In case you somehow missed it, this week, Taylor Swift announced her engagement to her footballer boyfriend Travis Kelce. Along with the happy tears of millions of Swifties there was something else that emerged, as it always does when Taylor Swift lives her life.
An undercurrent of resentment, even hatred for Taylor that as a Swiftie for over a decade I know All Too Well. And while some of the criticism is very valid, there’s a lot of it which very much isn’t.
There are some valid criticisms of Taylor Swift
So let’s start off with what is valid criticism of Taylor Swift and work our way out.
Many dislike her because of one part of what she’s become the figurehead for – a capitalist system which makes it impossible for newer artists to break into whilst pushing out constant repeats of, lets be honest, the same merch. The excessive amounts of album variations, the same cheaply made cardigans because her and her management know fans will buy every single thing they can. It’s excessive and comes across as greedy. There’s also the sheer amount of money she has and makes off of every single album drop, merch drop tour and the countless variations. In a world of extreme poverty, richness of her level shouldn’t exist, it’s as simple as that.
But there’s also what she’s done for the music industry. Before she started releasing Taylor versions there was very little awareness of how music ownership worked, and that the musician actually owned very little of the rights to their music, videos, and even image. Since this, many other artists have been able to fight for masters rights when negotiating contracts and reclaimed their own masters.
I’ve seen a lot of criticisms around her owning a private jet, which again shouldn’t be a thing that exists when the planet is dying and being ravaged by carbon emissions. But it’s also true that Taylor bought double the amount of carbon offsets than she would need. Carbon offsets go towards things like planting new forests or conserving current ones.
Many argue that if she didn’t fly by private jet she wouldn’t have to offset her carbon usage, but as the most famous woman in the world its impractical for airlines and not to mention unsafe for her not to. Just search her name on any social media site to see the sheer amount of hatred and threats this woman gets every day.
Most criticism is thinly veiled misogyny
But lets be honest, most criticisms of Taylor Swift aren’t about her wealth hoarding or carbon emissions: they’re deep-rooted in misogyny.
It’s men who think a woman shouldn’t be so famous, shouldn’t empower other women to advocate for themselves, and know themselves. It’s the sort of men who will direct hatred at a woman for simply attending the football game of the man she loves. It’s the sort of men who will send her death and rape threats and we won’t bat an eyelid when the president of the United States incites hatred on her and her fans – until one man decides to take a machete to a dance class where her young fans just wanted to dance and sing along to her songs and make friendship bracelets and it’s suddenly all about “protecting our girls”.
And there’s been a lot of criticisms about The Eras Tour, but there’s a lot to defend Taylor’s tour for too.
Yes, she is a billionaire who became inextricably rich from a tour which lasted two years. But she worked herself to the bone for those two years, her tour created microeconomies and boosted the economies of the places she visited. All her staff on her tour were paid incredibly well, with them also receiving regular bonuses, she’s also had a lot of the same musicians, singers, backstage staff and team for most of her career.
She has helped families buy houses, seen kids through college. Her charitable donations are also immense. She donated thousands to food banks and local grassroots charities in every city the Eras tour stopped at – and those are just the charitable donations we know about.
Terror threats and how the Taylor Swift community uplifted each other
There’s also the sheer JOY of the Eras Tour: getting to experience a stadium full of mostly women screaming our hearts out, dancing with our best friends, trading bracelets and sobbing with both happiness and grief and heartbreak is something I will never forget. Getting to do that with my best friend in the whole world is one of my most cherished memories.
Taylor Swift is a woman who empowers other women so much that men feel the need to silence her in every way possible, including threatening the lives of thousands of her fans with terror threats. Her Vienna leg of the tour was cancelled after three teenagers were arrested for planning a terror attack during her shows.
What came after the cancelled shows was a display of just how wonderful the fandom is. When the Southport attack happened, Swifties raised thousands for those affected for hospital care, funerals, and to support the hospital. They sent care packages and friendship bracelets in their thousands. When the Vienna shows cancellations were announced at such short notice, many fans were already in the city, so they all came together in their thousands to hold a vigil, sing songs, trade bracelets and hold each other in a show of grief and resilience.
She has also empowered fans to stand up against the creep of fascism in America. Shortly after it was announced that the 2024 presidential race would be Trump v Harris, Swifties 4 Kamala mobilised, thousands of fans held drives to help their friends and neighbours register to vote and held mass planning and rallying zooms. The collective is still going now, renamed Swifties 4 Hope. Their mission is to “educate, advocate, activate and celebrate”.
Having to justify cancelling shows due to terror
Even after cancelling her shows to protect herself and her fans, Taylor Swift received scorn. Many criticised her having an armoured police escort around London, as if the lives of her, her team, and fans hadn’t been threatened days before. She was also bitched about for not speaking about the suspected attack and carrying on with her tour. She took to Instagram once the European leg of the tour had ended to clarify that she did this in order to stay safe:
Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows.
She underscored her point with:
In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it is with great relief that I can say we did that.
More than anything though, she just makes me feel seen
But more than anything though, the reason I will defend Taylor Swift to the hilt is because she makes me and women like me feel seen. There may be a significant wealth gap between Dr Swift and me, but at the heart of it she’s also a woman in her mid thirties trying to make sense of life.
A woman who has grew up under such deep scrutiny and never stopped writing and singing about the things that are important to her. In a world that tells women they should be happy with what they’ve got, settle and dull their sparkle to please men who are supposed to want them to thrive, she says “I love you, but i love sparkling”. She has created tapestries and given so many of us a new language to describe our hurt, anguish, pain, and joy. “Who’s afraid of little old me” became a rallying cry for all who’d been underestimated then had men attempt to silence and destroy them.
And now after years of seeing her (from a distance) fall for man after man who wanted to use her for her fame and then have the courage to leave a relationship that’s failing, she’s found someone who truly adores her. Travis is a fan of Taylor Swift first and her boyfriend second, well her fiancée now – and people have still got a problem with it.
And now Taylor Swift can’t even be happy and engaged
From a weird part of the fandom there’s bizarre claims that she’s gone “tradwife” because she’s had the audacity to take a break from churning out music – after she was on tour for two whole years – and spent her time building a house with a man she loves. When if they look close enough, they’ll see a woman who is for the first time in a long time, living life on her terms.
There’s also the criticism coming from a lot of the left that this was the wrong time for her to announce an engagement whilst the world burns, but newsflash the world is always fucking burning. Was she supposed to wait and have it leaked to the press, once again stripping her of her agency? Yes it is crass as fuck seeing newspaper after newspaper abandon headlines about Gaza in favour of the Tayvis engagement, but that isn’t Taylor Swift’s doing.
The media bookending murder with her ring and speculation over who will design her dress is vulgar, but it’s a symptom of a media who will always find anyway they can to paper over atrocities.
Swifties contain multitudes
The criticism of Taylor Swift extends to her fandom. That we shouldn’t be all simping over another new album from a billionaire whilst children are murdered by Israel in Palestine, and that us focusing on how beautiful her engagement shoot is, means we don’t care about fascism on our own shores. But as Swift has shown, women contain so many fucking multitudes. We can highlight atrocities and raise awareness of systemic discrimination.
I struggled with a Taylor Swift lyric to end this on but I think the most beautiful one, which typifies what she brings to the world and her fans is this:
So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it, you’ve got no reason to be afraid.
There are many reasons to criticise Taylor, but me and so many women like me will also be here to defend her.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.