So whenever somebody is like “why are the swifties so crazy” or “why do swifties defend Taylor so vehemently” it’s because we have watched this shit unfold for almost twelve fucking years. We watched someone who was almost universally known for being charitable, virtuous and above all, kind and accommodating to others get smeared as a “whore” as if it were 1600s Salem, and then we watched the gaslighting of the same people crying “slut! bitch! whore! too skinny! not sexy enough!” turn around and pretend to be great activists with their platform almost entirely consisting of…bitching about a pop star online.
We watched the same people disparaging her for not being “feminist enough” make excuses for the man who sexually assaulted her, the men who took advantage of her when she was a teenager, the man who lied on her name and created a global smear campaign against her culminating in literal revenge porn of her, and the men who stole her life’s work from her in some weird, twisted uno reverse game of internet discourse.
We watched her literally be pushed to the brink time and time again, to the point where she was suicidal, struggling with an eating disorder and literally hid away for six years not only out of the need for escape and respite, but also out of her own fear for her life due to the constant threats, stalking, and harassment.
People are so addicted to making her the idol of their vitriol that they can’t even decide who they want to hate. They can’t decide if they want to hate a manipulative, calculated mean girl, or an overly-emotional sensitive crybaby, or a cringy and overly earnest optimist, or a spoiled brat nepo baby who doesn’t work hard enough or a desperate woman who works far too much, or a Princess Diana-esque figure with a savior complex, or a covert conservative opp or an overly zealous liberal millennial with a cringe RBG tote bag, or a fake feminist, or someone who speaks out about misogyny too much, or a vapid airhead or a pretentious weirdo who thinks she’s smarter than she is, or a Barbie doll, or an awkward, gawkish tall girl who isn’t “glamorous enough”, or a too-skinny too-perfect too-statuesque arbiter of unfair beauty standards, or a slut, or a virginal prude, or a stupid girly girl who needs to grow up and stop being so girly. It doesn’t matter that these things all contradict each other because they don’t actually care about that. Anything that will dehumanize her because it was NEVER EVER about genuinely making a critique on her. It was NEVER about merely “criticizing” her.
People saw someone who fought tooth and nail every day to be the kind of exemplary figure who represents everything a young woman was “supposed” to be because she saw the ways in which the media and the court of public opinion chewed girls with a dream just like hers up and spit them out, and because of this, people wanted to see her crack, and despite struggling at times, she never gave them quite what they wanted, so they sought out to punish her for it. They want to see her crack, she never cracks, they try something new.
Nothing more, nothing less. Here’s a link to donate to the Palestine children’s relief fund.
