I’m honestly suspicious of people who have ample time to watch the latest Netflix offerings on the day they come out. Last week, a new Netflix series came out called Ginny & Georgia. I guess it’s supposed to be the new Gilmore Girls or something, and the story is about a 30-year-old mother and her 15-year-old daughter. In the final episode of the season, a pop culture “joke” appeared:
Season 1 of the series, which follows 15-year-old Ginny (Antonia Gentry) and her 30-year-old mom Georgia (Brianne Howey), released last Wednesday and features 10 episodes. In the finale, titled “The Worst Betrayal Since Jordyn and Kylie,” the mother-daughter duo are fighting when Ginny says to her mom: “What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.”
The joke is bad. It doesn’t even make sense given the current pop culture image of Taylor Swift. It’s a joke which would have been based in some kind of factual snake drama in, say, 2012/13. But in the year of our lord Beyonce 2021? No, the joke is lazy and culturally irrelevant. Taylor has been with Joe Alwyn for more than four years. Sure, she did Tom Hiddleston dirty before she got to Joe, but there are other, better jokes to be made about THAT. Anyway, as you can imagine, the Snake Fam got involved over the weekend and caps-lock “respect Taylor Swift” was trending on Twitter for a long time. Taylor is hyper-aware of what people are saying about her, so she also responded:
Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY. Also, @netflix after Miss Americana this outfit doesn’t look cute on you 💔 Happy Women’s History Month I guess pic.twitter.com/2X0jEOXIWp
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) March 1, 2021
“Degrading hard working women”? Don’t get me wrong – I am against the degradation of women, and I know Taylor Swift works hard. Taylor also has the right to date or f–k or not date or not f–k anyone she wants at any time, forever, in perpetuity. But Taylor really has a knack for going just a tad overboard, my God. As do her fans, who began blanketing Netflix’s social media comments with “respect Taylor Swift.” Even when the Netflix account was trying to pay tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman in his Golden Globe-winning performance in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
RESPECT TAYLOR SWIFT
everyone repeat after me:
netflix cancelled
netflix misogynists
netflix boycott
netflix sexist
netflix bad service— The Stig's Moroccan Cousin (@StigMoroccan) March 1, 2021
what the fuck is wrong with you guys pic.twitter.com/9I92JVxD3I
— f ☆ (@bigtimezoya) March 1, 2021
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red and Netflix
I’m typically a Taylor Swift apologist, but the fact that she thinks Netflix owes her deference because she worked with them is icky.
Yeah, I think she could have just put the point about 2010 calling and wanting its joke back and it would have been more impactful for it. However I absolutely support her responding to this – she’s right, it WAS a lazy, sexist joke – even if we were still in 2010.
Yes- that would have been the perfect response- call out out for what it is, and then move on with your life.
I have mixed feelings about this. I see her point – Netflix is currently airing her documentary and she has promoted it as being available to stream on their service. Both Netflix and Taylor are presumably making money from this arrangement. So it seems kind of harsh that the same people who willingly accept her promotion of their service to her millions of fans – and presumably generating new subscribers for them – would make a lazy, sexist joke about her in a new and lesser known show. For me it does not pass the smell test.
I don’t think Netflix polices the writers of the shows it produces nor should they censor art. Ten years ago Swift lived her life very publicly, did huge roll outs of her boyfriends and, when things ended, she made a fortune writing songs about them. She is a public figure who really needs to get over herself.
@ Mac she also went through a completely normal and standard amount of men, and the shaming and painting it as extreme is unhealthy not just toward her but toward young women in general. It enforces “slut shaming” etc.
No one is slut shaming Swift. She made dating part of her brand and someone made a joke about it.
I think Swift would have been better served to have stopped with the “2010 wants its joke back” reference, which is completely on point. BUT it is also true that she is being shamed for her sexual relationships in a way that her male peers are not.
“You go through more men than Taylor Swift” is totally slut-shaming and a classic double standard. Women can be with men if they want to: trying to embarrass or shame them for being sexually active is disgusting. I totally read the line that way. I’m unsure how else it could possibly be read. This is not to say I am a Taylor fan btw, but that line is definitely slut-shaming and broadly misogynistic.
she talks quite a bit in that doc about how media storylines like that really affected her mental health, so I took it more as her being like “you host this documentary where I talk about how damaging jokes like this were to me and then also host a show where they make these sorts of comments about me? wtf?”
but honestly your interpretation is just as plausible lol.
