I remember being in 2nd or 3rd grade and singing her songs and wishing for a guy to be nice, just the way Taylor sings about them in some of her happier songs like "Love Story." The prevalence of Taylor Swift in media defiantly used to shape the way I saw myself and how I looked at the boys in my life.
Recently Taylor Swift has also been showing how much she understands that the media is influencing both her, her music, and her fans. She has recently come out with some songs as messages to her fans to be true to themselves and to not care about that others think. In this way she is saying not to pay attention to any media that is influencing you and to be yourself. I find this a little hypocritical. After all, SHE is media, yet at the same time she is telling us not to listen to the media? Examples of this is her song, "Blank Space" and "Mean." "Mean" is a song about her media critics critiquing her and her telling herself (and her fans) not to be affected by them. "Blank Space" is about how the media always portrays her boy crazy, so she is purposely trying to sound crazy to mock the media's image of her.
Personally I don't know Taylor swift that well, but I've noticed that a lot of songs that are supposed to be positive and empowering are mostly along the lines of "honey don't worry there's a guy out there." I mean if a girl is down on her appearance because she feels inadaquite that message is helpful, but the message of "you're good because some guy thinks so" is really only a bandaid solution. There are verry few songs out there, that I am aware of, that say girls are great because they are people who are soooooo much deeper than their appearance.
ReplyDeleteJust commmenting just to comment... FIRST OF ALL, YASSSSSSSSSSS, taylor swift is perfection and I love her music video for Blank Space. Thanks for the little shout out there. I can see where you re going with your points with how she is being a bit hypocritical. Taylor, prior to 1989, had a voice that almost made herself like the victim. So in "Mean" she was completely reacting to a guy that has no right to call her music lame, yet she didn't have to make a huge deal about it because we have the freedom of speech and freedom of press, so she has no control over the media, but hey, she won 2 Grammys because of the song... Anyway, I love Blank Space exactly because she's so sarcastic and she knows that the media is kinda overexaggerating who she really is. I can't explain how great of a song Blank Space is. This is all ramble sorry, go T SWIFT.
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