Taylor Swift Controversy Explained
It’s hard to be a Swiftie right now, and I say that as someone who owns not one, but two copies of Midnights on vinyl. See, even if you can ignore Taylor Swift’s rumored short-lived romance with the worst person imaginable, Matty Healy (and friends, I cannot, that guy sucks a lot. How can the woman who wrote a song called “Clean” be with a man that looks that filthy?), Taylor is no stranger to controversy. So much so that when you look at the evidence, you can’t help but wonder that maybe she wasn’t kidding when she said she was the problem in “Anti-Hero”.
Here’s the thing about Taylor Swift: she is hyper-aware of what her fans think of her. She’s quick to make changes when she gets called out and has for the entirety of her career. Case in point: she changed the lyrics in “Picture to Burn” from her first album after it was released to be less offensive. Most recently, she took out a shot in the “Anti-Hero” music video after there was an outcry that it was fatphobic. Many people, myself included, disagreed with that action, as the scene was pivotal to how Swift saw herself. Swift discussed her struggle with her own eating disorder in her documentary Miss Americana.
This is all to say that when she refuses to acknowledge something that her fans are talking about, it’s a choice.
She’s a “White Feminist”
It all started at the 2013 Golden Globes when hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler made a dumb joke about Swift. Per Billboard:
Fey — in a style she later referred to as “crazy aunt” — warned Swift to stay away from Sam Michael Fox in her pursuit for a new beau. “You know what Taylor Swift? You stay away from Michael J. Fox’s son,” said Fey. “Or go for it,” Poehler replied. “No, she needs some me-time to learn about herself,” Fey suggested before going on to introduce the next celebrity.
As far as award show banter goes, it was not on par with that horrendous Oscar number We Saw Your Boobs, which would air the following month, just in case you forgot how it was acceptable to be that gross and sexist openly 10 years ago. Swift, though, did not have a sense of humor about it. Per the above source:
Swift began her habit of shutting down sexist jokes and claims during her cover story for Vanity Fair, when she responded to the now two-month-old joke. “You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people,” Swift began her reply. “Because she said to me she had heard a quote that she loved, that said, ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’” The quote was later credited to Madeleine Albright.
As the article points out, this was a turning point for Swift where she began to advocate for herself on a feminist level. However, that feminist view extended basically only to Swift. What can you expect, when it’s Lena Dunham who Swift initially credited for educating her about feminism?
Case in point, Swift’s Twitter feud with Nicki Minaj in 2015 over the MTV Video Music Awards nominations, when Minaj was upset her video for Anaconda was not nominated and she took to Twitter to voice her displeasure.
Please note, at no point does she call Taylor Swift out by name here. However, Taylor took offense and replied back to Minaj in a since-deleted tweet. Per Bustle:
@NICKIMINAJ I’ve done nothing but love & support you. It’s unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot.
If you’re not aware, white feminism is where white women center themselves in “feminist” discourse sucking up all the air in the room in the process, with no space for intersectionality, and where white women frequently paint themselves as victims in the narrative. So, basically what Swift was doing in the exchange with Minaj.
To add further fuel to the Taylor Swift is-a-white-feminist fire, for a while, white supremacists loved Taylor Swift. She was an apolitical blonde-haired blue-eyed woman, and these fans even referred to her as an “Aryan goddess.” Now, if you believe in the tenets of feminism, there’s no room for racism in the conversation. So, did she speak out as soon as publications picked up on this fact in 2016? No, she didn’t.
In fact, it would be more than two years before she said anything political, coming out in favor of voting for the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections just two months shy of her 29th birthday. To contrast this, Beyonce (arguably the only woman who might eclipse Swift’s fame at this point) proudly campaigned for Barack Obama’s 2008 election, at the age of 27. One of these things is not like the other …
Finally, as The Mary Sue has already covered, when the sh*t hit the fan with the Healy relationship, Swift hid behind her collaboration with Ice Spice, a Black woman. The move felt like Swift was saying, “See? I have Black friends!” while refusing to comment on her rumored boyfriend’s disgusting habit of watching porn that gleefully celebrates the denigration of Black women. Gross.
Her Private Jet is Terrible for the Environment
Another controversy that Swift can’t shake off is that she is one of the least eco-friendly celebrities out there in terms of carbon emissions, due to her prolific private jet use. In 2022, Swift logged more carbon emissions on her two private jets than any other celebrity. Per Buzzfeed:
Taylor Swift has racked up more emissions on her own in just seven months than 1,184 average people would put out in a year.
In fact, her two jets took 170 flights in a mere 200 days this year, with her total amount of CO2 flight emissions for the year, as of July 20, being 8,293.54 metric tons. According to Yard’s report, the average person emits just 7 metric tons of CO2 a year.
The article stated that Swift’s average flight time was a mere 80 minutes. That’s a disgusting amount of consumption for one person’s jet. The article states that Swift’s jet emitted 1,000 metric tons more CO2 than the next celebrity on the list, Floyd Mayweather.
Her rep fought against this, saying the jets were loaned out frequently as if that makes it better?! OK, so it’s not this specific rich person solely responsible for emitting the carbon, it’s also the rich people who have access to her. Well gee, I feel much better about that, don’t you?
The Ticketmaster ‘Great War‘
Of everything you can side-eye Swift for, this is probably the weakest and I say that as someone who waited eight hours in a Ticketmaster queue to score nose-bleed seats to the Eras tour. (Pre-Healy BS, of course.)
In case you weren’t one of the millions of people who tried to get tickets to Swift’s first tour since 2018, there was a big old mess when Ticketmaster completely botched the sales process for Swift’s North American tour, severely underestimating the demand. The geniuses there decided to funnel everyone who was selected into the verified fan presale on the same day. Naturally, this brought the entire site down, causing some people to wait hours in the virtual queue while Ticketmaster tried to get its act together. Spoiler alert: they did not. Many fans who attempted to buy tickets were left out in the cold, and scalpers immediately put theirs on secondary resale sites for tens of thousands of dollars. It was obscene, and due to the demand, tickets never went on sale to the general public, as they were all snatched up in the various presales.
Swifties began to describe the process of procuring a ticket and fighting through the Ticketmaster BS as “The Great War” in reference to a Midnights 3 am version track of the same name. To add salt to the wound, the few tickets that were available once you got through the queue were “VIP” which cost more than regular tickets (something I saw with my own eyes when I was able to finally buy my tickets.) Anecdotally, on the day of my concert, the section where I had my obstructed side view tickets were going for $1500 plus, whereas I paid $49 (without fees.) To say the markup on these tickets was obscene is an understatement.
Ticketmaster screwed up so spectacularly that the company was called to Congress to testify. The only thing that unites both Democrats and Republicans is how badly Ticketmaster sucks.
Swift got some of the blame but was quick to throw Ticketmaster under the bus via her Instagram stories, where she claimed the company had “assured” her they could meet the demand for her tour.
Swift Will Probably Shake This Off
The Eras tour will most likely make Swift a billionaire, and she is on the top of the charts due to releasing Midnights yet again. None of the controversies I’ve outlined have ever had a lasting impact on Swift or her career. She will be fine which, as a fan, is even more puzzling that she won’t address the current controversy over Healy. She’s Teflon, at the top of her career, so refusing to mention it only seems like complicity. Swift probably put it best in her lyrics to Mastermind, the end track on Midnights:
What if I told you I’m a mastermind?
And now you’re mine
It was all by design
‘Cause I’m a mastermind
She knows exactly what she’s doing, this is all her choice to remain silent. It’s up to everyone else to decide what to do with that information.
(featured image: John Shearer/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
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