Taylor Swift is the new ‘Welcome Ambassador’ for NYC: offensive or fine?

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Real question for all the tall girls: why would you ever feel the need to wear a platform heel? I’m not judging tall girls for wears heels, mind you, but I’m side-eyeing Taylor Swift’s platform heels, which must make her well over six feet tall. She probably towered over everybody at Good Morning America yesterday. Anyway, you know how Swifty has a new album? Like you could avoid it. She’s completely oversaturated the media promoting this thing, but maybe that’s smart. I don’t know. Well, on her album, there’s a song called “Welcome to New York,” all about how Swifty is now a New Yorker and she struts around Manhattan in high heels, carrying her cats. That’s Swifty’s version of New York. And now the song has made her the “Global Welcome Ambassador for the Big Apple.”

Taylor Swift may have only welcomed herself to New York in March, but she’s already explaining city to the world. The mega music star has been named the “Global Welcome Ambassador for the Big Apple” — and has made a series of tourism videos in which she gushes about things such as: how she just realized that New Yorkers are friendly and what a bodega is.

“I’m still learning, but I’m so enthusiastic about this city that when I love something, I’m very vocal about it,” Swift said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday morning, when she announced her new role. In the tourist videos, made in conjunction with NYC & Company, the city’s official marketing and tourism organization, Swift gushes about the city she’s lived in for about five minutes.

She advises people to “carve out your own New York” — something that’s easy to do when you can afford a $20 million home like the one she bought In Tribeca in March.

“People kind of pick out their favorite little neighborhoods and get to know people around those neighborhoods,” she observes.

She also give New Yorkers credit for having manners.

“People talk about Southern hospitality, and that’s a real thing, but there’s also a really interesting hospitality about New York too,” Swift says.

The Pennsylvania native then gives lessons on how to talk like a real New Yorker.

“A bodega is a corner store that’s open pretty much 24 hours most of the time,” she explains in one clip as she sits on the roof of a Manhattan apartment. “You can get almost anything in a bodega. Bodegas are our friends.”

Stoops, according to Swift, are similar to what most people call porches, “but not in New York… Anything that is basically a stairway entry into a dwelling, home, apartment, brownstone or townhouse is referred to as a stoop,” she explains.

Swift — who is known for her many romances — said she quickly fell for the city, similar to her quick dive into love with former flings. The campaign also comes in conjunctive with her latest album, “1989,” which has a song called “Welcome to New York” which is used in the background for the clips.

[From Page Six]

Is this silly? Of course it is. It’s silly at every level. I can see why people are mad because Taylor is being used to literally white-wash a very diverse city, rich in culture and history, with amazingly diverse populations and enclaves and languages. This is part of the Disneyification of Manhattan too, the attempt to turn Manhattan into some kind of theme park. Who better than Taylor Swift, who is basically Bambi come to life? But still… it’s just a silly tourism campaign and Swifty’s just promoting her album. Is this really a big deal?

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Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

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79 Responses to “Taylor Swift is the new ‘Welcome Ambassador’ for NYC: offensive or fine?”

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  1. mia girl says:

    Ok, but will she shake journos’ hands when welcoming them?

  2. Loopy says:

    Thats a silly pet peeve I have, really tall girls wearing 6 inch heels,most of the time they look ridiculous. Khloe K and Kendell J,Tyra Banks are a good examples.

    • sienna says:

      Ridiculous, seriously? My closest friend is 5′ 10″ and is often self conscious about her height as people always make reference to it, I encourage her to flaunt it in the highest heels she can walk in. This feels like skinny shaming to me….more based on jealousy than anything else.

      • Sarah says:

        I agree. Just because someone is tall shouldn’t mean they can’t wear high heels. People can be so petty.

    • FingerBinger says:

      They don’t look ridiculous at all. They’re embracing their height.

    • Rae says:

      I didn’t learn to embrace my height until I was in college. At that point, you’d see me in heels every single day. Why shouldn’t tall girls wear whatever shoes they want??? Why should we be excluded from wearing those gorgeous shoes Taylor is wearing?

