RANT #1: Taylor Swift

Hello. I would like to talk today about one of my biggest pet peeves: Taylor Swift. (Not to be confused with my other peeve: naming a human being Taylor.)

If you listen to country radio or read Perez Hilton, you know who Taylor Swift is. If you are my Dad, you don’t. For those of you who are my Dad, let me lay it out for you: Taylor Swift is a nineteen-year-old singer who has made a splash on the country charts and currently tours (I swear to god, I saw this with my own eyes) with an entourage of something like FORTY-SEVEN semi-trucks with her face splashed gigantically across them. But underneath all that, she’s just a little girl with a big smile, a big dream and long shiny hair. And long shiny legs and long shiny eyelashes and a fair-to-middling voice. (See: Miley Cyrus, Hillary Duff and the original Teen Exploitation Queen herself, Ms. Britney Spears).

As in previous models, what drives me crazy is not Taylor Swift herself but the Taylor Swift Machine. The Machine markets Taylor Swift according to the accepted formula: one part pretty little virgin songstress, one part sexy rocker hair, one part business woman.


I wish I could find the photo of Taylor getting doused by a waterfall onstage.

Here are some quotes from articles about Ms. Swift:

The world's biggest new pop star is a little bit country, a little bit rock & roll, and all control freak. What's behind her drive for success?

"While other girls were drawing their wedding dress, I was drawing stage dimensions," says Swift, whose 55-city tour turns her junior-high fantasies into reality: "We have giant turrets that raise during 'Love Story,' and elaborate costumes," she says.

As it turns out, Swift is a rare blend of goofy teenager and polished saleswoman, which has let her tap into a huge market of country-loving teens.

See what I mean? They love in profiles like this to take two opposite traits and smack them up against each other. Case in point: Taylor Swift loves pink and purple but she is also a tooooootal control freak, guys. Whoa, come again? CAN SHE BE BOTH OF THESE THINGS? A professional, and yet a little girl? I too have two opposite traits contained within my dainty form, and thus I love her.

Our society loves that shit. I admit, part of me is jealous because I would love to be able to rig up a live waterfall in my own performances. Goddamit! How come I can’t end my show with a fucking WATERFALL cascading over my nubile flesh? That’s what I get for going into weird performance art instead of hot country.

Even in the circles I move in, though, many people want to see you this way as a solo artist, to see a contradiction embodied. They want you to be a high art savant crossed with a tough as nails, take no prisoners, clickety-clack red nails and heels businesswoman. They want you to be Bjork but inside be Sigourney Weaver from Working Girl. Pretty pink on the outside, blue steel on the inside. Maybe they just know that you have to be both to succeed.

But back to Taylor Swift. I worry about her. Like other incarnations, she was plucked from obscurity not because of her songs or her voice but because there is something about her that people respond to, and basing a career off charisma and charm and likeability (not to mention virginity)? We all know where that’s headed.

But if we all know where it’s headed, why are we so drawn in? Why are we ever-hungry for more teen queen victims? Why is there always such an appetite for the newest sexy little moppet? It can’t all be from preteen girls, can it?

Whatever, my rant is losing fire. It just makes me tired. Maybe she’ll make it out okay. Maybe her sharp as nails business acumen will save her a la Madonna or Shania Twain.