I think she meant that Netflix aired a doc about how badly she was treated. Not simply that they owe her loyalty.
Ehhhhh I think she means both honestly. She’s making a stand against a crappy sexist joke and also using her power to punish Netflix. She’s fully aware of how her stans act and that tweet is the equivalent of unleashing the hounds.
@Mac
Yeah Netflix isn’t Disney, they don’t necessarily have a brand based on ideals like Feminism or being family friendly. This is the same platform that put out 365 Days last year ffs
I saw cats and dog want an apology.
Her fans are rabid. She had a good point, but took it too far and her vipers went nuts.
Yes, she made a statement and she should encourage her rabid fans to calm down. And Netflix does not police their shows or what the writers put in the scripts, so if there is any shaming, it should be placed where it belongs, on the sitcom.
I’m going back and forth with this one. It was definitely a slut shaming comment, but it seems from what others have said that it was supposed to be, that it was more about the character shaming her mother than a cheap throwaway joke?
Regardless, working with Netflix doesnt mean that no netflix show can ever be less than glowing towards Taylor. That is really icky thing she is implying there.
Also, she 100% knows what she is doing with her fan army.
Yeah, the joke was 100% slut shaming. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to do some reflecting on their own internalized assumptions. Taylor has the right to call it what it is.
BUT I’m not sure Netflix owes her anything here. Maybe she was under the impression they wanted to tell “feminist” stories with their media, but that feels like a a stretch.
I’m also going back and forth. While I see how it could be seen as slut shaming, I actually think the context does not allow for that interpretation. I didn’t read it as “she had a lot of sex and is a slut and so are you” but more of a “you behave like you are a childless woman living her best life with no responsibility when you are in fact a mother, so how about a little bit more stability for the sake of your kids?”
And I also think the writer really show their age here. I don’t think the younger generation associate Taylor with relationship drama as much as we “older” folks 😉
The joke is dumb, but isn’t this also the same woman who wrote dumb blind items for most of her career about her exes? It’s hard to really be sympathetic of a rich, privileged woman being the punchline of a stupid throwaway joke on a random Netflix show. Especially since her stans also went on to harass the actors on the show about it.
She’s written crappy lyrics about women for simply having the nerve to be the girl her crush likes better ffs and she’s hot to trot to re-release that trash.
I need her to stop.
There was a way to call this genuinely misogynist tripe without releasing the stan army but she chooses to be the bully at every turn.
Agree, Taylor will be just fine so she doesn’t need our sympathy and yes, the stans should get back in their boxes but….I do think that this sort of misogynistic crap should be called out because, if it isn’t, then it continues to pervade our culture. The very fact that the show-writers thought that referencing the fact a famous woman had had more than whatever the ‘acceptable number’ of boyfriends is at an ‘acceptable’ interval was supposedly funny carries an unpleasant judgement behind it.
Taylor is far, far from being the perfect, feminist heroine but she doesn’t have to be perfect to be right in this instance.
Apparently the context of the line was supposed to be bitchy and judgmental, not just funny. I agree that misogyny and chauvinism are rampant in our culture, but I still think her reaction to this is overblown in relation to what the intent of the line was.
She spent years beating Katy Perry, and even made an entire clip pitting other women against Katy. I’m tired of this white feminist using the feminism as a shield.
And this is what I don’t get. Why is none calling her out? I swear, if I were a superstar, I would call her out and make her stop whining like a kid. She is 31 and not 15… Taylor Swift is the only person I know who gets away with everything and people are believing everything. How can you be a feminist if you have treated other women like crap…..
Thank you! She gets away with way too much. She is not the perfect being that everyone thinks she is.
I came to the comments fully expecting people to condemn this show and Netflix, but here I am, reading comments that call her out for all her behaviours since 2010. Thank you all for being far more articulate than I could have been in expressing this sentiment.