      • Moneypenny says:

        Exactly. I’m 5’11 and wear heels all the time. I don’t wear platforms because I don’t like them. What am I going to do, miss out on all fashionable shoes because some people don’t understand it?

        My 2 year old daughter is already the size of a 4 year old. I hope she embraces her height like I do!

    • McKenzie says:

      As a girl who is 5’10 I would like to say that I I will wear whatever shoes I like. Imagine the response if a tall girl said that short girls should be self conscious and only wear heels?

      • Jen says:

        I am 5’10 barefoot and love a good heel (having a shoe addiction as well there are only so many flats…………… but SO many heels lol) my 16 year old daughter is 6 foot and I have never discouraged her from wearing heels and I often give unsolicited advice to tall girls in shoe shops looking longingly at the heel but thinking they should buy the flat. A tall girl should never be afraid of a heel. 🙂

    • Jenna says:

      Um, sorry to sound like a pile jumper on this but ah… I’ll wear whatever I want on my feet, thanks. Even if it is a pet peeve of, well, anyone. Only time in my adult (and 6’2 in my barefeet) ever conceded to the request of ‘ballet slippers over heels please’ was for my wedding day, and at the asking of my soon to be husband. Not because he didn’t love me in heels – but his mom is 4’6 and it was going to be tough to get both my head and her head in the same photo as it was! Beyond that… look. Like I said. I’m 6’2. There is NO way to hide that fact. So better to stand up straight and embrace it all, even have fun with some serious killer heels and run with it then slouch and hope a pair of flats won’t be offensive. You are more then welcome to hating the look on tall girls – and I’m able to just shrug and think “Well, that sucks for you when you get into an elevator with me… but I won’t be kicking them off just because a shorter person has a problem with my clothes. I wouldn’t chance my hair, my dress, my accent for anyone, no way would I even think it was okay for anyone to think how I present myself is there purview.”

    • Chem says:

      Jealousy.

  3. TheCountess says:

    I’m 5’7″ without heels and love platforms. Yes, I love towering over everyone, it’s oddly empowering.

    As for her “welcome ambassador” title, eh. She’s got a new album, New York’s tourism bureau had an opening for a phoney baloney title. You’ll see her face for a few months before she’s quietly rotated out with other artists.

    • LadyMTL says:

      I’m the same height as you and I looooove heels, though not necessarily platforms. I really like being tall and I usually get tons of compliments too, hehehe.

      As for Taytay…meh. If I was on the fence about going to NYC it wouldn’t be her face that decides it for me. 😛

      • TheCountess says:

        Exactly – it’s not like she’s going to be serenading you at the security checkpoint as you arrive at LaGuardia 🙂

    • GoodNamesAllTaken says:

      Im so jealous. Im 5’6″ and the tallest heels i can walk in are 3 inch. I probably wouldn’t wear some of the crazy tall heels out there at my age but i would love to wear 6 inch heels. Jellie jellie jellie. Tall girls are lucky and beautiful.

  4. jinni says:

    Shouldn’t a real New Yorker be the ambassador? She doesn’t represent NY at all.

  5. mimif says:

    I am very excited to see what the real NYC’ers have to say about this. Please, bring it on, in full force, right here. GO.

    • Kiddo says:

      I read “offensive or fine” like a street sign. If you’re not offensive, you get fined.

    • We Are All Made of Stars says:

      Personally I’m never going back to my hometown as long as she’s their “ambassador.” Okay not really, but seriously? This is like having Joe Pesci as the face of Disneyland. What idiot let her do this? It’s her usual overtly literal way of saying “Okay everybody, I’m not from Nashville anymore, I’m a pop star from Noo York!”

      Oh, and a stoop is a Dutch word and IT IS the stairs. It has nothing to do with porches.

    • Rhiannionkk says:

      If this broad has actually ever been in a bodega I will eat her six inch shoes.

  6. Kiddo says:

    What the hell, it saves money since she’s always out walking and waving every day anyway. Walk and wave, walk and wave. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was serious shade.

  7. EEV says:

    Why *shouldn’t* she wear platforms? If she likes them, who cares?

