In my most recent post, I speculated that the reason pseudonyms on the internet enjoy telling Emily Ratajkowski or Margot Robbie or Taylor Swift of whomever that they’re ordinary-looking could be that these are men who do not leave the house. I did not say that I
I think, setting the very stupid Taylor Swift Fat stuff aside, two things are true:
1) Taylor's aesthetic is very "for the girls." A lot of the Eras costuming evokes playing dress up, especially one song where she runs around in a velvet cape. Appearing to be super thin is just not relevant to what she's doing. I think framing this as "she is deliberately mediocre to be relatable" (to paraphrase your interlocutor) is disingenuous because…
2) The Eras tour is incredibly physically demanding. Taylor is not a great dancer but she's still working the stage and she is basically on there for the full three and a half hours, the costume changes are quite fast. People also don't go there to be thrilled by her dancing, they go there because they love her songwriting.
In general I think there's a specific aesthetic that fashion people tend to value, which is this hyper-thin, woman-as-canvas look. (There is a post about that coming, though not by me.) Taylor does favor aesthetics that feel more attainable by normal people, but I don't think that's really mediocrity so much as a different set of values. She did try the hyper thin look and she (imho) looked pretty bad and also has been open about how it meant she had very little energy for performing. (edit: here's the clip of her talking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTou2PKsiKs)
"Taylor does favor aesthetics that feel more attainable by normal people, but I don't think that's really mediocrity so much as a different set of values." Agreed with infinite vehemence. This came up a bunch with Lena Dunham and "Girls" - critics acting as though it was a gotcha that she is not and is not trying to be a supermodel. Sometimes women - even young women, even young women performers - are doing something else! She is the subject not the object.
yeah, I think people who follow the mediocrity line don't really pay attention to how much work her show is and how she does it in basically all conditions—in the rain, without one shoe when one breaks on stage, with a chunk missing out of her hand on one show etc—and also does two unique solo acoustic performances every show etc. (Another point of commonality with LD imho is that people are generally ignoring the thing that the person is sort of obviously excellent at—i.e. writing—because it's an invisible skill, whereas thinness is not a skill at all but it is highly visible.)
I also think "no longer thin" is such specific phrasing, like she's lost some sort of currency or she's somehow failing at her job, when it's very obvious to anyone paying attention that she is still quite in shape, is arguably better at her job than ever before, and isn't going anywhere. I do also think it's hilarious, though perhaps accurate, that women in their 40s working in fashion with grad degrees are the ones reminding other women that their bodies have changed. Men like to call women mid, but women like to point out the tiniest fluctuations in weight, partially because of the idea that "men can't tell like we can."
Yeah… that reminds me, there's a rather sad (though perhaps apocryphal) story about a fan meeting Taylor when she was launching reputation and asking her something like "when did you get so fat." :/
But like… even if I don't care about weight or health or anything else and just want to be a shallow bitch, reputation era Taylor was just objectively hotter than her "trying to be a Victoria's Secret model" era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5S1fvplSyI Fashion aesthetics simply can't handle the truth!! [edit: sorry i know this is so sort of undermining the higher point i just feel like i have to speak my truth]
Yeah she looks incredible here! Thigh muscles are a good look. I think the strong, in charge, angry Taylor Swift is much sexier than the waifish, weepy, childish Taylor. Maybe that's because I've done both, too, and when I'm at war with my body (i.e. super thin), I'm not IN MY BODY the way I am when I'm eating and moving and happy.
"I liked it better when I thought it was just incels." If this doesn't encapsulate my descent into adult cynicism....
The little insight I have into male communities revealed that there are plenty of men who think her NFL guy is out of her league, which can only be based on appearance and is also so bizarre, probably the very shut-ins you talked about.
(In my fandom corners I've unfortunately witnessed a lot of fat shaming of male celebrities as well which is so bizarre, not your beat, but it's another case of "oh this is a bigger problem than I thought"-pill situation. It also doesn't revolve around fat men, but those who happen to have love handles or a slight tummy bulge in candid pics. Perhaps another shut-in phenomenon.)
