Taylor Swift Doesn’t Need to Be Your BFF

Last week, America’s darling, Taylor Swift, fell into unfavorable light during a Twitter spat with Nicki Minaj, setting off an Internet landslide that listed her shortcomings as a friend, feminist and role model.

To catch you up: Minaj, airing her grievances about the predominately white MTV Video Music Awards nominees, tweeted, “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year.”

Swift misinterpreted Minaj’s message about the lack of diversity as a direct attack against the nomination her song “Bad Blood” received for Best Video of the Year. “It’s unlike you to pit women against each other,” Swift wrote. “Maybe one of the men took your slot.”

And then, the Internet exploded. Swift apologized for her mistake, of course, but not before multiple trend pieces hit the web criticizing her behavior.

I thought I was being called out. I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke. I’m sorry, Nicki. @NICKIMINAJ

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) July 23, 2015

“When Swift chimed in, it changed the conversation from woman versus institution to woman versus woman,” wrote Spencer Kornhaber for The Atlantic. “This fits with Swift’s recent campaign against the Mean Girls stereotype of women as catty infighters.”

By “campaign,” Kornhaber is referring to the female-centric direction of both Swift’s 1989 tour and her recent public image. Gone are the days of Jake Gyllenhaal and John Mayer — instead, they’ve been replaced with an ever-growing squad of models, actresses and athletes who join Swift both in her downtime and on her stage. While this girl-posse doesn’t seem inherently harmful, it’s been attacked as faux-feminist and evidence of Swift’s capitalist agenda.

In a piece for Gawker titled “Taylor Swift Is Not Your Friend,” Dayna Evans elaborates on this campaign, calling it, “Swift’s current co-opting of capital-f Feminism as a self-promotional tool.” Evans takes a firm stance on Swift, skewering her for tricking audiences into thinking she’s an “underdog” who values female friendships when in reality she’s a “ruthless, publicly capitalist pop star.”

She cites Taylor Swift’s model posse (a publicity accessory), her decision to pull her music from Spotify (not something someone who humbly and truly loved music would do), and of course, the spat with Nicki (an inability to understand the many shapes feminism can take) as examples that Taylor Swift cares way more about “empowering Taylor Swift” than women at large.

There are many holes in Evans’ argument, but mainly it begs the question: who decided it was Taylor Swift’s job to be our role model, BFF, or teach our nation’s teens about feminism?

It is Swift’s job to alter her image as she ages and her fame and fortune grow, changing her identity from Girl Next Door to Girl with Broken Heart to Girl Queen With Squad On Fleek — what pop star that’s come before her hasn’t undergone similar transitions?

Similarly, it is — ironically — sexist to demand Swift appear humble or have her love of music outstrip her desire to make money from her trade. Her capitalist endeavors of fame and fortune don’t preclude her talent nor her claim to being a feminist.

And even if Swift is secretly a greedy, evil monster getting feminism wrong, who cares? She’s a woman in her twenties who should be allowed to mess up being a feminist sometimes. She may carry an undue amount of influence over teenage girls everywhere, but she’s not campaigning for office; she’s a pop star playing a part, and we can’t demand anything from her besides entertainment.

Rather, it is our responsibility to stop holding up celebrities like Swift as role models and visionaries. They’re performers, not presidents. We should focus our efforts less on their missteps and publicity campaigns and more on providing young women with legitimately feminist public figures — Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, Maya Angelou — whom they can aspire to be.

Photo via Elle.com

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