Jules, me too, I thought it the comments would be more pro Taylor. I have actually seen a few episodes of Ginny and Georgia and it’s really funny and am enjoying watching it! I had to explain to my husband what ‘stan’ means and BDE … LOL
All of this ^^
Agreed. This whole thread. 👏
Swifties have been blowing up my mentions for 24 hours because I dared to imply that TayTay only cares about feminism when it hurts her feelings and doesn’t care when her fans get play misogynist games, many of them straight from her lyrical playbook.
I stay tired of her and her stans.
Yes, her stans have harassed Kate, Kim Kardashian and many others, they’re awful
Oh totally innocent Kim who did nothing to provoke any response or drama. Uh huh.
Taylor’s feminism feels so weaponized and so corporate. Whenever she makes a feminist statement, it rarely feels like a genuine reflection of her values. Instead, it seems like she’s just trying to rehab her public image so that she can keep minting money from her fanbase. Just my 2 cents.
agree
“Taylor’s feminism feels so weaponized and so corporate.”
This is exactly it. Well said.
Good for her for sticking up for herself. It’s a bad, lazy, mean-spirited joke and yes, it has zero to do with her image in recent years. At the same time yes, her crazier fans tend to go overboard and she does nothing to stop them. Maybe let’s just…not watch the show? Instead of “canceling” Netflix LOL.
“I’m honestly suspicious of people who have ample time to watch the latest Netflix offerings on the day they come out.”
THIS. At my last job I’d come into the office every Monday and two coworkers would pester me about why I didn’t watch the newest season of XYZ yet that dropped on Friday. I watch an hour or two of TV/movies a night, but I’m not gonna stay up all night binging something just so I can talk about it with coworkers the next day. I hate how shows have become sorta “trendy” to watch for a couple weeks and become irrelevant if you’re late to the party.
I’m a painter. I do commissioned work that takes hours. I sometimes binge a show WHILE I’m working – but thanks for thinking I’m sitting around doing nothing and being lazy because I burned through a show the day it dropped.
I’ve actually been working my butt off!
Doodle, I did not call people who binge shows “lazy” or “doing nothing.” I was speaking to the cultural pressure to binge watch shows immediately after they drop to be part of the conversation while the show is still relevant in people’s minds, and how I’m usually not able to do that on time.
You “this”d the suspicion of people who binge watch tv. That does indeed imply a degree of implication that they’re lazy.
That’s not how I took it to mean and not what I was implying at all. *shrugs* I doubt Kaiser meant that, either.
If anything, I was thinking my comment would spark a lighthearted “yes, it’s crazy how people expect you to watch new shows in a weekend!” response, not this.
I sure as hell didn’t read what Case said as implying that those who binge watch tv are lazy. Are you kidding me?!? I can relate to what Case was saying as I have encountered the same pressure to be ‘up’ on shows from co-workers and friends. They have the time to binge and good on ’em but I do not. No big deal either way.
@Doodle: you took this comment waaaay too personally. No one called you lazy. I think you might need to take a bubble bath and relax yourself.
It was an insulting joke but I think she could have left it alone.
I think she is right to call it out. Slut-shaming should never be ok and it should be called out everytime.
She still hasn’t publicly apologized to Camilla Belle for writing an entire song that slut-shamed her. Interesting Taylor said “2010 called” when that was the same year she released “Better Than Revenge.”
I’ve not paid attention to most of her songs, but she ought to apologise for any slutshaming she did and to the person she did it to. Still the show shouldn’t have included that line and she was right to call them out for it. I see other commenters saying her fans are racially abusing the young girl. She should also call their racist behaviours.
@sandra that was my first thought! TS is right – that joke was lazy and sexist – and it clearly hurt her feelings. Now that she knows how that feels, she needs to apologize to Camilla Belle for doing the same thing to her.
That would mean that Taylor grew up which she hasn’t. Geez, even if she has dated this Joe guy for 4 years, she did pap walks with all her bfs and stuffed them up our throats. This victim shit is so old school and I still do not get how she got this big. Plus we are in the middle of a pandemic, people are losing loved ones, their jobs…. And this rich, white, privileged woman is taking this seriously and punching Netflix? I hate the world we are living in. Grow up ffs and take a bad joke like a champion. And those minions of her are embarrassing. Poor Taylor, let’s all pity her and harass Netflix.
