Taylor Swift taught me to be fearless, reputation be damned
Taylor Swift has always refused to let the bullies win.
Yesterday’s victory, the reclamation of her master recordings, is a huge victory for Taylor. She’s never taken bullying quietly, from her successful lawsuit against a DJ who groped her, to her recent epic adventure to claim the rights to her music. She’s faced immense social blow back, but maintained her self respect, finding a powerful voice in one of the toughest industries there is.
I vividly remember the first time my peers turned against Taylor Swift. She’d become too successful and mainstream. The tabloids were full of surmises about her sex life, and she’d become as she describes it, “a national lightning rod for slut shaming.” I felt embarrassed on her behalf and hoped my enjoyment of her music didn’t make me look whorish or lame by proxy.
I think her refusal to go quietly bothered people. After dating multiple high profile and much older men, she didn’t shrug off her heartbreak or hide from the public eye. She laid out her humiliation, frustration, and sense of wrong through some of her finest songs.
In Dear John, presumably about John Mayer, she wrote, “Don't you think nineteen's too young / To be played by your dark, twisted games when I loved you so?”
She ends the song with triumph “I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town”
Mayer called this “cheap song writing.” But Taylor’s criticism seemed like a fair point to make about a then 32 year old, routinely dating late teen and early twenty year olds.
This is only one of many songs she’s written sharing her experience of the unfortunately very public events in her private life.
During the most scandalous period in Taylor’s career, when Kim and Kanye accused her of lying and launched the #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty, drastically changing public perception of Swift. Many articles arguing she was a fake nice girl or secret snake circulated in major publications.
Taylor’s response was the reputation album.
Look What You Made Me Do, the album’s first single, is a song full of rage at the damage to her reputation done by Kim and Kanye’s cancellation attempt. She writes, I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me”
She captures the feeling of isolation that comes with social backlash.
While Taylor was facing national criticism for “lying” about her mention in Kanye’s song Famous, I faced my own cancellation crisis. I’d chosen to speak up when I’d gotten injured by someone’s intentional violence. Like with Taylor, the squeaky wheel sometimes gets the blame. I too lost my good name, lost a sense of my past self (the old Jess can’t come to the phone right now?). I too had to get smarter and harder to get through. But just like Taylor “I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time.”
Cringe if you must, but Taylor Swift was my closest companion in those months. She understood me, soothed my loneliness, earned my admiration forever. The vulnerability she showed by expressing her rage, insecurity, and new found love to a world that appeared to hate her is remarkably brave. But that’s what Taylor does. She bares her soul and takes what comes.
She has integrity that people don’t expect from a pop star.
Although it took some time, Taylor came back bigger and better than ever. No matter what obstacles, criticism, or personal disaster arise, she rises over and over again, keeping her side of the street clean, waiting for the bullies who’ve tried to silence her, embarrass her, ruin her career to get what they deserve.
Her example and music gives me the courage to keep doing right, choosing to protect myself and my art, all well embracing love,life, and joy.
I wish all the best for her. I’ll be celebrating her reclaimed music by listening to reputation and following her example to speak now.