  8. R says:

    I’m 5’8″ and I wear whatever heels I happen to like, platform or no platform.

  9. mimif says:

    I’m 5’10” and like to wear stilts to the grocery store. I always get immediate service at the crowded deli because everyone is clambering to get away from me. Not silly at all.

  10. Mindy says:

    She doesn’t know SQUAT about New York. Ugh. In fact, her type is what is WRONG with NYC now.

    As someone who was born and raised in NYC, I’m hoping for the next great ‘white flight’ exodus – give me the old gritty, prostitute filled Times Square of the 1970’s any day to what Manhattan is today (and a good portion of Brooklyn now is too). The city has truly lost it’s soul to carpetbaggers like HER.

    • Candy Love says:

      .

    • FingerBinger says:

      @Mindy Harlem too. Completely different from what it used to be.

      • RobN says:

        Which, of course, is completely different from what it was before that. People seem to forget that part when they’re romanticizing parts of the city.

      • FingerBinger says:

        I’m talking about gentrification. No one is romanticizing anything.

    • Happy21 says:

      Now I’m disappointed…LOL, I’ve wanted to go to NYC since I was a teenager reading lots and lots of books that took place there. I picture it being how it is in the 70’s and since it’s now 40 years later I should have known better. I always just pictured it like this…I guess when I finally get there I will just have to pretend 😉

  11. Someonestolemyname says:

    Well maybe she’ll be on hand to greet her singing friend Pr.William and meet Kate when they arrive in NY for their tour?
    🙂

    She’s pretty harmless, maybe she’s Ambassador for the NYC Garment district?

    • Mindy says:

      The real NYC garment district is gone. If you can find this documentary, Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags – I recommend it highly:

      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1474312/

      • Someonestolemyname says:

        Yes, I was joking, 🙂

        I miss it, the Garment Center, I worked there in the late 80’s early 90’s as a showroom model for designers while I was at University in NYC… it basically was on it’s last legs then, but at least there was still some of it left.

  12. FingerBinger says:

    The PSA she did on NYC vocabulary is so laughably bad and cringe worthy. http://www.nycgo.com/w2ny/#nyc-vocabulary

  13. OhDear says:

    As a not tall person (had people helping me reach stuff at the supermarket yesterday), I think it’s fine – even great – that she’s wearing platform heels. Let her be comfortable in her tallness!

    As for the NYC ambassador, I’m not *offended.* However, there are a lot of issues re: gentrification which I think her being named a Welcome Ambassador perpetuates – specifically that people outside of the area are yet again getting an image of NYC as a Sex and the City/Girls-like paradise, where it’s not like that at all for most people. So you have a lot of well-off people (usually parent-subsidized) moving into the city to “live the dream” and it pushes people out further and further. (Though I should note that the “rent being too high” issue isn’t just an issue for NYC)

    • We Are All Made of Stars says:

      Yes, it is truly fiction come to life, at least if we can all suspend disbelief and convince ourselves that the fairytale life of a rich girl turned tweenage megastar isn’t fiction. When I moved as a young teen, everyone’s vision of New York came from either Friends or mob dramas like The Sopranos. There seems to be a lot of bullcrap going on in the city right now, like the scandal involving the apartments where the poor tennants can’t use the front door like the well-off ones can.

  14. Reece says:

    I’ll agree with her on one thing, some of the nicest most polite, helpful people I’ve met in my life were random New Yorkers that I met when I spent a summer there in college.
    As for the other, well, I’ll leave that to the actual New Yorkers. My eyes are still rolling at the PR of it all .

    • GoodNamesAllTaken says:

      I also agree with her statement that New Yorkers are friendly in their way. Its not like everybody’s waving or smiling at you, but if you need help or directions, they are very nice and will go out of their way to assist. At least in my experience.

