When Did the Media Plow Against Taylor Swift?

Photo-Illustration: Kelly Chiello and Photo past Getty Images

Remember when Taylor Swift wasn't a villain?

It's difficult to imagine now, later a week that saw her become up against Kimye and seemingly confirm every bad feeling you may have had almost her, but every bit recently as ii years ago, a lot of smart, progressive people were on her side. Glamour once cheered her for "making too absurd uncool," while the Times dubbed 2014 "The Year of Taylor Swift." You tin can still notice hints of this vanished era if you stumble through former web log posts — we once lived in a world where it was generally accepted that Swift was a kind, genuine person.

Now, though? Now a site can publish a roundtable called "When Did Yous Beginning Realize Taylor Swift Was Lying to You?" and information technology's among the nicer Swift takes. When did the media plough on the woman who, for a cursory, shining moment, was one of the chattering class's most beloved popular stars? That'southward what we're here today to find out.

(Caveat: When we talk almost the media, we're mostly talking virtually the recollect-piecing-littoral-elites media. The mainstream tabloid media —People ,U.s. Weekly, etc. — has e'er been Team Taylor.)

Swift didn't beginning out in our skilful graces, of form. She had to work to go there. Even though she hailed from suburban Pennsylvania, she read equally culturally "red" at first, with those fiddles, Southern vowels, and heteronormative fantasies of romantic bliss. You lot didn't have to look too deeply into her early piece of work to observe a conservative streak: "Fifteen" was sex-negative; "Moving picture to Burn" contained an unfortunate gay joke.In 2009, Sady Doyle wrote the approved hit piece, dubbing the "You Belong With Me" video "a triumph of girl-on-girl sexism," and slamming Swift's "cartoonishly innocent and pure … blonde blue-eyed white girl thing [which] strikes me equally simply every bit artificial and calculated every bit any other pop star's personal brand, with an added noxiousness due to its edge of moral superiority and 'l's-style coy submissiveness."

Her third anthology, 2010's Speak At present, did little to plough things effectually. "Better Than Revenge" just solidified the idea of Swift as a slut-shamer who didn't support other women, and her performance of "Innocent" at the 2010 VMAs, which opened with a replay of the Kanye West incident of the previous year, gave the vibe of someone who was a little too comfortable painting herself as the victim of an angry blackness man. Coupled with the Surprise Face up meme, Swift'southward star image caused a sour subtext: She was cold, calculating, false.

The release of Red in 2012 saw Taylor nab her first No. 1 single and arise into the upper echelon of the A-list. She wore a lot of bright patriotic colors during this flow, and had recently dated a Kennedy; to many, she seemed the musical embodiment of American hegemony — an aircraft carrier in high-waisted shorts. As Foster Kamer and Ernest Baker explained in Complex: "Neither you, nor the charts, nor whatever homo, woman, or mortal being will e'er stand in her way.It's not a terrible thing, or a great thing. It'due south just a fact, like gravity … She wasn't congenital to lose, in the same way Goldman Sachs wasn't built to lose, either."

The Red promo tour saw Swift give a archetype nonanswer to the obligatory are-you-a-feminist question ("I don't actually think about things as guys versus girls"), but it also saw the seeds of her eventual transformation. That fall, Swift began a public friendship with Lena Duham — about as "blue" a celebrity as you lot can go — and the Girls creator soon provided a strong defense of Swift to Vulture: "Anyone who thinks Taylor Swift isn't good for the girl crusade has to be crazy, because any woman who'due south dominating the charts, the creative director of her own empire, and made whatever millions of dollars terminal twelvemonth is simply lifting us upwards." This was a very specific version of feminism, but it was a version of feminism still.

Over the next two years, Swift fabricated a series of major life changes. In spring 2014, she moved to New York City. She joined Tumblr, and started lurking in her fans' social media. She became friends with people like Tavi, Lorde, and Jack Antonoff. She called out the press for focusing too much on her relationships with men, and gave quotes virtually the importance of female friendship. In an interview with The Guardian, she came out equally a feminist. A charitable read is that Swift was simply growing equally a person equally she entered her mid-20s. A more cynical outlook is that, in the words of BuzzFeed'south Anne Helen Petersen, she was employing "an incredibly savvy paradigm maintenance strategy." These interpretations are not mutually exclusive.

Whatever her intentions, the reactions to Swift's transformation were effusive. (So effusive, in fact, that she was largely able to shake off her first racial-cribbing scandal.) She became one of the few people to ever appear on both the cover of Fourth dimension and the embrace of Maxim, discussing sisterhood and solidarity in both. SNL made a sketch about the feeling of vertigo that came from realizing you enjoyed a Taylor Swift vocal. Vulture published so many stories nearly her — including a glossary and a walking tour, both of which I contributed to — that commenters were on the verge of open rebellion. The Guardian mocked the enthusiastic reception to the "Blank Space" video with a post titled, "How Taylor Swift'southward 'Blank Space' video redefines music, politics and everything else e'er," and that false-hyperbolic take was but barely an exaggeration of the paper's actual one. At year'southward end, Mic, usually a reliable indicator of the way the progressive air current is blowing, found "9 Times Taylor Swift Was Right Nearly Feminism in 2014." Through sheer force of attempt, Swift had managed to volition herself a new identity every bit a feminist fairy godmother.

