AIBU to think Taylor Swift is being carefully repositioned and we’re not meant to notice?

Oooh, a former model! Would we have heard of you? Curious now!

I admit, I was surprised when I saw what a sexy direction she's taken with Life of a Showgirl. There's also a photo of her bending over in a black leotard with a naked-esgue butt, looking as if she's ready for a spanking. There was nothing like that from her before, and not on the Eras tour, either.

Maybe she wants to flaunt it before she starts a family! Like a last hurrah! But yeah, it looks like this Showgirl era is set to be less family-friendly than previously. I would be a bit concerned if I had a daughter same age as yours, but more by the spank-my-butt photo than the finger in mouth one.

Well as a former 90s model who has pulled this pose myself it is a bit of a sexy move. Obviously if she was pretending to have full on sex things would be different and worse. We can completely leave it at I think its a bit too suggestive and obvious and you like it. Do you have a pre teen? Would you like them trying out this pose? Taylor was rare as a pop star not continuiously objectifying and sexualising her content and I was hoping for another film and album to enjoy with my daughter.

This thread is going bonkers though, as a 40+ Taylor Swift fan from when she was a country star no one had heard of I don't know that HTH even means

Her “liberal outspokenness” was actually very short lived. There is plenty evidence of her promoting and upholding “traditional family values” before 1989 came out.

She refused to endorse Obama in 2012.

There were several fans invited to secret sessions with openly racist and homophobic posts on social media (which is where fans were selected from).

A lot of the political rhetoric on Lover /the Miss Americana doc came about precisely because people were lining up to cancel her over her silence on certain issues.

I’m a big fan but I do not trust her politics.

I double checked and you are correct she does look at the camera, I still don't love the pic though for a tween fan. Like I said other people are fine to respond differently to the photo but I can only say that the outfit plus fingers in mouth was a bit much for me. If you still find powerful that's cool for you. I personally found bejewelled etc much more empowered and do hold that the showgirl theme has been very done before. Not heard it so the songs should hopefully be good and am still reserving judgement which is a first for me with one of her albums over the last many years. I think we are both fans, my daughter is too and I really hope this is an album and film that will give her a positive role model as a young woman. Obviously not sold on showgirl with fingers in mouth at the moment!

Oh ffs, if I see HTH one more time on this thread, I am going to bash my laptop in! And it's a work one, so can the culprits please stop.

HTH

I think she is just very busy with work and probably really quite tired. When I was in my 20s, I was out and about shouting at anti-war protests and partying most nights. At 35, I was largely at home watching tv and in bed early (with a dc). I’m as leftist as ever, in my mid 40s. But I’m busy and tired.

I never said she was a right winger.

I said it's naive to think she doesn't know and love people who vote Republican. She went to high school in Tennessee.

No, she didn't. She grew up in Pennsylvania, which was blue from 1992-2016. (And has flip-flopped since then.) She moved to Nashville in her teens for career purposes. She's not from the South. Her family is vaguely Christian in the sense of taking the kids to church on a Sunday and celebrating Christmas.

I can't believe how many people look at her and see a right-winger despite all evidence to the contrary, just because she's getting married and doesn't look as if she needs a good scrub!

I think you’re overthinking things. Who peoples personas are on stage etc is not who they are in private. She is entitled for her life to progress with marriage and children if that’s what she’s chosen for herself.

Why are you so relentlessly negative about Taylor and why do you ascribe such critical motives to everything she does and doesn't do? I think you must be profoundly jealous of her.

I'm confused - the photo shows her looking directly into the camera.

Someone upthread said that Taylor Swift has a trans sibling. She has one sibling, a brother named Austin, and there is zero evidence that he's trans. Where on earth do some people get their information?!

I'm not sure why the finger in mouth photo is so shocking! PPs make it sound as if she's imitating sex or something, but it's just at the corner of her mouth in a sardonic kind of "Hmmmm..." pose. As if she's telling someone who's speaking to her that she thinks they might be bs-ing her.

But what if you think the situation is too complicated to just pick a side? What if your view is more nuanced than that? I can see both sides, and I think it's a pity that everyone can't just share the land. ETA: Genocide is never OK! When I say sides, I'm taking about the issues in Israel as a whole, not what Hamas did, which is horrific and unacceptable.

I don't blame TS whatsoever for not wading into politics. It's complex, and once she starts she'd be forever explaining what she meant, all the crazies would go for her no matter what she said, and ultimately she's a pop star not a politician. I agree she has a lot of influence, but I think that's precisely a good reason not to say anything. People who are easily led need to make their own minds up. She was very unsure about pinning her colours to a particular mast before she endorsed Kamala, for that reason. Too much influence. It's for the politicians to sort out, not for someone who has untold influence but no responsibility for that influence. She's being careful how she wields her power, and I think that's a good thing.

