Taylor Swift Is Obviously Ruining America

I never did post up my entry on Taylor Swift, but I may not need to, as I need to smack down Sady Doyle’s She Pop post on the singer, for her wildly inaccurate and frankly insane criticisms of two of her songs, “You Belong With Me” and “Fifteen”.

The inflammatory post, titled “Taylor Swift Wants To Ban Access To Your Lady Bits,” tries to explain, if you can call it that, how the singer is a pernicious influence on young girls today, that she reeks of moralizing and superiority because she dresses in white, sings pop songs about love, and is so submissive, innocent, and virginal. Now, this would make some sense if she was talking about “Love Story”, and how everything gets tied up in a bow—an ending that also appears in “You Belong With Me”—but that’s not her argument.

Sady criticizes Taylor Swift for promoting abstinence and being anti-sex, as well as sexist. Her analysis, however, takes everything out of context, makes incredible assumptions, and positions everything that Taylor Swift does in terms of sex.

(I’d also like to point out that when criticizing a song of an artist, you actually should, you know, MENTION THE TITLE OF THE SONG. So that your readers don’t have to look up the song in question, and you should be aware that just because you post the video doesn’t mean that the video will work or that your readers will have any idea what you’re talking about. Also helps, Sady, if you do a bit of research into your subject before you start ranting like an out of touch madwoman.)

Sady goes off on “You Belong With Me” and her new single “Fifteen”, which was well-received when she sang it on the Grammys with Miley Cyrus. “You Belong With Me” tells the story of a girl who likes a boy with a girlfriend who doesn’t treat him right, and she contrasts the two of them. In the video, Taylor pulls a Mariah Carey and plays both the “bad” girl (the girlfriend) and the “good” girl (the protagonist). Sady twists this into girl-on-girl hate, because the girlfriend doesn’t find his jokes funny and she does. No, she doesn’t call her a bitch or a cunt—but why should she? That would be too obvious, something that Sady finds fault with in the oversimplified, trite video.

"You Belong With Me” isn’t even Swift’s first single on unrequited love; that would be “Teardrops on My Guitar.” Taylor has a few others, but if you listen to any random collection of songs on any given day you’re bound to find a few on this topic, and if there’s a third party in the picture, damn straight you’re going to get some sort of comparison, usually with a reason attached why the singer is better than said third party. It’s called a love triangle. They exist. They aren’t pretty, and yes, nasty exchanges are part of the deal.

But why is Sady hating on Taylor’s narrative, when all she does is provide a descriptor? Carrie Underwood sings nastily about a tramp in “Before He Cheats”, and Haley Williams calls her rival a whore in “Misery Business”, but clearly Sady doesn’t take issue with these artists for their name calling, both of which are far more problematic than the situation presented in “You Belong With Me”. What about “Girlfriend” or “Sk8er Boi”?

Sady calls the comparison between the two girls “girl-on-girl sexism”. What Sady forgets is that this is what people do. That is what girls do, that is what teenage girls do, this is what girls do when another girl has they guy they like. It’s tame, and pretty damn fair. Sady clearly doesn’t realize that just because Taylor’s remarking that that girl is known for being a cheerleader and wearing high heels that she’s automatically calling her a slut, and that because she wears glasses in the video, she’s ugly while the other girl, Taylor Swift in a brown wig, is hating on girls that are prettier than she is, and that it is an example of the limiting beauty standard that women are expected to fall into. What the hell.

Sady’s biggest problem is that she is reading the music from a very adult perspective, completely forgetting that Taylor is singing from a teenage girl’s perspective TO teenage girls. That’s why she’s so off her rocker. Although “Fifteen” can be schmaltzy, it is a parable, telling bits and pieces of her story and her best friend Abigail’s story. There’s not even a suggestion of sex in the song, and while the video does have a scene where it could be hinted at, it’s a stretch, and Sady blows everything up. She takes the lyric “and Abigail gave everything she had to a boy/ who changed his mind” to mean that she lost his virginity to him, and that’s bad and that you will be successful and happy and wonderful if you don’t have sex. Does this make any sense? Seriously, what the hell is up with this woman? You can completely give everything to someone without it being about sex at all, and haha, no, sorry, your jokes about Jonas Brothers posters aren’t witty.