Yeah, I’ve never felt any sympathy for her throughout the years. The things she’s gotten away with baffle and disgust me. She has the thinnest skin that I know of a celebrity. And what’s worst is, she’ll never mature. She’ll remain as a perpetual teenager either ’cause that’s the way she is, or it suits her brand/career.
Her fans make her hard to ignore. She had to respond in a way. But perhaps she could have played differently.
The joke is tired, and I can get on board with calling that out, but I wish she had done it a less martyr like way. She knows how her rabid Fanbase reacts to things like this, and unfortunately she plays up even the smallest slights into catastrophic attacks.
Exactly. It is a dumb joke and she had the right to call it out. But her fans were already waging a campaign to tank the audience score of the show and harrassing the actress involved. Taylor could have made her point about feminism by defending herself and asking her fans to lay off the actress involved.
I get it—she handles sh*t in non-constructive ways at times—and at the same time I think it’s sad stan culture is so out of hand she can’t make a comment (this isn’t like the time where she clearly directed her stans to harass Scooter) without her stans going rabid & her getting blamed for their behavior.
Has she ever asked them to stop? They are currently doxing the female leads and writers of the show – phone numbers and emails address, etc. it’s pathetic and harmful. Plus as many people who actually watched the show noted, the line about swift was meant to show the same toxicity that swift is complaining about. The show is actually was in agreement with her narrative.
She’s so tiresome.
True she can’t control all of her fans, but it’s that whole with great power comes great responsibility, and she has to be aware of what they do whenever she is slighted, and I think needs to be cautious about what she publicly says.
And if they are harassing the young actress of the show, who neither wrote or produced the show and is simply doing her job, she should step up and say “guy, get a grip and leave people alone”.
The point of the joke was for it to be cringey. That was the point. That was the context.
Two steps forward, 20, 000 steps back with this woman and her fanatics.
Taylor, is that chip on your shoulder going to put out its own album, or does it really want to produce?
Engaging your creepy Trump-like cult of supersnakes to harass Netflix over a joke that gently pokes fun at your past dating history, which is also the basis of many of your hit songs, does a disservice to women who actually are slut shamed or smeared, who have their careers or lives irreparably damaged by nasty rumors after they said no to the wrong person.
Netflix got that call from 2010 but you’ve got voicemail from Ashley Judd and Gretchen Moll.
YES!!!
YES, thank you.
Yes it’s a lazy, old, sh-try joke. But she is basically saying in her tweet that she expects Netflix to screen and remove anything mean about her because she had two documentaries come out on the platform. GMAFB, Taylor. Her “argument” is that Miss Americana was about feminism – which, sort of, I guess? It was more about her undoing and breakdown after Kimye’s receipts and learning to find her voice afterward. I know she is a control freak, but expecting the content behemoth that is Netflix to disallow anyone mentioning her in a way she does not deign to be positive to her image is next level.
Exactly this!
I loved her documentary honestly, but I also recognize that she had total control of how it was presented. It was a fluff piece. And she was good at it. It gave me all the warm fuzzy feels about Taylor which was her goal with it.
I actually enjoyed her documentary too, I just didn’t come away from it thinking it any shining example of feminism (or politics), for the reason you stated. I’m usually a Taylor apologist, but I think in this case she could have chosen her defense a lot more carefully. This kind of thing is why so many people have a problem with her.
I watched the documentary and what stood out to me was just how young she was at the beginning of her career. Becoming that famous as a teenager will do a number on you. I have more sympathy for her than many of the people on this thread seem to, though I also think she goes too far in responding to criticism and should absolutely tell her stans to moderate their behavior.
“But she is basically saying in her tweet that she expects Netflix to screen and remove anything mean about her because she had two documentaries come out on the platform.”
So freaking entitled. I’m sure Netflix is paying her good $$ for that doc. They don’t owe her anything else.
It was a minor, lame joke that Taylor breathed a ridiculous amount of life into by even acknowledging it. The joke is outdated, but it’s hardly deeply cruel. Her best response would have been to answer it with a better comeback that showed a sense of humor.
