By MELISSA WELLHAM
The internet has just delivered us the phenomenal and ass-kicking gift of Feminist Taylor Swift.
And she’s taking it all on: the gender pay gap, the patriarchy and calling out sexism wherever she sees it.
The real Taylor Swift reportedly doesn’t consider herself a feminist, but that hasn’t stop a student at Brown University – Clara Beyer – from creating the Twitter account, which gained a massive 50,700+ followers in just a few days. With only 48 tweets. That’s not bad, for a feminiswift.
Beyer tweets Swift song lyrics from the account – but lyrics that have been reworked to address feminist issues. Such as, “I don’t know about you / but I’m feeling twenty-two / cents underpaid per dollar.” And, “It’s been true all along, so why can’t you see-ee-ee / Gender isn’t necessarily a binary-y-y / Not a binary.”
The real Taylor Swift’s twitter bio reads “Happy. Free. Confused. Lonely. At the same time” – a lyric from one of Swift’s hit songs 22. Feminist Taylor Swift’s twitter bio is much more amusing: “Happy. Free. Confused. Oppressed by the patriarchy. At the same time.”
Click through the gallery below for more tweets.
While Taylor Swift’s lyrics have quite a “girl power!” message, they are – dare we say it – also fairly conventional. Swift certainly isn’t pushing a radical agenda, of any description. In her early days, Swift also copped a fair bit of criticism for seemingly being the physical embodiment of female innocence and purity, and managing to diss other women who expressed their sexuality.
For example, in Swift’s You Belong With Me, she sings, “But she wears short skirts / I wear T-shirts” as a reason why the object of Swift’s affection shouldn’t be with his current paramour. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s not cool to judge a woman on the length of her skirt, Taylor?
As Feminist Taylor Swift points out, “She wears high heels / I wear sneakers / We’re each expressing our gender identities in ways that make us feel comfortable / Date me.”
By Taylor Swift’s own admission, she has never set out to empower women. When Ramin Setoodeh interviewed Swift for The Daily Beast, he asked, “Do you consider yourself a feminist?”
Swift replied that, “I don’t really think about things as guys versus girls. I never have. I was raised by parents who brought me up to think if you work as hard as guys, you can go far in life.”
Which was as clever a way of not really answering the question as any.
But whether she intended to inspire other girls or not, Swift has certainly succeeded – and she is undoubtedly a powerful woman in the music industry. Her fourth album Red sold millions. Her single We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together set a record for digital sales.
The Feminist Taylor Swift account creator, Beyer told BuzzFeed that, “I consider myself a feminist, and I blog about that kind of thing all the time, but I also LOVE Taylor Swift … Being a feminist Taylor Swift fan isn’t always easy, but it led to @FeministTSwift, so I’m not really complaining.”
Beyer also told BuzzFeed, “My fantasy is that this Twitter account gets so many followers that she tweets at us.”
Want to lend Beyer a hand? Check out the Feminist Taylor Swift account here.
What feminist mash-up would you like to see?
Top Comments
Im sick of everyone bashing on Taylor Swift! She is just another girl who was able to make her dreams in the music business come true. She is a great role model for girls these days. There are so many promising music artist that show true potential and have people loving them, then they go and do something stupid. When kids see that their idol has done something like this, it makes them question right from wrong even if they were raised in the perfect home. Nobody is perfect, perfection is imperfection. So everyone needs to support her for being this generation's kids positive role model. You may not like her music, some people do and some don't, thats okay. Everyone is entitled to it. So let the girl live her dream and help show all the young kids, that are watching her, that they can do great things and still be a good person with a clean record.
Thank you for reading :)