Exactly this!

If only Taylor had written a passionate instagram post about Gaza - people would stop dying instantly 😏

The whining about famous people not involving themselves in politics is so pathetic. If you want to stop something bad from happening in the world, find a way to use your own agency to do it, rather than expecting people in the entertainment industry to make vacuous statements about it.

So High School is about the experience of feeling like a giddy teenager whilst actually being much older. It wouldn't make any sense if it was written by someone actually in high school.

As for Me! in my opinion it's a catchy pop song. Not everything she does has to be deep and meaningful. However, it's also important to note that although she has many fans in their 30s and 40s she also has appeal with tweens and younger. Some of her songs are going to be written for them- catchy, empowering, fairly simple musically and fun. My 5yo loves dancing to Love Story, Me! and several others, she has heard TTPD, doesn't relate to most of it, and it is slightly jarring to hear her sing "I'm so depressed I act like it's my birthday..." I'm sure lots of parents of young girls will be happy to have some songs on LoaSG that their kids will love too.

She's mid '30's and may want a family-
I don't think that she is right wing but I don't know if she can remain the poster child for the 'cat lady' independant women who doesn't want kids cliche mentioned by Vance that she leaned into.

Fair enough. I do think she has written some good songs but it did suprise me that she comes up with stuff like Me! And So high school as a 30 something year old. But I always liked her early variety of songs, especially Mary and The Best day.

I think she's just reconsidered her desire to be political, for the obvious reason that she's realised you can't win with the left. She can stick her neck out and endanger herself, and people will still complain that she's not doing enough, because she didn't support their cause de jour, or give her opinion in the exact way they wanted her to.

If you're a fan, she's been hinting at this for a while in her music. There was that line in Anti Hero about her political advocacy era being "covert narcissism disguised as altruism". Another line in Sweet Nothing about all the "voices that implore, you should be doing more" and how "I'm just too soft for all of it". Then there was that other song, Dear Reader, which seemed to exist as warning to her fans to stop viewing her as some sort of political saviour. It felt like she was telling them to grow up a little, and stop with the hero worship, in that one. I can't remember the lyrics exactly, but it was something along the lines of "you should find another guiding light, but I shine so bright".

All those examples were back in 2022. She's kept quiet on the political front since then, except for a rather milquetoast endorsement of Kamala that made it feel like she was as unenthusiastic about voting for her as anyone, but was going to grit her and teeth and do it as the lesser of two evils. Taylor has always had quite a good grasp of the public mood. In 2019, she was the only celebrity not virtue-signalling, so she made a movie about her "political awakening" and some gay ally / feminist songs, and dipped her toes in the water. But by the time the next album came around, the culture had shifted back to a "celebrities shut up about politics challenge" place, so she went quiet again. Probably with some relief, once she'd had a taste of the purity spiral that inevitably results from speaking up.

I don't think she's rebranding as a conservative, personally. But I do believe she has savvy PR people, and they know a centrist position would be better for her career. Sometimes it's smarter to say nothing and let everyone assume you're on their side. Swift has taken that approach for most of her career and people used to mock her for it, but I bet they're seeing the wisdom in it now.

FFs, there's no way she's gay! She's spent years and years in relationships, including a six-year one that she kept mostly under wraps, and now she's marrying a man. She's so wealthy that she could have a child on her own, no problem, if that's what she wanted.

People go crazy where Swift's concerned. She's right-wing, she's calculating, she's gay...when she is quite obviously a straight, Democrat lefty who's just doing her thing and who seems really nice - i.e. turning off the surge pricing on her concert tickets and making sure most of her dancers are people of colour and different body sizes. If she was all about "milking" people, as someone upthread said, why would she turn off the surge pricing?

The world cannot BEAR the sight of a young, pretty, successful, wealthy woman. It makes the collective brain short-circuit.

My username outs me as a Swiftie, in that I enjoy her music and she writes a bloody good line. I’m also 53 although happily not divorced so ticking at least some of the cliché boxes.

But Taylor to my mind has never been anything other than pretty bland politically.

In action she is liberal (the diversity of her backing singers, her donations to food banks in Eras tour cities) but she’s hardly edgy musically or in her lifestyle.

She is a savvy businesswoman but she’s middle of the road in her love life and what she sings about. I can’t see her quitting to become a tradwife but it’s obvious from her lyrics that she’s always wanted a happy relationship!

She’s a privileged artist whose parents moved heaven and earth to help her break into music.

She’s made missteps on her ‘feminism’ (the ‘fat’ scale quickly corrected in the Anti Hero video, for example).

For everyone saying her audience is 10yo girls, well, I’m not sure they’re in a position to understand or influence the Palestine debate, and those of us at the other end of the audience demographic have probably made up our own minds a long time ago (if indeed we have an opinion at all).