In 2016, Kim Kardashian posted some clips on Snapchat of a phone conversation that happened between Taylor Swift and Kanye West. At the end of the day, there were disagreements about what exactly was said and agreed to in that conversation. Taylor’s side argued one thing, Kim and Kanye’s side argued another. In the wake of it, Twitter threw a #TaylorSwiftIsOver party. Kim Kardashian was also the one to really make the “Taylor = Snake” thing happen. Taylor’s main director Joseph Kahn and unnamed sources spoke repeatedly about how Taylor was being victimized, and the language they used was arguably racial.
Skip ahead to 2017, and Taylor’s first music video off of Reputation – “Look What You Made Me Do” – involved Taylor “reclaiming” the snake imagery that was used against her. We now know that the Reputation tour’s set design and props involve a lot of snakes too. And on her first concert of the tour, this is what she told her fans:
“A couple of years ago, someone called me a snake on social media and it caught on. And then a lot of people called me a lot of names on social media. I went through some really low times for a while because of it. I went through some times when I didn’t know if I was gonna get to do this anymore and I guess the snakes… I wanted to send a message to you guys that if someone uses name calling to bully you on social media and even if a lot of people jump on board with it, that doesn’t have to beat you. It can strengthen you instead.”
I’m including the video below. To my eyes and ears, it honestly feels like Taylor Swift is performing her victimhood. She’s performing the idea that she was and is the victim. That she was UNFAIRLY bullied online, that she is forever innocent, that what happened between herself, Kanye and Kim Kardashian wasn’t a complicated and racialized drama involving years of backstory and years of performative victimhood. What she’s saying to her fans is that there was never any nuance, never any both-sides-to-every-story. But if she was always the innocent victim… why is she also the snake?
when taylor threw shade pic.twitter.com/F13qF8e3gH
— nat (@nat_nieIsen) May 9, 2018
Photos courtesy of Getty.
She is just…very unlikable to me.
Same. In fact, seeing this headline means it’s time for a celebrity news breather, because it’s making me rage-y. My constitution can’t handle another “I’m the victim” lap from this one. No ma’am!
Love your username btw!
Taylor Swift has really perfected the art of playing the perpetual victim.
I mean, obviously don’t ever aknowlege your own bullshit – because pretty blonde girls can actually monetise victimhood and people corniest buy into it. Ugh.
‘Ooo – Look what you made me do’ repeat ad nauseum
Takes zero responsibility for her actions and whines that someone made her do bad things
Gah
Because she’s a twat with no self awareness
She will never grow up…. A mean girl she still is. A bully always blames the victim and she done this with her fued themed music saying other people were asking for it.
Literally 30 going on 13. STFU Swift.
Oh, god, that video. I can’t even. Total acting, and not performed well. I couldn’t even get through the whole thing!
Tbh, the people who don’t like her will forever think of her as a snake (me included), and the people who love her will think she’s the second coming. Those two groups are set in their ways and won’t change. The ones in the middle I think would’ve moved past the snake thing a long time ago if she would just stop bringing it up. Honestly, this whole tour/era has felt like one big Streisand effect to me. Plus, I can’t get the icky feeling that she’s treating reclaiming how she did feminism, and while she’s technically doing it according to the definition, it just feels superficial.
I’m a definite middle grounder (and I actually liked “Look What You Made Me Do”) and I agree. If she had leaned alll the way in, I might have got behind it but to still fall back on the white woman perpetual victim card? Yeah, no.
It’s also revealing that there is no one in her family or on her team that can speak truth to Taylor and tell her regurgitating this story
will only appeal to her rabid fans and turn off the rest…
Wow, Tay. Imagine if you had been “bullied” over the color of your skin, or your sexuality, or something silly like that.
Exactly. All this drama over being called a snake?
The caption to that video, “when Taylor threw shade”. Spare me. That was not shade, it was someone completely missing the point. Like always. She’s so tone deaf, and the least edgy person in the industry right now. Her style is just so hot topic circa 2002 and I just can’t handle her or her stans. It’s not even fun drama for me anymore.
This whole Reputation-era Taylor was just not very well thought out. Well, maybe it was thought out, but it was a bad idea. I feel like she doesn’t have good people advising her. She came out swinging with the I-don’t-care-what-you-think-I-am-a-snake vibe in “Look What You Made Me Do,” that flopped completely, and so now she’s playing the victim again.
At this point I think she should just go away for a decade or so, pop out some babies with Gorgeous Joe, and make a James-Taylor-esque acoustic comeback when her fans grow up and forget about all of this.
“Performing her victimhood”
You nailed it. that’s what I get, too.
You can’t spin over-sensitivity as an empowerment message. it doesn’t work.
During her “reinvention,” she should have come back as humble and acoustic/pop country like she started out. There are too many pop divas in the industry right now and not many successful country-esque females
Killing it right now. Plus would have been good for her image. This snake/reputation thing is a fail.
I wish Kim had made ‘rat’ happen instead of snake. Swifty wouldn’t be as quick to *reclaim* that or put giant rats on her stage lol.
I beg to differ. I hear demon rats are quite fetching.
She definitely could have squashed the whole thing if she’d just owned up to her mistakes and moved on. Instead she’s continuing to portray herself as a 100% innocent victim. It’s tiresome and immature.
Leaning into the snake thing would have been interesting had she been unfairly bullied, but really it was just people point out her hypocrisy, so…nope.
For a lot of people, that was the day Kim took Tay down, and then life moved on – but not for Taylor. She spent the subsequent year (and a half) writing revenge songs and then came back reclaiming something that we’d already forgotten about. Her fans cared, we shrugged.
The problem with the Reputation-era Taylor is that she tried on an image that nobody outside her snakedom actually bought. What was meant to be a strong woman showing that nobody can hold her down, is now falling back to her default setting: Victim.
Look what we made her do: because she never does anything of her own volition, it’s always the other party forcing her moves. Whether it’s Kanye, or her ex-boyfriends, or the director of her videos.
What an ugly set! Yes, she’s playing the victim and it’s just too much. I used to like her, but she’s just too annoying at this point.
The Lady of Perpetual Victimhood.
…what about all the bullying she does with her crappy songs? Is she not accountable for that? Camilla Belle, anyone?
And others who remain nameless and openly mocked and yet never spoke a word against her?
Damn, girl, GTFU.
Like Michael J Fox who made an innocent joke about her and her fans went rabid on him. Calling him names, saying he should die, saying horrible things to him about his disease. He had to apologize just to get them to stop. She ended up thanking her fans instead of telling them off for their behavior.
Taylor Swift…the eternal victim….and the eternal mentality of a high school aged student. She can dish it out but can’t take it.
You know — she’s sweet to her fans, but beyond that, she exhausts me. She’s too old for this nonsense. She tends to blow really weird sh*t from her life and her exes’ lives out of proportion and monetize on it (Harry Styles had a certain kind of necklace that she featured heavily in imagery at a concert and might’ve even sold a similar necklace; she and Tom Hiddleston were seen drinking Old Fashions and now she’s selling them at her concert…it’s wild). It’s too weird, too fake, too much. I genuinely did like her for a while — it’s a shame she can’t let go of her constant high school drama nonsense.
Taylor grow up already. There are REAL victims of bullying out there who need help and support. Maybe she doesn’t understand the definition of bullying.
She really is lame
Bullying?
Because she was exposed as a liar?
She needs her head examined.
It’s almost sad. Money, success, she’s already had what most people would have work the rest of their lives for and more, yet nothing can ease insecurity or the constant need for validation.
Same old tay tay. Her fans and her fans Moms’s will continue buying her crap because she sells whatever it is they think she is 1. Not as “bad” as the other pop stars because she doesn’t say the word SEX 2. She sells the naive ideal (some) immature women crave of “I don’t seek out drama, drama loves me”. Ugh