Long gone are the days when Taylor Swift sought to solely entertain. For a few years now, she’s decided to exploit her fame to promote her leftist politics and complain about the patriarchy and capitalism--even though she’s pretty much the most successful touring artist ever and literally broke Ticketmaster. Sure, she sings and writes songs about her long register of failed relationships, but she has successfully transitioned from an apolitical country star to an entitled leftist pop star on a soapbox.
It’s apparently not enough that someone as successful as Taylor Swift is a diehard ally of the LGBT community; she has to be a part of that community, even if she won’t admit it. That’s what New York Times opinion writer Anna Marks, who is apparently a lesbian herself, decided to do.
In 2019, she was set to release a new album, “Lover,” the first since she left Big Machine Records, her old Nashville-based label, which she has since said limited her creative freedom. The aesthetic of what would be known as the “Lover Era” emerged as rainbows, butterflies and pastel shades of blue, purple and pink, colors that subtly evoke the bisexual pride flag.
On April 26, Lesbian Visibility Day, Ms. Swift released the album’s lead single, “ME!,” in which she sings about self-love and self-acceptance. She co-directed a campy music video to accompany it, which she would later describe as depicting “everything that makes me, me.” It features Ms. Swift dancing at a pride parade, dripping in rainbow paint and turning down a man’s marriage proposal in exchange for a … pussy cat.
At the end of June, the L.G.B.T.Q. community would celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. On June 14, Ms. Swift released the video for her attempt at a pride anthem, “You Need to Calm Down,” in which she and an army of queer celebrities from across generations — the “Queer Eye” hosts, Ellen DeGeneres, Billy Porter, Hayley Kiyoko, to name a few — resist homophobia by living openly. Ms. Swift sings that outrage against queer visibility is a waste of time and energy: “Why are you mad, when you could be GLAAD?”…
"The first time I viewed ‘Lover' through the prism of queerness, I felt delirious, almost insane,” Marks wrote. "I kept wondering whether what I was perceiving in her work was truly there or if it was merely a mirage, born of earnest projection."
Related: How Extreme Can Taylor Swift Idolatry Get?
All signs point to projection.
Marks even goes so far as to suggest that Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce might all be for show—apparently ignoring the fact that Taylor Swift’s romantic partners have all been exclusively male, and that years ago Swift made it clear that she is an ally of the LGBT community, not a part of it.
And so Marks digs herself deeper in her quest to out Swift as a member of the LGBT community.
Sometimes, Ms. Swift communicates through explicit sartorial choices — hair the colors of the bisexual pride flag or a recurring motif of rainbow dresses. She frequently depicts herself as trapped in glass closets or, well, in regular closets. She drops hairpins on tour as well, paying tribute to the Serpentine Dance of the lesbian artist Loie Fuller during the Reputation Tour or referencing “The Ladder,” one of the earliest lesbian publications in the United States, in her Eras Tour visuals…
Whether she is conscious of it or not, Ms. Swift signals to queer people — in the language we use to communicate with one another — that she has some affinity for queer identity. There are some queer people who would say that through this sort of signaling, she has already come out, at least to us.
No, this is projection. Plain and simple. And to me, a reflection of how cultist the LGBT community has become, as they are desperate to co-opt people into their movement. If you’re a tomboy, you’re not actually a girl, you’re transgender. It’s not enough to be a strong ally, you must actually be a part of the community. It will never be enough, will it?
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