Andrea Rhiannon @andrearhiannon - Tumblr Blog

hilary duff and nico tortorella photographed for cosmopolitan - 2016

i’ve said it before i’ll say it again there’s a difference between lady gaga singing born this way in 2011 and taylor swift singing “shade never made anyone less gay” (whatever the fuck that means) to profit off of it in 2019

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The difference is that Lady Gaga is bisexual and Taylor Swift is straight

enigma-boi

Honestly, even if Taylor came out as gay or bi tomorrow, “You Need To Calm Down” would still be tacky because of tone an content.

Born This Way was, unequivocally, “You are beautiful for being YOU in a world that often tells you you’re not” while “You Need To Calm Down” is basically “Me, and The Gays™, have haters”.

Gaga was singing about celebrating herself with Born This Way. Taylor Swift comes off as comparing homophobia as equivocable the beef she had with Katy Perry.

I feel a better comparison from the early 10s is Same Love by Macklemore. While yeah, the song is clumsy and hokey, at least “I received a lot of misdirected homophobia growing up and I can only imagine how much worse it is for gay folks” is more tasteful than “homophobia is just like when critics say my songs aren’t good or I get snake emoji replies on Twitter.”

Even if she has the best intentions, the final product comes off as, well, tone deaf and a little exploitative.

michaelmilkers

also taylor swift has lgbt people in her music video but macklemore had a lesbian (mary lambert) sing the chorus of same love

people like to make fun of the “when i was in the 3rd grade i thought that i was gay” line and its deserving of that bc its definitely a clumsy attempt at solidarity

but they also forget that macklemore used his status as one of the Hot Celebs of the time to put a song on the radio where the chorus is a woman singing clearly and explicitly about loving other women

p.s. the lyric “not crying on sundays” is more poetic and meaningful than literally anything that has ever come out of taylor swift’s mouth and macklemore put that lyric into the mainstream. THAT is using your influence for good allyship.

lesbianistictendencies

Also minor point but you really can’t compare the two bc Macklemore and Lady Gaga did that in a time when being LGBT+ wasn’t considered a thing you could capitalize off of. It was just them genuinely showing allyship and support. But with Taylor Swift, it feels so…rainbow capitalism-y, especially with all the gay/trans celebrities in the video.