Taylor Swift is a White Feminist and IDK Why I'm Totally Fine With That

It's been 15 years, and I'm still in love with her, even after the jet thing

What do we expect from celebrities? I ask myself this a lot whenever someone I love or admire is “cancelled” for something big or small. It could be something as simple as a tone-deaf tweet about race 10 years ago, or they’re one of the many abusers being called out in the #MeToo movement. Often, it’s a K-Pop idol who is completely ignorant of other cultures. Like anyone else on the internet, I have written many unsavoury tweets (when they were still called that) supporting the “cancellation” of multiple celebrity mistakes. Even though I only read one or two articles. I felt high on my horse.

But there is one parasocial relationship that I cannot cut off—Taylor Swift.

If you read the sub-headline, I mentioned that I have been a fan for almost 15 years now. Ever since I heard “Teardrops on My Guitar” on the radio when I was 12. At first, I listened to it thinking of my one-sided crush and then the next thing I know it was on my Friendster account. If you’re not familiar with Friendster, it’s like a cringe version of 2014 Tumblr pages meet Myspace. So, whenever someone visits my account, they will hear Taylor singing “Drew looks at me…” thinking I went through the worst break-up ever. Despite being 12 and never having a boyfriend.

My crush soon faded and the discovery of Taylor Swift’s early discography turned into an intense hyper fixation. I watched everything. Her vlogs, her Myspace updates, and cheered when called out Joe Jonas on the Ellen Show. I was completely head over heels for the woman. Every “Who Inspired Me” essay for school was about Taylor Swift. My tone-deaf ears tried very hard to memorize every song in every album she’d released.

I was the internet fangirl people warned you about—vicious, vindictive, and very annoying. Someone would say she only writes about boys and breakups, I defended her and called them sexist. They say she dates too many men, I told them they probably are single and lonely. Even during my One Direction era, I fought anyone online who had something to say about Harry Styles and Taylor Swift. If you thought K-Pop stans are scary, you never saw a 16-year-old queer girl hopelessly devoted to Taylor Swift.

This is an actual excerpt from my old Tumblr blog, where I threatened my followers if they ever said any ill thing about my favourite blondie.

She made me feel like she was my best friend. I projected my feelings of teenage loneliness and obsessive personality on a woman I’ll never meet. Because every tweet, Tumblr post, and Easter egg lyric felt like it was just in between us. A secret. An invitation to her world—quite literally, too. During Swift’s Red Era, she invited fans to her house for a listening party and baked cookies. This fuelled my delusion, which continued to drive my love for her.

Then Tom Hiddleston, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian happened. It’s no secret that Taylor Swift is a calculating kind of person. Taylor Swift is a marketing and PR genius. She knows what to say and how to react, so people focus on the public image she crafted for herself. Whether it’s the sweet country girl-next-door or a wholesome pop girlie, we buy what she’s trying to sell. Every time. Then it started slipping down the moment Tom Hiddleston wore an “I <3 TS” shirt. People assumed it was for publicity, their relationship was not real. Rather, it was a pretty good payday for both paparazzi and Swift’s PR team.

Then people complained about her “shocked” face whenever she wins awards. Fake. Even when Taylor met Hiddleston’s mother in London, people kept tweeting fake, fake, fake, and fake. Taylor Swift was fake. As if she owed her real personality and real life to us. That didn’t matter. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West decided it for us.

The calm before the storm.

Here’s a short catch-up on this big crack in Taylor’s picture-perfect public image Kim and Kanye shattered:

• Kanye West said that Taylor gave him permission for his song Famous, which became the lead single off his album “The Life of Pablo.” The lyrics included the line, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous.”

• Taylor said that Kanye never called her for approval and felt blindsided by the “I made that bitch famous” part.

• During her acceptance speech for Album of the Year at the 2016 Grammys, Taylor passive-aggressively called out Kanye West.

• Kim Kardashian defended her then-husband, Kanye West, saying Taylor knew about the song and even released a video of a phone call between Swift and West talking about the song, where Taylor heard the lyrics and supported it.

• The infamous notes app explanation and the iconic “I would like to be excluded from this narrative.”

She may have deleted all of her past posts but the internet is forever.

Taylor’s reputation took a massive hit. Everyone called her a fake bitch, a snake, and a try-hard victim. She was venomous. Then people called her out for her Girl Squad, which was mostly a bunch of white women. Which then snowballed into a conversation about how she rarely supports Black and POC artists in the industry unless the headlines would benefit her.

