Update: Taylor Swift must have been feeling the heat, y’all. She just tweeted this:
I thought I was being called out. I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke. I'm sorry, Nicki. @NICKIMINAJ
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 23, 2015
Original post as follows:
Has the Taylor Swift backlash begun? Maybe. Following Swifty’s faux-feminist, tone-deaf tweets to Nicki Minaj on Tuesday night, many pop-culture professionals (yes, that’s a thing!) are giving The Swift Domination another look. Katy Perry’s very pointed and strategic tweets help with the analysis, because any discussion about Taylor Swift inevitably includes her ability to pick fights and slam other artists (not to mention ex-boyfriends) while still retaining her lily-white-perfect-princess image.
Salon wrote a think piece called “The inevitable Taylor Swift backlash begins: Watching the critical mad love crumble, right on schedule.” That view seems to be that this is all part of some kind of Tall Poppy Syndrome, that we simply want successful people (particularly women) to fail after they’ve reached a certain amount of success. I kind of feel like that argument – with regards to Swift in particular – is bullsh-t. Swifty has had major messaging/hypocrisy issues for years and it’s really nice to see her get called out for it at long last.
Gawker also did a lengthy analysis of The Problem With Swifty called “Taylor Swift Is Not Your Friend” – you can read it here. The TL;DR version: Swifty’s friendships are business and she’s not a feminist, she’s a capitalist. She’s selling a feminism-lite version of empowerment and professional “friendships” for profit.
And here’s an interesting piece of Swifty news – she’s partnering up with a Chinese retailer to sell Swifty-approved clothes to Chinese youths. She’s not doing out of a desire to see Chinese kids dressed in harnesses, plaid miniskirts and midriff-baring tops though – The Daily Beast’s sources say that Swifty was irritated that the Chinese site Alibaba had “hundreds and hundreds of pages of pirated merchandise of all kinds, none of which were authorized, none of which [Swift] was making money on, and none of which she was exercising creative control over.” Meaning Swifty wants her cut. But here’s what’s funny – she’s probably going to be selling her T.S. 1989 shirts/sweatshirts/whatever, because that’s her latest album. Tiananmen Square was in 1989 too. Chinese authorities really don’t want a lot of kids wearing “TS 1989” shirts!
Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.
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