dating and how often she was switching boyfriends than a guy her age. I’m sure sexist rags such as Radar made it a thing but in reality I think she got off pretty easy.
I think she got off incredibly easy compared to other celebs her age, because she has that good-girl image.
I find it really interesting that so many people consider her a great role model for younger kids, when I remember the same people getting all ‘won’t someone please think of the children’ about Miley Cyrus saying sex was fun while engaged to her long term boyfriend.
She dated Mayer and it wasn’t a big deal. Katy Perry got so much flack, Taylor got out of it with her halo fully intact. You know if Rihanna or Miley went there they’d be the biggest whore who ever whored. Celebs get put into boxes. Good girl, bad girl, slut, girl next door. Taylor got put into the good girl box early and so she get’s treated with kid gloves where other celebs are torn apart.
Jessica, the difference with the three is that rhianna already shed her clean image, the one she came out with “Umbrella”, and went with her sexed up one. And Miley’s been humping on people, going on out to shock people with her sexual type antics on stage. These are things Taylor Swift has never done.
Not saying the “biggest whore that ever whored” should be put upon miley or rhianna either. However they do play up the sexed up or sexual out there images.
Feminism is just her latest way of playing the victim. All her statements about feminism have been about HER, and how all the nasty sexist meanies have been hating on her, but she’s like, so above it all. That’s not feminism, that’s narcissism. It takes a pretty amazing ego to learn about a movement like feminism and come away only thinking about how it relates to your own wildly privileged life.
+1
Exactly, you know her management team is vetting these comments – they aren’t off the cuff – she will do anything to market her bland pointless commercial drivel. As others on this site and elsewhere have said – her management team is top notch to get this much out of a marginally talented bland boring white girl; Amazing. Release you damn album for the tweeners and soccer moms. Does she do anything that isn’t calculated far in advance?
…don’t forget the grandmothers who like Taylor because she keeps her clothes on….it’s not the music Taylor is selling, it is this pure perfect good wholesome all American squeaky clean American girl image she is selling. It is all about branding that image worldwide to maximize profits.
its not sexist to mock a persons “dating” life when all of them (minus John Mayer and probably the Kennedy dude) are all assumed to be in the closet. all of those relationshps were paraded around in front of the paps and she even wrote songs about them. not quietly dating a couple of men. fine, you can always fall for a guy that everyone thinks is gay, but basically every one of them in hollywood? in a row?
if all of that wasnt the case i would cut her some slack but im seriously angry at people misusing words like sexism to play the victim because her money making and publicity seeking scheme was called out.
do you think Amy and Tina would have attacked her if it was only based on sexism? they both mocked her sketchy showmances.
I agree that she gets a lot more flack for her dating life than a guy her age would. And I haven’t heard anyone say, “He’s 25 now and single, so he’s going to be alone forever and there must be something wrong with him…” But I have seen that narrative shoved on her several times.
but how many of those guys openly flaunt their relationships and make money with them? Leo DiCaprio goes through the Victoria Secret catalogue a couple of times each year (and gets called out on it) but you cant say that he uses his relationships to make money. he is the other extreme, hiding when paps are there, pulling hats over his face etc.
Taylor is unique in this, no one has ever done that. no man and no other female artist, not on that big scale. the only other singer who talked about his relationships with other famous people was John Mayer and he did not recover from that, but that was also because of his racism, hard to judge what people were more offended by.
i dont know about famous guys, but i dont think men are cut much more slack when they are single. Handsome men yes, because society wants them to screw around. if a man is not good looking and is single he is usually labeled a creep.
I don’t know of any men in their 20’s who people think are strange for being single. Maybe in their 50’s but not Taylor’s age. The guys people keep bring up (Leo, Clooney) are also much older than her.
Honestly, the stuff about random dudes showing up at her house and threatening her is terrifying. There are a lot of crazy people out there and I can see her being a major target. I don’t like her music or her persona, but I wish her safety and peace of mind because no one needs that ish.
The cynical side of me says that if she wants to play up the “poor little feminist me” schtick, she should run with the safety issues. Entitlement and insanity make a caustic combination.
i liked that she mentioned it. basically every celeb has stalkers and its rarely adressed outside of news about invaders. obviously also because you dont want to make those people feel validated, just the thought that you know that they exist gives them motivation.
I actually agree with her that it was a sexist slant. Not because they were gossiping about who she was dating, but because of the way it was spun. It was always she can’t keep a man/unlucky in love/etc. Why wasn’t it “she can’t commit” like it is with George Clooney? Why is it just a given that every girl is desperate to find the one and get married, even when they’re 22 years old and probably have years of fun and dating in front of them before they’re even thinking about long term commitment?
Because she was the one whining about how all these guys messed her about, how they dumped her, how they hurt her, how much they suck for not loving her like she loved them. She was openly invested in all these relationships, even the ones that only lasted a couple of weeks. Her whole narrative for a long time was that she wanted to get the guy and they were big mean jerks for not giving her what she wanted.
You can’t write the songs she wrote and then pretend you were just casually dating and having fun. The woman reacted to break-ups of 2 week long ‘relationships’ in a way that would have been extreme even if we were talking about long-term relationships. She was stalker-ish and vindictive and really quite creepy in some cases. If George Clooney was like her everyone would think he was a really nasty piece of work, that’s the difference.
Spot on. That’s exactly how I feel
@Jessica, exactly! she brings all of on herself and now she cries about it.
Amen.
God Taylor other celebrities both men and women have been dragged for dating people found suspect or thought to be not good enough or were hoping for a different coupling, etc, etc, etc.
But Taylor has used her relationships in the past as a marketing ploy to sell records. So I am giving her a huge side-eye for now using sexism as another marketing ploy in her new evolution as a “feminist”. Can’t her music stand on it’s own? Why am I EVEN asking that question.
Sorry folks Taylor is pretty, mildly talented but interesting she is not. In fact she is so bland she makes white bread look positively provocative.
Ding Ding Ding!
Now that I agree is/was very sexist. Her dating habits weren’t any more or less excessive than anybody else in that age range, and we certainly don’t have those kinds of conversations about men who date as often. Some of her dating choices are certainly questionable (c’mon, can you take anyone serious who dated John Mayer?), and she has no right to complain about using those high profile relationships to sell music, but the implication that she’s slutty or promiscuous for dating around has always been sexist.
(For that matter, as long as you’re being safe and responsible, what’s wrong with being slutty and promiscuous?)
i kind of feel like Lena Dunham (who she mentions in basically every other interview she’s done) has given her the LD version of feminism and now Taylor is her unofficial mouthpiece. Lena told her it was sexist and now that’s Taylor’s new big word.
She;s right, it is/was really sexist.
People also forget her age, I think, because she’s been very visible since she was barely out of middle school.
No one cares about her serial dating. What everyone finds rightfully annoying are her dear-diary type tattle tale songs that make her sound like a vengeful idiot-girl. It is not sexist to point out the obvious. What is sexist is that she exploits the stereotype for money.
Swiftly go away