Exploring the Taylor Swift Love-Hate Relationship
Image Credit: Eva Rinaldi via Flickr
What’s the big deal with Taylor Swift? Since her biggest-grossing (in the world! in history!) Eras Tour, people can’t seem to stop talking about her. In this article we’ll dive into the reasons why there’s so much hype surrounding Swift–and alternatively the abundance of hate directed towards her.
Swift’s fans, better known as “Swifties,” have the reputation of being a little too “obsessed” with Swift’s music, even if they’re just looking up to her as a positive role model. Lorelei Curren-Evans ’28, a lover of Swift’s work, shared her perspective of the positive role Swift plays in her life. “She’s kind of like an older sister figure,” Curren-Evans said, expressing that “If I relate to a song … it just makes me feel like someone else has felt this before. She makes me feel…that having a lot of emotions is fine and it’s a normal thing; it can be hard to handle, but it’s a good thing.” To Curren-Evans, Swift is a positive female figure whom she can look up to and relate to on a parasocial level.
Not everyone in the Sequoyah community admires Swift’s music, however. Giuseppe Mazzotta ’27 thinks that “Swifties would probably be very good cult members since they’re willing to throw their lives to someone they’ve never met”--and that’s a bad thing. For Mazzotta, being a Swiftie means pushing your values onto others. He is not a supporter of Swifties since “her fans can be very annoying. They’re always getting in your face about it unnecessarily.”
Amélie Barajas ’27 would consider herself to be pretty neutral on the Swiftie-hater spectrum, although she doesn’t enjoy Swift’s music and thinks that “all of her songs sound pretty much the same.” In considering the qualities she sees in Swifties, Barajas stated that “if being obsessive is to the extent where you’re consumed by it every minute of every day, I think that’s kind of a problem, but if you can live your life normally outside of it, then that’s okay.” Barajas believes in maintaining a healthy balance of how much media and music fans are taking in. She noted, “every single Swiftie I’ve met is unhealthily obsessed with her, and that can be a problem, because I think that being crazy obsessed with something is never good. It doesn’t have to be Taylor Swift, it could be anything.”
A big argument that usually comes up when talking about Taylor Swift is the size of her carbon footprint. While there are a variety of perspectives on the issue, Swifties and haters seem to have a variety of perspectives. Mazzotta stated that “she [Swift] produced what one person would produce in 60 years, in about 7 months last year in carbon emissions…We have the right to know what’s affecting our planet.” Curren-Evans agreed about Swift’s overuse of her private jet, noting that “if any celebrity is taking an unnecessary short flight, then yeah, that’s something to think about constructively.” Likewise, Barajas stated that Taylor Swift “definitely contributes a lot to global warming with her private jet, and I think that her carbon footprint is really big and could be reduced a lot.”
The conversation surrounding Swift’s private jet use has many more layers of complexity to unpack. For Curren-Evans, a gendered double standard is at play. “Notice how no one critiques other celebrities’ carbon admissions,” she observed. “Why just Taylor? People don’t care about the planet and the health of forests, animals, etc., until it comes to their reasoning of hating Taylor Swift, who is in fact, a powerful independent businesswoman which they are threatened by.” Curren-Evans also noted that it would be unsafe for Swift to fly commercial, stating, “literally no one can convince me that Taylor could fly commercial. She is the biggest pop star in the world [and] literally has had terrorist threats [made against her].” Clearly, Swift’s carbon footprint is a complicated issue that doesn’t have a simple solution.
All in all, people seem to have different thoughts on Swift’s role in pop culture, whether or not they’re a fan of hers, or have strong opinions on her carbon emissions. This conversation between Swifties, Swift’s critics, or those who take a neutral stance, inevitably results in a lot of debates about Swift’s impact on her fans and the environment.