And I think it’s only sexist and slut-shaming if you stretch those definitions really thin. There was a point in Taylor’s life when she very publicly (by her own choice) dated a lot of guys in a fairly short period of time, and then deliberately included those relationships in her artistic output. The comments I recall at the time were around “thirst-shaming” Taylor for her desire for attention, not about how many guys she had slept with. Maybe I’ve just seen and been subject to enough real outrage in my life that I can’t get worked up about manufactured outrage.
It is because of her attitudes that Taylor Swift annoys me. It is she herself who to market her image of marked on her very public relations and the fact that she is constantly being dumped by guys. So even if it was in 2010/2012, this image remains because it is not easy to wipe off from one image to move to another. She just has a fragile ego and likes to control the story , when the story escapes to her she plays the card of white tears or of a feminist serving only herself. She had done the same when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler had a similar blaque to the golden globes of 2013.
When googling a little to remind myself of this history, I learned that Taylor Swift has also threatened LEGAL ACTION for normal reporting: https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/6/16742166/taylor-swift-time-magazine-person-year-2017-silence-breaker-me-too
The joke is tired, but I don’t blame her for being upset. However, she needs to get her fans/stans in check…they’re insane posting RESPECT all over twitter on crap that has nothing to do with her and they even went after the actress that said the joke in the show, as if she wrote it herself.
I’m sure Netflix doesn’t mind. She just have them free publicity for this show. Now I want to watch it!
I had never heard of the show. I read this thread and went and watched the first 30 min. I like it so far and will continue to watch.
Two things can be true: the joke is tired and old (and even worse in context) AND Taylor handled this poorly. She often has good points but goes around making them in not terribly constructive ways.
*The character Ginny low key shames her mom multiple times over her past with men (her mom has 2 kids by 2 different men & was married to a different guy) while simultaneously being almost jealous of her mom’s ease with men. The line is from her to her mom, and it absolutely read, at least to me, like she was calling her mom a sl*t by comparing her to Taylor Swift. So yeah, it was sl*t shaming.
Thanks for the explanation, that type of content is not my thing so I won’t be watching it.
note below: I gave my opinion anyway lol
Agreed. Its a dumb joke but I found her response really passive aggressive. ‘this doesn’t look cute on you’ is a school playground response. The womens history month reference is pretty self absorbed too. Is she a great woman of history suffering an injustice? Ffs
Just when you think Taylor Swift may have matured a tad and finally learned that she doesn’t have to address every single little thing she takes offense to…🙄
I say speak up! She’s entitled to feel and respond any way she wants and if we don’t think it’s just right, bfd. Just keep speaking up, people.
She did the same thing to Camilla belle and never apologized to her. She is a hypocrite and a narcissist and I will never feel sorry for her, sorry. Btw her fan base is attacking the black lead of the show as if she wrote the scenario and Taylor will never say anything to support her. But she wants the public to support her for some reason every morning.
This is such a good point! That’s probably why she said “2010 called” because that’s when she herself was degrading a less famous hard working woman by saying her acting didn’t matter, what mattered was what happened on the mattress.
Exactly! She has never apologized for her slut shaming lyrics about Camilla Belle which were way crueler than this silly joke: “She’s an actress. She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.”
Yeah…when I first saw this I was like….was she even watching the show because slut shaming and its effects are a part of the plot. Also, I feel some type of way that Taylor really believes she is above writers saying anything negative about her. Also as this show is about a biracial girl figuring out her white mother in white suburbia, I really feel some type of way about Taylor attacking his hard without context. Obviously the joke is sexist and I understand being annoyed..but yall remember when Snapchat made a meme with Rihanna’s bruised and bloody face on it….that’s what Black women in this position have to deal with…so yeah “sexism” but girl, context and self awareness is all I’m asking. Also asking a major corporation to edit jokes about you out of all of their content because you worked with them to make a project embiggening you after we all smelled your RACIST snake bullshit (Americana and the aftermath of the Kanye West drama)….is ridiculous and an incredibly privileged thing to expect. This just confirms that unraveling your white rich privilege and letting go of the petty power that white feminism thrives in is going to be an ongoing process for her.
@adi all that!
Legit question: Did she ever apologize to Camilla Belle for writing the slut-shaming song “Better Than Revenge” about her in 2010 or at least address how messed up that was? Because making a joke that Taylor has dated a lot of men….dated, not slept with…is still not as bad as that was.
