zanopticon:
Yesterday I read the excerpts from Vanity Fair’s big story on Taylor Swift and tossed...
Yesterday I read the excerpts from Vanity Fair’s big story on Taylor Swift and tossed off a few joke-y tweets about her lowkey dismissal of Kanye’s career, and “it was important to Jay-Z that I be friends with Kanye.” Then I heard Bad Blood on the radio on the way to work, and I kept thinking about it: what is it about her that I used to find compelling, that’s recently turned into something that’s really kind of driving me crazy?
(There is a simple answer to this, and it’s: casual unacknowledged racism! But. Also.)
I spent a bunch of this weekend re-reading Bennett Madison’s September Girls, which is so so so good. This passage is probably my favorite:
Since we have no word for beauty, we use the closest word we have. We call it the knife.
Our beauty is only our knife. Our beauty is our only knife. It’s just a knife: rusty blade, ordinary handle. But it’s sharp. It does its thing. Nothing special.
When is nothing special the most important thing? When it’s the only thing.And then:
A knife is sometimes a tool. A knife is sometimes a weapon. You can eat off a knife if you don’t have a fork or a spoon. A knife can be used as a mirror, in a pinch. And if you’re lost in the woods, a knife is helpful for marking your path on tree trunks. But what the hell good is a knife, really?
The thing about Taylor Swift is that she never lets you forget that she is holding a knife. It used to thrill me to see a girl holding it out in front of her like that: shining, sharp-edged, a seduction bladed with betrayal. I love it when a woman claims her own feeling and beauty like they’re powerful and dangerous, because they are powerful and fucking dangerous. But lately it’s starting to feel exhausting, or exhausted, like her grip is starting to shake, like she’s forgotten the difference between tool and weapon, that there is a difference to begin with.
She’s beautiful and she’s powerful and everyone loves her. All her friends are beautiful and all her friends are friends. She can’t put down the knife; she can’t remember how to use it for anything other than violence. The knife and what it got her have become the only things for her. She keeps herself blade sharp, like there’s something she’s trying to be ready for.
Murder By Zan & now i’m going to spend all day thinking about the realization that Taylor Swift is a siren luring me to the rocks