The whole point of “Fifteen”, which Taylor Swift has said over and over, and which is pretty clear from the lyrics, is that you grow up, and you realize what’s important and what’s not. When you’re in high school (and even sometimes after it), the things that are going on at that moment are the biggest things ever, and it’s hard to conceptualize the future, when these things won’t matter. That’s the point of the line “In your life you’ll do things that are greater than dating the boy on the football team.” That’s someone with some perspective—like an older sister, or a teacher—telling a girl who’s just had her heart broken and can’t see the forest for the trees that things change and this isn’t the end. It’s not that dating this boy—or any boy—is the sum of the girl’s accomplishments. And again, Taylor Swift has been very vocal about these things: marriage is “not my ultimate goal in life”. As she put it in Rolling Stone:

"I'm fascinated by love rather than the principle of 'Oh, does this guy like me?'" she says. "I love love. I love studying it and watching it. I love thinking about how we treat each other, and the crazy way that one person can feel one thing and another can feel totally different," she says. "It just doesn't take much for me to be inspired to write a song about a person, but I'm much more likely to write that song than do anything about it. You know, self-preservation."

Her interest in love is obvious from her songs, and at times it does border on the fantastical (“Love Story”). But in other songs, like “White Horse”, she knows it’s over and deals with the pain head-on. Taylor is famously unrepentant, and it is also well-known that she uses real names and real situations in her songs. That’s one of her many selling points, because she has the guts to say “You suck, and you hurt me badly”, and immortalize what that guy did into a platinum-selling song. Sady calls Taylor Swift calculating and artificial, and this makes her noxious. But Taylor Swift has always come across as earnest and sincere, not to mention hardworking. She’s always been in charge of her career (she turned down development deals when young because she didn’t want to be in limbo), and is very big on personal responsibility. These are traits to admire, but because her outward appearance—her image—is sweet, wholesome, and very teenage, she gets flack for being “innocent”. Sady is doing what she hates: reducing Taylor Swift to a caricatured Disney Princess, ridiculing her for who she is because she finds her too limiting and shallow, without even bothering to understand her.

Fox Still Messing with Dollhouse

And some people say Twitter is worthless: Felicia Day tweeted that her episode of Dollhouse will not air on Fox. Entertainment Weekly has the scoop, which again puts the network in a bad light:

It's true. Fox bought and paid for 13 hours of Dollhouse (from sister company 20th Century Fox), one of which turned out to be the scrapped pilot that Whedon wound up reshooting. Which means Day's episode, "Epitaph One," isthe 14th -- which the network didn't buy. And isn't going to buy.

Way to be lame.

I'm still figuring out the show. I'm a Whedon newbie, but it's clear to me that Fox messing with the show from the very beginning only harmed the series, and that many people are sticking with it out of a sense of loyalty to Whedon in the hope that it will be successful. It's only now that Dollhouse is beginning to go somewhere, but it's probably too little too late for a lot of people.

Seems to me that Whedon loves to pull in people with the sexualized content: Every episode showcases Eliza Dushku's feline body bound in some ridiculous bondage or sex kitten wear, and then she runs around and kicks some ass it in, somewhere between the :45 and :50 mark. While it works within the show, sometimes the series just feels like an excuse for having Dushku dressed so laughably, and it always elicits chuckles and raised eyebrows.

Sex Is Bad

While I have no interest in watching the new "90210", I read the Times interview with many members of the old cast, and this jumped out at me:

[Executive Producer Charles] ROSIN We did our prom episode, which was written and directed by Darren, and Brenda loses her virginity to Dylan McKay in a hotel room and comes down and tells Kelly that indeed this has happened.

[Creator Darren] STAR The affiliates were scandalized — not because they had sex, but because Brenda was happy about it, and it didn’t have any dire consequences. I was strongly advised to write a show that would address the consequences of that sexual experience. So the first episode of the second season Brenda broke up with Dylan because their relationship had gotten too mature. (Bold mine)

There has been a long history in television of showing negative consequences for teenagers having sex. Pregnancy scares are usually the first plotline, hyped up to get the kids a-watching. For girls especially sex is usually aligned with punishment--something Amy Sherman Palladino tried to mock in "Gilmore Girls" by having Paris have a public meltdown when she discovers she was rejected by Harvard, thinking it's a direct connection to losing her virginity. Of course it's preposterous, but that wasn't the message that came across. If you have sex and enjoyed it, you will pay.

So now we have "Beverly Hills, 90210" to thank. I haven't watched this show in a long, long time--since maybe I was 14--and even then I didn't like it. I found it then to be too slow and painfully boring; I found it hard to believe that this show was so controversial and scandalous. And the episodes I saw were the early seasons. To a viewer with another eight years of teen shows behind her, the old 90210 would only look even more old-fashioned and quaint (those were the words I used then) compared to Gossip Girl, Dawson's Creek and The OC.

But notice: The Dylan/Brenda breakup--which I'm sure was a pivotal, dramatic moment in the history of the show--was necessitated by suits too uncomfortable to show a regular teen girl (albeit in stylish Cali '90s wear) living a regular life. They can't show that! This is a show about teens for teens! What will happen to the youth?!?!? Brenda fell for the bad guy, a guy who was going to lead her down the Wrong Path, and for that they needed to show that she should have waited.

I bet that many, many shows followed in this wake, whether it was because the execs pressured them to, the showrunners felt other pressure to showcase a certain value set, or just because they couldn't fathom doing something different. Teen sex isn't always the best course of action, we know. But to demonstratively prove, time and again, that the woman who is having the sex must be "punished" in some way is sexist and ridiculous. Far too many girls (and even boys) take away messages from the television they watch, both conscious and unconsciously, and for them to fear or worry that sex will always negatively affect them is wrong and irresponsible. I understand where the execs were coming from, especially considering a new network that needs to desperately please advertisers, but too many times the need to moralize is just a knee-jerk reaction. Did Dylan go through any doubts or fears? I doubt it. From the little I can recall, he was an Elvis-type figure, aloof and cool to the extreme. This was before the era of sensitive guys, and it wouldn't have occurred to anyone that he would have any of the hangups that Seth Cohen did.

Granted, I haven't seen the scene, so if someone has, feel free to enlighten me. This also goes for the original "90210" as well, in addition to any examples of teen sex where the plot twisted in a way that made the girl regret she had sex (though if you give me time, I can find some that aren't Gilmore Girls-related).

Sex On the Brain

Angela: I mean, I think about it... all the time, but...
Brian: Wait, you *think* about it all the time?
Angela: Brian! Yes! Shut up... guys don't have a monopoly on thinking about it.
Brian: They don't?
Angela: *No!*

–My So-Called Life

"You were not bored. There was plenty of stuff to watch on TV. And Blair Witch Project was about to come on Starz, and you were like, "I haven't seen this in forever" and you wanted to watch it, but then you were like "Oh no, we should just make out instead. La la la."

–Paulie Bleeker, Juno

Maybe it’s all because of Sex and the City.

It used to be that girls didn’t want sex. Oh, they wanted it, but it wasn’t acknowledged, it was never talked about. Girls wanted the boyfriend to cuddle and to pay for their movie tickets, but they didn’t actually want to make out. They didn’t lust after anyone sexually, even if they swooned over Brad Pitt. It was just a crush.

But you can’t say that anymore.

Everywhere I look, it seems, there’s another girl taking charge of her sexuality. She’s the one who initiates it. Knocked Up, Superbad, Juno, Mean Girls–-in all of them the girl is the one who’s going "fuck me hard" and leaving the boy’s head spinning.

The moments above are both comic and real, but what’s notable about them–-with the exception of Knocked Up–-is that they all deal with teenagers. Is it a way to acknowledge the feelings at a time when they are possibly the strongest and most frightening? Or that this attitude has trickled down to teenagers? It’s years after Sex and the City went off the air, after all, and that show was known for both being very appealing to teenage girls (heaven knows I was one of them), and for allegedly changing the way sex, and female attitudes towards it, were portrayed.

All I know is that I love every one of those scenes when the girl goes for it. She’s vulnerable but presses on anyway. She has to. And the boys are always baffled by what’s happened, confused how it all came to be, never knowing how to act but that they want to be the good guy. They’re never prepared. Maybe watching enough of these movies they’ll get the drift and won’t be so taken aback the next time a girl jumps them.