No she did not publicly apologize and it’ll be interesting to see whether she re-records that song on the new version of the Fearless album that’s coming out, or if she evolves and leaves it off (being the “woke feminist” that she now is).
I forgot that she’ll re-record all of her older songs. So maybe she’ll leave it off but will she address it or just pretend like it never happened? Time will tell.
Well.. it definitely won’t be on the re-record of Fearless because it was on Speak Now.
oh, good point, Dini. Guess we’ll have to wait until she re-records Speak Now.
I am curious though if she’ll change the words. She’s mentioned before regretting it so I’m sure there was a private apology at some point.
Sorry this is nonsense. I’ve seen the show and the joke is clearly supposed to highlight the daughter’s internalised misogyny. The mother is sex positive, there are lots of jokes about her vibrator etc.
She is a powerful woman. And just can’t seem to figure out how to use that power effectively. It’s so disappointing.
Precisely
I’m so confused by this. Was the comment dumb AF and sexist? Yes, but why did Taylor even bother to bite? She’s been working really hard (and was doing a good job) at making more mature music and being more mature herself so why regress and stoop to their level by making a comment that seems like it was written by her vindictive 2010 self? *Sigh* this woman. She could have just said it was lame and sexist and moved on but she proceeds to need to be so extra.
You’d think Taylor would’ve figured out by now that she can be above this kind of stuff. Does Beyonce comment on every little joke at her expense? NO. Because she is the queen, and the queen does not deign to recognize those who are beneath her.
I will never feel an iota of sympathy for Taylor Swift. She’s such an annoying white feminist.
The only laziness I see is Taylor and her twee fan club.
Also overlooked is some of her fans were attacking the Black actress who said the line of script. Those folks were quick to be racist to Antonia Gentry in the guise of “feminism” & “protecting” Taylor. 😐
Same ones calling scooter Braun a rapist in defense of her recording ownership battle. Threatening his wife, etc. She never says anything.
The thing that I think people don’t either realize or want to acknowledge was in the beginning how much Taylor benefitted from pop culture sexism. Since there’s been talk about Britney Spears and how sexist the media was towards her, let’s talk about what happened in 2008. When Britney had her meltdown the industry scrambled to find more wholesome replacements: Disney had many of their young teen stars at the time wear purity rings and Taylor Swift hung out with that crowd. I remember many interviews she did where the person interviewing would praise her so much for being a “Good Role Model” and she happily accepted the praise. It went into overdrive in 2009 with the whole Kanye thing and she milked it for all it was worth. She wrote a song slut shaming an actress and no one called her out. She called out John Mayer and most people agreed that he was a douchebag. 2010 was also the same year where John Mayer said some truly gross stuff in magazine articles so it was easy to side with Taylor on that.
She didn’t consider herself a feminist around that time telling a magazine that she didn’t view things as boys vs girls. And why should she? She was the media darling in a way Britney never really was, had amazing albums sales and was winning awards left, right and center. It was only around 2013, not 2010, when more and more jokes about her love life became prominent and that’s when she started making more statements about how some of the jokes were sexist. Like how Meghan McCain didn’t give a shit about maternity leave until she became a mother, Taylor didn’t give much fucks about sexism in the industry until she became the target of it. She didn’t have anything to say when many of her peers like Lady Gaga and Rihanna and Katy Perry were getting shit for what they wear when they are performing and what they are singing about.
Now this is not to say that I think Taylor is full of shit when it comes to feminism, but I do think she needs to realize that while she has been a victim of sexism, she’s also been a benefactor as well has instigated sexist attacks against some women with little remorse on her part. Of course that would require doing some soul searching which not quite sure she’s equipped to do.
I agree, she leaned HARD into the virgin/whore dichotomy in her career (debatable how much control she had over her image, I’ll grant her that) but then continued to profit off of the frankly racist trope of a White Woman Victim when a forgotten fact is that Kanye was not standing up for himself, he was pointing out racism towards Beyonce in the music industry.
It’s truly incredible how much she embodies white woman feminism in the most shallow sense. Has she been a victim of sexism? 100% unequivocally yes, and I applaud her for speaking up about it.
