Taylor Swift
Dear Taylor Swift,
Damn your catchy songs.
No longer dropping tears on guitars, you continue to embrace the “crazy” label brought on by the dozens of gossip magazines I hate, and that’s awesome.
Spinning the largest attack against you into a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign is commendable, but that said, I draw a line right before you sing over the corpse of an ex-lover.
The crazy-girlfriend concept is and always will be a clear slight on any gender-equality movement, and it normalizes unhealthy relationships. The second half of Swift’s new music video for “Blank Space” doesn’t help the gender-equality effort; if anything, it’s a step backward.
I’m not for the age-old argument for protection of the young and impressionable. Everyone from 5 to 50 years old gets that this music video is a joke, but the butt of the joke is the crazy ex-girlfriend. That’s a problem.
Mental health isn’t funny, and any effort to make it funny places the issues on a national stage in the wrong way. Swift hasn’t become the poster child of mental health stigmatization, but she’s far from the solution.
Needed disclaimer: I’m on my 14th (this article is making it 15th) playthrough of 1989. I also have an elementary school-grade crush on Swift, so writing this is a bit of a catch-22.
Swift could be falling into the growing trend of female pop Top-100 artists making controversy just for the ratings. She is no Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball, but this video is an obvious attempt to push the envelope. It’s a tightrope that led Cyrus to her post-Disney fame but was followed by harsh blowback from unimpressed fans.
Swift is not in this game to alienate. Scott Borchetta, the CEO of her label, Big Machine Label Group, said Swift won’t put her songs on Spotify because the label doesn’t want to embarrass fans who invest in her music and buy the album, regardless of whether it’s free on Spotify.
I will continue to listen to this song, which arguably makes me the worst essayist in a 1,000-mile radius. My point isn’t to make a stand: Swift will make a lot of money off this album, and she should, because it’s catchier than “Too Many Cooks.” This video is a misstep in a series of well-played decisions by Swift to appeal to a completely different market.
Taking your persona from country to pop is no small feat. The surprisingly original 1989 could trick the average fan into thinking Swift was always into these electric beats. Somehow in such an oversaturated market, Swift has carved out a unique sound with “Wildest Dreams,” “Style” and even “Blank Space.”
The moral of the story: Cut the charade. Stop the crazy act. It harms the face of any true mental health efforts. And no artist who frames herself as a passe feminist (as Swift stated in an August Guardian article) should go on to feed such a prevalent and harmful stereotype about women in relationships. There’s a difference between owning an insult and joining in the ridicule.
Because of this video, high school guys sitting outside class will feel more inclined than ever to label their girlfriends as more examples of crazy ones — by the end of it, they’ll laugh.
And you know what? That’s partially on Swift.