Of class, as any adult female tin tell you lot, the moment you telephone call yourself a feminist is but setting up the moment y'all'll be chosen a bad feminist. Over the grade of 2015, Swift managed to lose much of the goodwill she'd built upwardly in the press. How? Information technology came down to iii things:

ane. Overexposure
Swift kicked off her 1989 World Tour in the summer of 2015 with a central gimmick: To cement the theme of female person friendship, the shows would often come across Swift "welcome to the stage" a surprise guest — sometimes ane woman, sometimes many women — whom, it was implied, Swift personally admired. (Men were occasionally invited too, especially if they had a hit single Swift could perform.) The content industry'south interest in a topic dries upward only when the page views do, so these appearances earned a hefty dose of coverage — which meant that Swift and her suddenly ubiquitous "team" were in the news every time she made another tour cease. Oh, and the bout lasted six months.

ii. The complicated legacy of "White Feminism"
Information technology's increasingly pop to utilize celebrities every bit signposts (or, every bit Roxane Gay puts it, "brand ambassadors") for various strains of political thought; an informed observer can now pinpoint all the means "Tina Fey feminism" is different from "Beyoncé feminism." This development has been very benign for the media — amusement news spreads better when injected with a dose of political signaling, and potentially abstract political discussions spread better if they're attached to a recognizable name — and for an artist, in that location tin exist definite benefits in having your piece of work linked with a specific politics. But the risks are heightened, besides: Your failings become not just the failings of a person, but the failings of an ideology, and must be denounced even more than loudly.

As the think pieces about Swift, her "squad," and feminism piled up, a few writers ran contrary to the hyperbole. At Gawker, Dayna Evans wrote the first major takedown of Swift's YAAS-QUEEN era. (Full disclosure: Evans, a staff writer for the Cut, is now my New York co-worker.) In a concert review titled "Taylor Swift Is Not Your Friend," Evans wrote:

To think of [Swift] equally womanhood incarnate is to trick oneself into forgetting about "Bad Claret" and "Meliorate Than Revenge."
Swift isn't hither to help women — she's here to brand bank. Seeing her on phase cavorting with Globe Cup winners and supermodels was not a win for feminism, only a win for Taylor Swift. Her program — to exist as famous and as rich equally she can possibly exist — is working, and by using other women as tools of her self-promotion, she is distilling feminism for her own do good.

In some means, this was a repeat of the old criticism of Swift as a creature of calculated self-interest. Just because she had been so successful at politicizing her image, the critique was politicized as well: Swift became an embodiment of "white feminism," a make of progressivism that centers wealthy white women at the expense of everyone else. (Like a hipster or a neoliberal, no one identifies as a white feminist.) Critics before long fell over themselves pointing out that Swift's clique was really merely an exclusive group of more often than not white actresses and supermodels. As Mic now put information technology, Swift's #squadgoals were "totally disturbing."

3. The feud with Nicki Minaj
That line of critique might accept been too abstract to catch on … until Swift fabricated it painfully concrete in July 2015 by getting into a Twitter spat with Nicki Minaj over the VMA nominations. One time once again, Swift tried to paint herself every bit a victim of a black artist, and this time, she was clearly in the wrong; in the words of The Guardian's Nosheen Iqbal, Swift was "at best patronizing and ignorant; at worst vacuous and self-absorbed."

The negative reading of Swift, that she was another white woman whose feminism didn't extend past her own forepart door, was widely embraced every bit the correct one. She eventually apologized — a rare sight — but the damage had already been done. By the fall, Aaron Bady was calling the "Wildest Dreams" video "cornball for a time when yous could be nostalgic for white supremacy." Not besides long after, even Hurry was writing lists of "5 Important Reasons I Can't Love Taylor Swift Anymore."

Swift was savvy enough to grab the mood in the air. "I retrieve people might need a break from me," she told NME in Oct of last twelvemonth, floating the idea of taking fourth dimension off subsequently the conclusion of the bout. This didn't happen: West dropped "Famous" four months later, which thrust the spotlight dorsum on Swift. The drama basically hasn't permit up from there.

At times Swift seems to be replaying a darker version of the Speak Now era: Instead of a perhaps-fake relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, there'southward a probably-fake relationship with Tom Hiddleston; instead of a vague sense of Swift controlling events to make herself the victim, there's actual video proof. At present,even a relatively innocuous story nigh songwriting credits somehow carries a sinister air. The seemingly incommunicable has happened: Swift experienced a very public invasion of privacy, and basically no one was on her side. Having been manipulated into loving Taylor once, the media swears, it won't be fooled once more.

When Did the Media Plough Against Taylor Swift?