No matter if you’re a die-hard Swiftie, or if you haven’t really heard her music at all – there’s no denying the fact that Taylor Swift is a formidable force in pop music.
The most incredible aspect of Swift’s career is that she is a completely self-made woman. From writing her own songs, to producing her own tracks and to starring, writing and directing her own music videos.
Swift is an incredibly smart business-woman who has single-handedly kept the sales of hardcopy discs & vinyl’s alive in this digital age, while simultaneously advocating the streaming rights of artists and catalog self-ownership (looking at you Apple Music, Big Machine Records & Sco*ter Br**n).
But despite that, no matter how hard Swift seems to try, there’s no winning for her in this industry.
Time & time again, men have gone out of the way to make sure that she is “running as fast as she can” to disprove the haters – and that’s the tea on the music industry’s sexism!
Interestingly, Swift said she didn’t notice sexism when she first started out her career.
“I would hear people talk about sexism in the music industry, and I’d be like, I don’t see it. I don’t understand,” she said. “Then I realized that was because I was a kid. Men in the industry saw me as a kid. I was a lanky, scrawny, overexcited young girl who reminded them more of their little niece or their daughter than a successful woman in business or a colleague.”
However, as soon as she started playing Stadiums and started to look like a grown woman, things changed.
Men would begin dictating her clothes, her sound, and her stage production – as if she wasn’t doing all that herself successfully, already.
Swift also highlights that there is a huge double standard for women in the industry, She claims, she has become the “national lightning rod for slut-shaming” for dating boys and writing songs about men, while the male artists are unprovoked.
Taylor has been criticized at every junction of her career, in every unique and creative way possible.
Does she write her own songs?
Why is her voice so pitchy?
Why does she date so many men?
Why does she have so many breakup songs?
Is her success because of her male producers?
Is she country or pop, we can’t really tell?!
Is she a calculated manipulator?
Why does she show us so many pictures of her friends? Over sharing much!
She is toooo skinny!
Why is she so fake at award shows?
It’s obvious that these criticisms have never been used for men!
Women in the music industry are constantly picked at and measured up to their pop counterparts through their bodies, their romantic lives or their fashion.
And Taylor Swift’s career is a great example of showcasing how casual sexism has been ingrained into our perception of media.
She has blazed the trail for generations of female artists to come. Since we couldn’t give her the due respect she deserves – let’s hope it's not the case for female artists who follow.
Men, in general, are not used to seeing women being very successful. Males dominate most industries, and it's impossible to filter these abuses and criticisms. These criticisms are coming from the trolls on the internet and the media itself. She has been dragged around a lot and is often given titles of not talented, a girl who breaks up every month, and a girl who dates many men. Taylor Swift is a strong lady and an artist. She has paved a path for future female artists to come. It's laudable to see Taylor Swift rising despite efforts to suppress her.
Taylor is literally an icon. Its amazing how she stands up to the ridicule she faces from media and paperazzi.
UGH YES, THANK YOU. It takes everything in me to keep my cool when someone says that Taylor has no talent or looks but she rlly did make bank on those relationships and I’m just like?? Anyway, stream folklore and evermore the Queen is a true poet 🤧
i spent so much of my childhood and teenage years hating on her, only to realize now that it was mostly just internalized misogyny. men cant deal with strong and successful women which is why they hate her. she might have written about her exes, but that's literally what every artist does. she does not deserve the amount of hate she gets
AGH. Taylor has been dragged around by the media so much. If you watch her documentary on Netflix you can see the impact it had on her; she had to hide in a SUITCASE to avoid the press. She would use it to move in and out of vehicles. Jeez. She's been accused of being girly (as if that is bad), not hot, a serial dater, a serial breakup-er, and not talented. And that's not by trolls on social media, but by the literal paperazzi and media. But what's admirable is how she continues to prove everyone wrong and rise up from everything.