Is she also a perpetrator of sexism, racism, refuses to show significant growth, apologize for past actions, or reconcile with her actions in a meaningful way? Does she also use “feminism” as a cudgel to attack people — especially other women — and sees herself as perpetually a victim?
I really appreciate the dialogue in these comments because I’m really over the Taylor-worship.
Agree with you on everything you said Calypso. One of the difficult things to do in order to become a better person and fight injustice is to recognize how in what ways a person has perpetuated a horrible system which has harmed others. You also have to recognize your privilege within that system. If a person can’t do that then they are in danger of causing the same harm to others that they might have experienced themselves.
Sin Tay probably did not watch the whole series in one sitting on its release day, does she have a super google alert that notify her whenever her name is mentioned in any type of media (ie not just online)? Isn’t that next level intense to care about other ppl’s perception of yourself THAT much?
Taylor spends so much time being a bully pretending to be a victim that I always assume she’s overreacting. It’s like she has amnesia. If everyone hit by the actual Gilmore Girl’s dialogue threw a tantrum… we’d be here all year. The new version is probably far less incendiary, but will have it’s moments. It’s interesting how Taylor can choose to unleash though “fans” and never consider the outcome, but everyone is supposed to be sympathetic ONLY to her. She’s reckless and once again… someone with less power is paying the price. Her career was built on her dating history. Her next album should be named OBNOXIOUS.
Her name is a pop culture buzzword.
Personally I really don’t care for her because of the mean girl things she has done to other women (Katy Perry, Camilla Belle). She also encourages that army of fans she has to attack people. So perhaps she should address her past of being unkind to others before calling out others for what they say about her.
Most of the fans that are demanding “respect for Taylor Swift” are the same ones that have been mocking and humiliating Tom Hiddleston for years, using Taylor’s songs that are supposedly about him. They never miss an opportunity to insert her name every time he is trending (like when his birthday was trending on Twitter for more than 24h) or some news about his work comes out. They say he got famous thanks to her but they are the ones who keep inserting Taylor in every narrative about Tom, even though he has moved on. She could stop that with a tweet but stays silent because it is good publicity for her.
They also did this a few months ago when Jake Gyllenhaal made an Instagram post trying to promote a charity using a throwback picture of himself but then he got flooded with obnoxious Swifties. So the topic is not about the charity he was promoting but about Taylor Swift. Stan culture is terrible all around but Swifties are on another level.
https://www.glamour.com/story/why-taylor-swift-fans-are-flooding-jake-gyllenhaal-instagram-with-all-too-well-lyrics
Taylor Swift would be a far more sympathetic and interesting character if she ever put her considerable power and energy into looking out for someone other than herself.
Question about her online stans – does she get new crops of rabid teenagers every year or are these the same people, now deep into their 20s, behaving like this?
I’m a fan in my thirties and I find the Stan Twitter behaviour appalling.
I think in every fandom there is an extremely toxic side and Twitter has the worst of it.
Side note – a bunch of the ones I saw were from like thirteen year olds so who knows.
I’d like to think older fans are more mature for the most part.
For your first point she actually does a lot and just doesn’t talk about it publicly. Pre covid she would visit sick kids that were fans in the hospital or donate to people in need. The last story I saw was about sending stuff to a kid who had a stroke and was a fan.
I agree. I have tended toward defending her here since I think some critique of her is irrelevant, but this time I cannot. It seems woefully obvious to me that the only times she’s spoken out about things is when they have concerned her or been convenient to her. She denied sexism existed until she experienced it, then she went around talking about feminism while refusing to acknowledge her privilege as a white woman and historically not working with women on her albums/videos (Miss Americana being the exception). She didn’t care about politics until a documentary crew was following her around and she could show she cared about politics.
And the allusion that because she worked with Netflix they should…screen every line written by a writer? Never say anything other than glowing praise regarding her? So bizarre and narcissistic. I think the line is sexist and boring, but honestly, she is so rich and successful it surprises me she doesn’t see it as below her to respond to a throwaway line on a new TV show few people are talking about.
Could what you’re talking about in your first paragraph be also called growing up? Maturing?
