An Icon, Inspiration, and Role Model: Taylor Swift

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Recently, the Netflix show Ginny and Georgia made pop culture headlines after one of the characters uttered a sexist joke regarding Taylor Swift. The comment said: “What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.” Being an advocate for feminism and equality especially amongst the music industry, Swift wasn’t pleased. She responded to the outcry over this comment by saying, “Hey Ginny and Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse sh*t as FuNnY.” 

Her anger was entirely justifiable, especially considering Taylor Swift has worked with Netflix on her Miss Americana documentary. Considering that the comment was made in 2021 speaks to the double standard she will constantly have to battle. It might have stemmed from her reputation for writing about the men she’s loved, even though she’s only ever been with eight men in her life. Let’s reminisce over her amazingly successful career.

In June 2006, Taylor Swift released her debut single “Tim McGraw” as a country pop artist.  In October of the same year, Swift released her debut album composed of songs which she either wrote or co-wrote. In January of 2007, “Tim McGraw” reached #6 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs; she performed this song at the Academy Awards for Country Music when she was only seventeen years old. In February of the same year, “Teardrops on my Guitar” was released and also peaked in the charts. In August 2007, Taylor Swift performed on American Idol with Julienne Irwin, and, in September, Swift launched a campaign to protect children from online predators. In October, she won the Songwriter/Artist of the Year award at Nashville Songwriters Association International. She also released a holiday collection in the same month. In November, Swift won the CMA Horizon Award, and in December “Our Song” became Taylor Swift’s Number One Single. All of that in the span of only one year! 

At the age of 18 in 2008, Taylor Swift was ranked #57 on Maxim’s List Of Sexiest Women. It is clear that early on, Swift faced sexism whilst trying to focus on her career. At such a young age, Swift was already being objectified and judged based on her looks, instead of her talent and achievements, a very frequent pattern amongst women in the media. 

2008 was a busy and successful year for Ms. Taylor Swift. Her song “Should’ve Said No” was released, which she performed at the 43rd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. Furthermore, she appeared in the 17 magazine, graduated from high school, released her songs “Change” and “White Horse” as well as her hit single “Love Story” and one of her biggest albums of all time, “Fearless”, totaling in 217,000 copies on her first day of sales. She sang “The Star Spangled Banner” at The World Series, appeared in CosmoGirl, performed on SNL,  and performed at the Grammy Awards. It is so hard to condense Taylor Swift's career into one article, it would never end! My point is, she has worked tirelessly and incredibly hard. To have her name degraded in that way, must have been simply crushing. 

On February 11, 2021, Taylor Swift announced that she’d finished re-recording a new version of her album “Fearless”, originally released in 2008 and selling over 10 million copies, winning four Grammy awards. The re-recordings began with “Love Story,” one of her most popular songs. However, the songs didn’t belong to her, but belonged instead to her label. In 2018, Taylor Swift changed record labels; her old label, Big Machine was bought by Swift’s rival manager, Scooter Braun. By buying Nashville Big Machine, Braun also bought Swift’s first six albums. By re-recording and re-releasing her award winning album, Taylor Swift can reclaim ownership over her recordings. Swift also stated that she is remaking her six of her albums because she wants to spread the message that “Artists should own their work for so many reasons, the most screamingly obvious one is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.”

Taylor Swift has constantly faced adversity throughout her career; she’s always had to work twice as hard to get half the respect she deserves. Swift is an icon, an inspiration and a role model. We, and the music industry, owe her the respect she has earned.

Images:

Cosmopolitan UK, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons