Do you see a political march on television and think, “Hey, maybe I’ll just stay home?” Or, let’s say you’re a prominent artist with consumers on both sides of the aisle. And let’s say you’d rather not offend half of your audience by marching in a highly politicized, radical event that labels the president of the United States the chief threat to females in the country.
This makes you “spineless,” according to Amy Zimmerman of The Daily Beast.
On Monday, Zimmerman ran a piece titled “Taylor Swift’s Spineless Feminism.” What did Swift do wrong?
With all of the pink posturing on display last weekend, conversation naturally turned towards Taylor Swift, our nation’s most opportunistic celebrity. Taylor has an unrivaled ability to read the room and seize a moment….But strangely enough, Swift has no interest in leaning in to her true potential; instead, she’s resolutely tried to preserve her public image as the sweet, romantic girl next door.
Zimmerman doesn’t stop there: the problem isn’t just that Swift carefully cultivates an image crafted to enhance her broad popularity. It’s that she “runs on bland feminism and Pinterest-friendly patriotism…Given Taylor Swift’s love of ladies, cats, and the U.S.A., one might think she’d have an opinion on America’s own pussy-grabber-in chief. Unfortunately, the pop star’s dedication to female empowerment appears to begin and end at letting Ruby Rose and Lena Dunham share her spotlight. Taylor Swift wasn’t just not with her—she didn’t even know her. The full extent of Swift’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election was a nonpartisan selfie from the polls. Courtesy of the Instagram, we learned that Swift endorses democracy and cold-shoulder blouses. But in terms of candidates, it was impossible to deduce if she’d voted for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Jill freaking Stein.”
How terrible! What should we do if the singer of Bad Blood and Shake It Off refuses to tell us she voted for Hillary Clinton, or scream about p***ies and wave a poster of a vagina in the air? We must shame her! SHAME HER!
Her failure to politicize her image or art is a great crime against women everywhere:
As a pretty white girl who has written songs that rely heavily on fiddles, Swift undoubtedly counts a healthy handful of Trump supports among her fan base….Taylor Swift has always valued apoliticism, even to a fault. Her girl squad has been infamously silent on social issues, with card-carrying members like Selena Gomez earning internet ire for her refusal to discuss Black Lives Matter.
Of course, that ignores that Swift did use her Twitter account (83.2 million followers) to promote the Women’s March:
So much love, pride, and respect for those who marched. I’m proud to be a woman today, and every day. #WomensMarch
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) January 21, 2017
But this wasn’t enough. She should have shown up alongside the genital posters or shrieked poetry like an Ashley Judd wannabe. And her failure to do so makes her an ENEMY:
There’s a craven calculus to winning brownie points without offending your most offensive fans….Cutesy sentiments and political palatability are no longer acceptable. If you’re not overtly on board with the resistance, then you’re tacitly chill with being proclaimed an Aryan goddess….Trying or pretending to be woke, without displaying any sort of political preference or informed opinion, is almost more offensive than saying nothing at all.
This is ideological fascism in action. If you’re not with the intersectional left, you’re against them. If you refuse to be dragged into Lena Dunham-esque antics, you’re in league with Richard Spencer.
It’s amazing we’ve come this far in Hollywood – the industry used to prize its apolitical stances, used to protect its stars. Now, the media attempt to undermine stars by claiming they’re cowards for not using their fame – earned in non-political ways – to press for leftist politics. No wonder Americans were so off-put by Hillary Clinton’s celebrity campaign.