Web Crush Wednesdays: FeministTaylorSwift

I don’t know about you guys, but I am not a fan of Taylor Swift. I don’t like her music because it always focuses on the most vapid, clichéd high school problems. Seriously, until very recently I actually thought Taylor Swift was only like eighteen and had just graduated from high school. But most of all, I don’t like the messages that Taylor Swift sends with her music. Many of her songs seem to support ideals of submissive, male-dominated women, but my biggest problem is her songs that describe how anything stereotypically feminine is bad.

For example:

She wears high heels,
I wear sneakers.
She’s cheer captain,
And I’m on the bleachers.

Anytime I hear this song I just want to send Taylor Swift a gold star and congratulate her on not being stereotypically feminine. Good for you, Taylor Swift! What a special and unique little snowflake you are!

To be clear I don’t think there is anything wrong if you are a girl and not stereotypically feminine. All girls/women are different and that’s fine. What I have a problem with is Taylor Swift’s proclaiming that she is so much better than this other girl because she herself isn’t feminine. Yikes!

Taylor Swift is someone young girls look up to, so it worries me to hear lyrics like this or to read about how Taylor Swift avoids calling herself a feminist (in fact she seems to view feminism as the opposite of wanting equality).

So I was more than a little happy to see that some viewed Taylor Swift as just as problematic as I do. An anonymous Twitter handle going by FeministTaylorSwift began rewriting Taylor Swift’s own lyrics to put a more feminist spin on them.

Here are some of my favorites:

Accounts like FeministTaylorSwift are important because it helps us look at the major problems in our media. As Dodai Stewart, a writer for Jezebel, said of Taylor Swift:

Some may argue that Taylor Swift is a role model, a class-act in the drugged-up, sexed-up music industry. But do we need another photogenic cisgendered carefree white girl singing heteronormative songs about mooning over boys? (source)

I love FeministTaylorSwift, but every time I read a new tweet all I do is wish for songs that actually reflected these feminist themes. Until then, if you aren’t following FeministTalorSwift, you should be.