#taylor #taylorswift #blakelively

I was a huge Taylor Swift fan for years, I have paid hundreds into that brand, so I am going to have an opinion on this whether or not it upsets the Swifties or not. I could maybe give Taylor Swift the benefit of the doubt if she hadn't spent the better part of a decade leading a very public campaign on the moral importance of artists owning their own creative work. Framing creative control not merely as a contractual or financial issue, but as an ethical one, a matter of principle, a line in the sand about power, exploitation, and who gets to shape a narrative when it comes to one's own creativity. I could maybe give Taylor Swift the benefit of the doubt if she hadn't spent the same decade speaking at length about how language is weaponized, how the words we choose to describe people we dislike are not neutral, how labels carry weight and have consequences, how they can harm diminish and dehumanize, or whilst repeatedly positioning herself as someone uniquely aware of that damage, and frequently as a victim of it. Especially when she herself has said in her own words, direct quote, "you don't get to control someone's emotional response to being called that bitch in front of the entire world." Or alternatively quote, "there is no such thing as a slut, there is no such thing as a bitch, there is no such thing as someone who is bossy, there is just a boss." These are moral statements, used to frame her world view, her feminism, her activism, her brand, and her credibility in the eyes of the public and her fandom. Now the Swifties are out in their droves saying that their private texts to their friends are way worse. Okay, good for you I guess, at least you are owning your own narrative, not a flex, but crack on my flowers. Be as spiteful as you want to be to people in your life, but, and it's a big but. You have not spent the last decade positioning yourself as a petrol victim of misogynistic language. You have not built an entire public moral framework around how words harm people. You have not run a multi-million dollar Taylor's version rebrand centered on the ethical importance of artists owning their work in narratives. You have not repeatedly used that framework to claim cultural and ethical high ground. She has, you may have clapped along and said yay, I'm sure you did, but she is the hypocrite. You can be a mean girl in private, on text messages to your friends, all you like. Not ideal, but human. People do it, but Taylor's riff is being held to the standard that she herself set. Again, she did this. I've given you her quotes. She placed the gold posts. She sold them, she monetized them, and now people are pointing out that she has scored an own goal, rightly so. Nobody is holding her to a standard of their own. They are holding her to her standards that she put out into the world as her brand. I'm not criticizing her language. I'm criticizing her hypocrisy. Very specifically, the act of selling, selling one set of values to the world, profiting from the moralising them, and then doing the exact opposite in a setting she assumed would remain unseen. The other significant difference between you and your besties being mean in a personal message chat against whoever is in your life is this. You have no power. None. You have no status, power, influence or money to actively do anything more than be petty in the chat. You cannot get out and actually put weight behind your words. You have no means to do so. She does. She does, and she did, and that power was being used to give Blake the upper hand was Taylor played. Looks like it, but this is a tough lesson. And what it reveals is a significant fracture in the image that she has carefully constructed and projected for years. Not just projected, sold, sold to you, sold to me, and I bought it, and that is why I'm going to speak about it. That brand now appears to be conditional. As to whether or not you see her private text messages or not, that is the issue. Call me a hater like we're in third grade. I do not care. I didn't set those goal posts. She did.