  15. Sammy says:

    “Unreleased Taylor Swift track ‘full of drug references and f-bombs’” … lol
    http://dandygoat.com/unreleased-taylor-swift-track-full-of-drug-references-and-f-bombs

  16. TheOneandOnlyOnly says:

    Oh, please the marketing over exposure of this marginally talented insipid pop star is ridic; as a poster from England from a previous thread stated: her “music” is kidz bop for catatonic pre-schoolers. You would think her management team thinks she’s Bach, or a very nice meal ticket.
    I’m tired of seeing her on target ads, the Voice, this marketing campaign,etc. if her music is so great why doesn’t it stand on it’s own.
    Long after this nitwit is gone, we will still be admiring Freddy Mercury and Jimmy Page for their talent and music, not for their wraparound marketing blitz to sell plastic product.
    Can someone please tell me what is truly interesting about this girl or her “music?” Marketing doesn’t count; i’ll bet her team calculates how many brush strokes she gives her hair at night she is so contrived. Enough

    • Steph says:

      I completely agree! Adele never had to go to this level of marketing to break through in America…because her music stood on its own merit.

    • MaiGirl says:

      Ditto. I don’t hate her, but she is just sooooooo boring, and in no way deserving of the accolades she receives. I feel the same way about Katie Perry. I am no big fan of Rihanna, but at least she is somewhat interesting!

  17. TheOneandOnlyOnly says:

    Oh, please the marketing over exposure of this marginally talented insipid pop star is ridic; as a poster from England from a previous thread stated: her “music” is kidz bop for catatonic pre-schoolers. You would think her management team thinks she Bach, or a very nice meal ticket.
    I’m tired of seeing her on target ads, the Voice, this marketing campaign,etc. if her music is so great why doesn’t it stand on it’s own.
    Long after this nitwit is gone, we will still be admiring Freddy Mercury and Jimmy Page for their talent and music, not for their wraparound marketing blitz to sell plastic product.
    Can someone please tell me what is truly interesting about this girl or her “music?” Marketing doesn’t count; i’ll bet her team calculates how many brush strokes she gives her hair at night she is so contrived.

  18. TheOneandOnlyOnly says:

    Oh, please the marketing over exposure of this marginally talented insipid pop star is ridic; as a poster from England from a previous thread stated: her “music” is kidz bop for catatonic pre-schoolers. You would think her management team thinks she Bach, or a very nice meal ticket.
    I’m tired of seeing her on target ads, the Voice, this marketing campaign,etc. if her music is so great why doesn’t it stand on it’s own.
    Long after this nitwit is gone, we will still be admiring Freddy Mercury and Jimmy Page for their talent and music, not for their wraparound marketing blitz to sell plastic product.
    Can someone please tell me what is truly interesting about this girl or her “music?” Marketing doesn’t count; i’ll bet her team calculates how many brush strokes she gives her hair at night she is so contrived. enough.

  19. Roo says:

    This is far worse than the alternate side parking tickets I get for “forgetting” to move my car. As a born and raised New Yorker (now Brooklynite), I am VERY DISPLEASED.

  20. Someonestolemyname says:

    Can you repeat that?
    🙂

    Joking.

    • GoodNamesAllTaken says:

      Lol.

    • mimif says:

      In case you missed it:
      TheOneandOnlyOnly said:
      Oh, please the marketing over exposure of this marginally talented insipid pop star is ridic; as a poster from England from a previous thread stated: her “music” is kidz bop for catatonic pre-schoolers. You would think her management team thinks she Bach, or a very nice meal ticket.
      I’m tired of seeing her on target ads, the Voice, this marketing campaign,etc. if her music is so great why doesn’t it stand on it’s own.
      Long after this nitwit is gone, we will still be admiring Freddy Mercury and Jimmy Page for their talent and music, not for their wraparound marketing blitz to sell plastic product.
      Can someone please tell me what is truly interesting about this girl or her “music?” Marketing doesn’t count; i’ll bet her team calculates how many brush strokes she gives her hair at night she is so contrived. enough.