Cue in the Twitter feud with Nicki Minaj.

Minaj called out the 2015 Video Music Awards for snubbing her Anaconda video for a nomination, while the roster of nominations included a lot of slim women. Similar to anyone with a fragile white ego, Taylor took this as a personal jab at herself, as her Bad Blood music video was nominated. Luckily, she apologized after realizing that the tweet was never really about her. So, why did she feel like it was?

Her feminism hung on the line of the “women supporting women” point of view without any intersectionality. It was shallow. But once Reputation came out, we sort of forgot that specific criticism about Swift. We praised her comeback and how she was reclaiming her narrative and public image.

Pre-Lover Era, Taylor has never spoken up on issues about LGBTQIA+ or racism. Anytime the topic would be mentioned, she was quiet. Heck, people thought she supported Trump because her silence during the 2016 elections was truly that loud.

Of course, Taylor did try to step out of the White Feminist label through her documentary Miss Americana.

Now, this is where a lot of people felt she has finally realized the influence she has as a celebrity and not just an artist. She wanted to harness the full power of her voice for something good. Her documentary addressed every single issue that she avoided during earlier parts of her career. Taylor spoke about her battle with body dysmorphia, her mother's cancer diagnosis, her sexual assault trial, and finally going public with her political views, including LGBTQIA+ allyship. She explained that her silence was because of her people-pleasing tendencies and her need to be likeable.

Quite relatable to anyone who has ever felt like they had to suppress their views to avoid any unnecessary criticism or conflict.

Needing to speak up about beliefs I'd always had because it felt like an opportunity to shed light on what those trials are like. I experienced it as a person with extreme privilege, so I can only imagine what it's like when you don't have that. And I think one theme that ended up emerging in the film [Miss Americana] is what happens when you are not just a people pleaser but someone who's always been respectful of authority figures, doing what you were supposed to do, being polite at all costs.

— Taylor Swift, Variety 2020

Taylor Swift may not be a feminist icon and The Man is a surface-level song about misogyny, but still quite catchy. At least, we see her try to be better. She is speaking out as much as she can and cherry-pick issues that she believes her voice can amplify. Yes, her activism is performative, not perfect, but it’s an effort. So, I took those crumbs and ate them up like any devoted fan who grew up loving her.

Then there’s the private jet issue. Back in July 2022, it was revealed that Taylor had the worst private jet CO2 emissions of that year, with an average flight time of just 80 minutes. So, she was branded as a climate criminal.

For this I have no defence, there’s nothing there to defend anyway. Her two jets flying in seven months caused a huge amount of CO2 emissions that roughly 1,184 average people would put out in a year. Now, this is all before any world tour. So nothing is justifying these short private trips.

And yet, people like me still desperately want a ticket to The Eras tour. Unless we’re all deluded and think she may not be using a private jet. Let’s be real, she is, and I still don’t know how to feel about that.

I never expected anything more from Taylor Swift than good music and poetic lyrics. She’s a pop star. Her job is to make music and perform. What else is she supposed to do? Of course, I expect her not to be overtly racist despite dating one and then collaborating with Ice Spice to distance herself from said racist (ex) boyfriend. I also hope she treats her staff well and compensates them fairly—the girl has two private jets she should be paying them well.

My love for Taylor Swift can simply be boiled down to separating the art from the artist. I don’t know Taylor Swift personally.

I can say I’ve known her since I was 12, yet it’s only the parts she’s willing to show us. Miss Americana is a glimpse, not a window to her life. Whether it’s for publicity to salvage her public image or her amazing music. I love Taylor Swift, the artist. It’s a lame excuse, but there’s no other way of going about it. I can’t ignore the headlines that follow her, and neither can I stop listening to her songs. No matter what other people or the media may say, I’ll always be a fan.

The Taylor I know is the artist behind Fearless, Speak Now, Red, Reputation, Lover, Folklore, Evermore, and Midnights.

What else can I do? Sure, there are more problematic artists out there who have done far worse. Yes, it sounds like an excuse, but as the title of this essay says, I don’t know why, I’m totally fine with it all.

How about you? Are you a Swiftie who cares about Taylor’s reputation, or do you just love her music? Should we separate the art from this artist?