Slut shaming is never ok, regardless of who is the topic of discussion.
It is mind baffling to me that in the age of swiping left or right or whatever it is that people are still making cracks about having 9 boyfriends throughout her entire life so far.
And the excuse of well she writes songs about it is old too. Do we criticize Ed Sheeran or JB or the Weeknd for doing this? No we don’t.
The issue at hand is the internal misogyny that we carry.
the lame joke aside, the show is nothing like Gilmore girls….teen pregnancy in the 00s wasn’t a unicorn…..teen pregnancy in the 80s?….grab me a net!!
Didn’t see many twinkle lights either……
I think she gave it oxygen by paying attention to the dumb ass comments. Who heard of the show before Taylor and her stans made it a deal. Sometimes it’s best to ignore stupid shit ppl say… really.
I clicked it because I was bored and Netflix pushed it on me, but I don’t think I even made it as far as that joke. I loved Gilmore Girls in its first run, but whatever was unique and charming about Gilmore Girls then is now commonplace (rapid, witty dialog, portrayals of alternative family structures, leggy women using their wiles to conquer all) and I was just like “next.”
Meanwhile, people are dying of Covid.
Has any celebrity ever been more out of touch than this one?
I like a lot of her music but good grief this girl needs some thicker skin. There have been much much worse things said about famous people. Get over yourself!
Imagine if Britney Spears fired off an angry social media post every time she was mentioned in pop culture, in a joke, etc.
This is what is making the headlines about that show, not the episode 8 clip of the oppression Olympics? Okay….
I haven’t seen a single episode and nothing I’ve heard about it makes me want to. It seems like poor lazy writing all the way through.
She needs to stop playing the victim. It’s getting old. Imagine every celeb who was ever mentioned somewhere would start complaining about it publicly.
Exactly. It’s part of the social contract. You become famous and in the public eye… then you’re in the public eye. Get over it. I would never have known this joke existed if she hadn’t put a big ole’ spot light on it.
I don’t see how it’s sexist, but it is a bad, outdated “joke.”
She built a career on transforming fake PR relationships into shady lyrics. You can’t rake in millions by trashing ex’s and then act like the victim when we take note of your many “relationships”.
Yaaah… every time I start to think Taylor Swift may have a point, she opens her fool mouth, spews some butt-hurt over-the-top commentary, and reminds everyone what a self-involved narcissist she is.
Taylor is a pro at playing the victim and using, abusing and manipulating “feminism” to her own benefit. It is so obvious, her entire image and career are built on this. don’t know who her fan base is but she seems to have a lot of young fans who learn from and copy her. Problematic on so many levels.
100% agree.
As dumb as the joke is, this ‘controversy’ says a lot more about what a thin-skinned celeb Taylor Swift is…and who CLEARLY has time on her hands to whine about being the butt of a dumb joke. You’re a celebrity honey—it goes with the millions of dollars you make annually.
I agree. It’s bad and rather offensive joke, and her initial tweet was OK I think, but banging on about it and unleashing her minions is overkill and childish. And it sounds like she has some blood on her hands too when it comes to this kind of thing, so I don’t feel at all badly for her and I think she should be more about helping and less about herself.
She is using her voice to tell us how she feels, not how you or I think she should feel.
oh please
No doubt she’s had the slut shaming up to her eyeballs. I’m stick of it and it didn’t even happen to me. I say speak up, defend yourself when you feel like it.
She’s the pot calling the kettle black. She can slut-shame women, even men. But don’t do it to her.
Why is she always so desperate to be the victim?
It was a nothing-burger joke about what Taylor’s M-O was about a decade ago, so she can calm down. Not EVERYTHING is worthy of social commentary. She could have taken that moment to shine a light on more important social issues as other stars do, but she’s never been great at pivoting from herself once in the spotlight.
Sometimes it’s best to just move on.
I agree it was a lazy, deeply sexist joke. It was already a lazy, deeply sexist joke when Taylor made it about Camilla Belle in the lyrics to “Better Than Revenge”. She gonna apologize for that? She gonna sign her royalties of that song over to Camilla? She gonna pull that piece of sh!t song?
No, no and no. She’s fine with lazy sexism as long as she gets to be the one dealing it out and profitting from it.