      • GoodNamesAllTaken says:

        Ohhh, i see. She meant Oh, please the marketing over exposure of this marginally talented insipid pop star is ridic; as a poster from England from a previous thread stated: her “music” is kidz bop for catatonic pre-schoolers. You would think her management team thinks she Bach, or a very nice meal ticket.
        I’m tired of seeing her on target ads, the Voice, this marketing campaign,etc. if her music is so great why doesn’t it stand on it’s own.
        Long after this nitwit is gone, we will still be admiring Freddy Mercury and Jimmy Page for their talent and music, not for their wraparound marketing blitz to sell plastic product.
        Can someone please tell me what is truly interesting about this girl or her “music?” Marketing doesn’t count; i’ll bet her team calculates how many brush strokes she gives her hair at night she is so contrived. enough.

      • Someonestolemyname says:

        🙂

  21. kri says:

    This like making me the head cheerleader for Team Kardashian.

  22. H says:

    I thought Celebitchy had a pet peeve about not using “literally” when “figuratively” is more appropriate. “Whitewash” when used to refer to the erasure of diversity is a cliche and a metaphor, a figurative idiom. Unless Taylor Swift goes deep into Tom Sawyer drag, she cannot literally whitewash NY.

  23. Pri says:

    This has to be the first time that I absolutely absolutely ahve no idea what the heck she is wearing. And it doesn’t look nice, which is a rarity for this girl.She usually has pretty good taste Imo, even if it is twee

  24. Elise says:

    I don’t understand her appeal. I can’t sit through a Taylor Swift song and put up with her bleating voice and middle school lyrics. Something nice: her dress looks cute. But the shoes look tacky – something I’d see on a Forever 21 website.

  25. Erika says:

    I really don’t get all the hatred Taylor Swift gets from some women. I find her amazing!. In a world full of artists that sell sex tapes, butt implants, twerking, profanity, drugs, promiscuity, racism, violence and more, I find her refreshing. She comes from a wealthy family, it’s drop dead georgeous, genuinely nice and charismatic, treats well her fans, dont need to buy uncensored versions of her songs on Itunes, dresses up modern and classy. What’s wrong with that?????

    • vavavoom says:

      This! I’m not a ‘fan’ .. but she seems so together, and obviously has a strong base in family / friends.. she’s handling all the fame really well. Smart girl.

      And those LEGS. I’d kill for those legs. They’re probably as long as I am tall. I’d wear those shoes if I had those legs.

  26. Veronica says:

    Ehhh…they are using the prototypical white girl to sell it, but I didn’t find her comments *excessively* culturally illiterate. I mean, NYC tends to sell itself as diverse – few other places in America land you on a train with five different languages being talked around you.

    I’m actually fond of her tendency to wear high heels. My mother is the same height as her, and she always talked about wearing stilettos in the 70s. She did it because people – especially men – would make comments about her height (passive aggressive insults at their finest) or would feel intimidated, so she figured – what the hell? – and wore them out of spite. 😛

  27. maybeiamcrazy says:

    I didn’t know NY had welcome ambassador. Who was the welcome ambassador before Swifty or did they just made it up for her?

  28. RobN says:

    As a woman who is 5’10”, I say wear them whenever, wherever you’d like. You like the look, and unlike me, you can walk in them, then enjoy them. Being tall is not some sort of dread disease.

  29. annaloo. says:

    Oh Swifty, you are now ambassador for the people of Train Pigs too, I hope you know.

  30. paranormalgirl says:

    The last track on her album, “Clean” with Imogen Heap, is quite good.

  31. whatsmyname? says:

    I’m kind of disappointed with her album.

  32. Louise177 says:

    Based on comments from other sites, a lot of New Yorkers are angry Taylor is an ambassador. She’s lived there for a hot minute and isn’t even synonymous with New York. She gives off the vibe of being a tourist giving a lame version of Friends/Sex In The City. Overall Taylor is harmless but she’s just so annoying. A lot of singers write about their love life but they make it the backstory. Taylor insists on putting it front and center. She also has no problem trashing others but throws a hissy fit every time somebody jokes about her. I also find it odd that all of her friends are celebrities. I know she has non-celebrity friends but I find it odd when celebrities spend most of their time with other celebrities.

  33. Rux says:

    WTF — Ambassador to NYC — i am so POed about this. I am a true New Yorker born and raised and if Taylor is what NYC stands for I am f’ing moving.