The creators of a Twitter account called “feminist Taylor Swift” say they feel let down by their pop star idol, because Swifty refuses to take a public stand on any political issue.
The account, @FeministTaylorSwfit, rewrites Swift’s lyrics to be more “progressive,” ostensibly as a way of injecting a hyper-feminist message into the furor surrounding Swift’s success. The Tweets aren’t always creative, but they are always drawn directly from the radical feminist playbook — and they’re often very predictable.
She wears high heels / I wear sneakers / We’re each expressing our gender identities in ways that make us feel comfortable / Date me
— FeministTaylorSwift (@feministtswift) June 14, 2013
Of course (though that “date me” at the end seems rather desperate and, dare we say it, very unfeminist).
Last week, though, the account stopped being parody and started getting real. Triggered, the Feminist Taylor Swift creator, Clara Beyer, says, by a Tweet from newly-minted Fox News host Tomi Lahren praising Swift as among her idols, she launched into an extended, 25-Tweet manifesto, begging T-Swift to speak up against Lahren’s regressive ideas and the greater threat of what Beyer calls “white supremacy.”
Her Swift parody account has lost all its fun, Beyer claims, because there are Very Real Problems that a Very Real Taylor Swift could solve, but unfortunately Taylor just doesn’t see how important she is to the greater cause of radical feminism.
3/ Why am I not coming up with fun feminist twists on Taylor Swift lyrics right now?? a few reasons. mostly that i’m exhausted.
— FeministTaylorSwift (@feministtswift) August 30, 2017
The rant hits all the familiar notes, with a few creative twists. Beyer hates Trump, of course, but also says she considered resisting the president by free-bleeding during her menstrual cycle, and fears that she will be among the first dead in the inevitable nuclear holocaust. Taylor Swift probably does not have an opinion on either of these things.
Beyer also goes after Swift for something Swift can’t control — the fact that the alt-right has occasionally used Swift in their memes — and for not being as politically woke as Katy Perry, whose last album was a love letter to Hillary Clinton, but, as far as Billboard is concerned, also an unqualified flop.
Taylor, whose circle of friends included dedicated progressives like Lena Dunham, certainly has her own thoughts about the new world order under President Donald Trump, but it’s probably pretty clear to Taylor that speaking out on political issues has consequences, both for Swift’s brand and her bottom line. Still, Beyer says, a girl can dream. “I would love it if Taylor Swift woke up tomorrow and said, ‘Donald Trump should be impeached.’ But I don’t think that it’s actually important for her to do that.”
