An Open Letter To Taylor Swift
I’m writing this letter because there are few celebrities in the media that I find more important and relatable than you. Being well known in the industry from the age of around 16 onwards, the evolution of your songwriting, performance and personal life has been continuously under public scrutiny. From your relationships to your ‘feuds’ with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, so many often have something negative to say about who Taylor Swift is and your career when most of this information should be taken with a pinch of salt.
The reality is that all of these headlines about who you’ll date next or how you should have handled something are often taken widely out of context and without knowing you personally at all; they are generalisations made by people who want to make viral content or live vicariously through you.
How can a complete stranger, even if they are a fan, define who you are and claim that they would do a better job at being you? Over the past few years, opposed to being a pop star constructed for scandal and chaos, you have instead remained one of the few role models behaving in a way that helps others opposed to just yourself. I don’t think many people could do that all, regardless of whether they had your fame or not.
It is difficult to be in the limelight and instead of using it cautiously or for personal gain, you have utilised it to make change.
For those that don’t know, Taylor Swift has stood up for the copyright of content and wages of artists across various platforms in the royalties they get paid and regularly visits fans and donates to charitable causes. She also speaks often on Feminism, why it’s important and why it needs to be better understood by the wider world. In all of these pressing issues, she has spoken openly and honestly about the consequences of such actions and what needs to happen next.
Another important example of this positivity during difficult times is the recent Taylor Swift case against a DJ who sexually assaulted her, who then in turn attempted to sue her $3 million.
Swift requested only $1 to emphasise the ludicrosity of this attempt to prevent justice of what was clearly assault against a woman much younger than the man in question who had given absolutely no consent. Around the time of the emerging #MeToo movement, Taylor made something incredibly personal into something which represented the need for change in the industry to protect other female artists from this too. It is inherently linked to the courage and platform it provided other women to speak out about their own roles as victims in notoriously sexualised industries.
And so I guess I’m also writing this letter as a thank-you.
Alongside this role in the media and the mature handling of such challenging things to go through, Taylor you have channelled this into so much great music that remains relatable and central to the lives of so many people all across the world. The Reputation album especially summarises all of this up perfectly.
As I danced at your concert earlier this summer, I was free of all my worries and all of my cares because your music so completely understood what it is to feel on the outside or to hurt, but did it in a way that let me escape my own reality too.
I think that you still have a long way to go before you are done with spreading such messages of strength and gender equality, Taylor Swift.
There are more concerts to play, more songs to write and more importantly, more world to influence with love opposed to hatred. And whilst it is difficult to summarise everything here that I want to express to you about how proud you make me to be a young woman in the Twenty-First Century, I think this is overall the most important parts of that. For now, Thank-you again on behalf of me and so many others for showing us what it means to be capable of kindness during even the darkest days.
