She’s consistently linked her recent Pride-themed performances-including at the Stonewall Inn-with real activist efforts: writing her senator, directing people to a petition, driving donations. Swift has shown some awareness of the risk of over-centering herself. The cause becomes more vulnerable to criticisms of faddishness, or of style above substance-of ROYGBIV and sequins as empty aesthetics. If heterosexuals become overly important in the gay movement, then it becomes harder to talk, with precision, about what the movement is actually for. The A in terms such as LGBTQIA+ typically stands for “asexual/aromantic,” but it’s often mistaken for “ally,” which is a sign of the danger here: People with no personal stake, facing no germane struggle of their own, not only join the club but also begin to define it. The fear for many queer people is less that allies might profit off them than that allies might change and defang what queerness means. Big corporations such as Target and Bank of America see an upside in advertising that involves rainbows and same-sex kisses.
![taylor swift youre gay meme taylor swift youre gay meme](http://thats-normal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/you-belong-with-me.gif)
But public sentiment, the marketplace, and the dynamics of online communication have given queerness a trendy mainstream component. Queer people used to mostly stand alone in advocating for those things, and it wasn’t long ago that a video like the one for “You Need to Calm Down” would have been assumed to be a career-ender for a performer banking on wide popularity. LGBTQ folks desiring legal protections, cultural inclusion, social services, and all the other items on the gay agenda rightly welcome the help of straight people. Read: Taylor Swift’s “ME!” is everything wrong with popįifty years since the Stonewall uprising, allyship has become a tricky subject.
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Thus far, though, her only coming-out has been as an ally: a straight person who marches for her queer friends. But recent years have given rise to online speculation that she’s secretly canoodling with the model Karlie Kloss, leading to buzz that Swift might “come out” on her forthcoming album, Lover. Swift is the great champion of 2010s-era heterosexual romance: Football players and cheerleaders, princes and princesses, and James Deans and good girls have all paired up in her hits. Yet fans seem equally fixated on the personal implications. It closes with a plug to sign a petition for the passage of the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity.įor a star whose greatest political controversy used to be that she had no politics, a single that name-checks GLAAD is a real evolution, and it’s already reportedly having the concrete effect of boosting donations for gay rights. The song’s second verse takes on homophobic demonstrators: “Sunshine on the street at the parade / But you would rather be in the dark ages.” The video, released today, has a legion of queer celebs doing famously queer things such as sipping tea, performing in drag, and getting married in matching baby-blue tuxes. “You Need to Calm Down” is Swift’s grand LGBTQ-rights statement, released in the middle of Pride Month with all the precision of a bank’s new credit-card rollout. Shout along with this brain bender: “Shade never made anybody less gay!” I like the dry, silly way Swift drawls the strongest punch line of the track: “Like, damn … it’s 7 a.m.”īut I’ve also been fixated on-uncalmed by, and maybe even losing sleep over!-what the lyrics say. I like that the “oh-oh” swell of the chorus takes yummy harmonies, typically the key side dish in pop, and makes them the main course.
![taylor swift youre gay meme taylor swift youre gay meme](https://i.redd.it/ebcz79cxs3g31.jpg)
I like that the beat’s something a great beast might march to, slowly from one side to another, rumbling with each footfall.
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Since it debuted Friday, Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” has bounced around in my head for exactly the reason a pop song should: the way it sounds.