First-person view re: male communities, if by that we mean NFL fans. Insofar as there are any strong opinions in said community on the topic of Taylor Swift, by far the most commonly encountered is annoyance at the constant intrusion of Swift-related material into game coverage. That may sometimes get expressed as derogating her appearance, in a sense. It's not that she's bad-looking in any way; her beauty just isn't so transcendent as it'd need to be for all the otherwise gratuitous reaction shots, etc., to be justified on visual appeal alone.
The other factor here is that Swift has, by fate or design, attached herself to what happens at the moment to be the most hated and envied team in the league. The Chiefs were already widely viewed by fans of other teams as overpromoted, overrated, and propped up by star-driven favoritism. And that's *before* Taylor ever got involved. With most fans, I suspect any impulse to dump on her as an overhyped mediocrity or whatever is just a natural extension of a preexisting attitude toward all things Chiefs, which she fits into like hand in glove.
I can just barely remember Soupy Sales as an old guy on Shanana (a show I adored, probably because of Bowser). He was a comedian of the variety show type, I guess.
Yeah, I too preferred the incel theory. Women ripping each other apart was never a good look. One thing I really like about the Gen Z kids I know is that they don't really seem to do it the way us Gen Xers often did.
I think, setting the very stupid Taylor Swift Fat stuff aside, two things are true:
1) Taylor's aesthetic is very "for the girls." A lot of the Eras costuming evokes playing dress up, especially one song where she runs around in a velvet cape. Appearing to be super thin is just not relevant to what she's doing. I think framing this as "she is deliberately mediocre to be relatable" (to paraphrase your interlocutor) is disingenuous because…
2) The Eras tour is incredibly physically demanding. Taylor is not a great dancer but she's still working the stage and she is basically on there for the full three and a half hours, the costume changes are quite fast. People also don't go there to be thrilled by her dancing, they go there because they love her songwriting.
In general I think there's a specific aesthetic that fashion people tend to value, which is this hyper-thin, woman-as-canvas look. (There is a post about that coming, though not by me.) Taylor does favor aesthetics that feel more attainable by normal people, but I don't think that's really mediocrity so much as a different set of values. She did try the hyper thin look and she (imho) looked pretty bad and also has been open about how it meant she had very little energy for performing. (edit: here's the clip of her talking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTou2PKsiKs)
"Taylor does favor aesthetics that feel more attainable by normal people, but I don't think that's really mediocrity so much as a different set of values." Agreed with infinite vehemence. This came up a bunch with Lena Dunham and "Girls" - critics acting as though it was a gotcha that she is not and is not trying to be a supermodel. Sometimes women - even young women, even young women performers - are doing something else! She is the subject not the object.
yeah, I think people who follow the mediocrity line don't really pay attention to how much work her show is and how she does it in basically all conditions—in the rain, without one shoe when one breaks on stage, with a chunk missing out of her hand on one show etc—and also does two unique solo acoustic performances every show etc. (Another point of commonality with LD imho is that people are generally ignoring the thing that the person is sort of obviously excellent at—i.e. writing—because it's an invisible skill, whereas thinness is not a skill at all but it is highly visible.)
I also think "no longer thin" is such specific phrasing, like she's lost some sort of currency or she's somehow failing at her job, when it's very obvious to anyone paying attention that she is still quite in shape, is arguably better at her job than ever before, and isn't going anywhere. I do also think it's hilarious, though perhaps accurate, that women in their 40s working in fashion with grad degrees are the ones reminding other women that their bodies have changed. Men like to call women mid, but women like to point out the tiniest fluctuations in weight, partially because of the idea that "men can't tell like we can."
Yeah… that reminds me, there's a rather sad (though perhaps apocryphal) story about a fan meeting Taylor when she was launching reputation and asking her something like "when did you get so fat." :/
But like… even if I don't care about weight or health or anything else and just want to be a shallow bitch, reputation era Taylor was just objectively hotter than her "trying to be a Victoria's Secret model" era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5S1fvplSyI Fashion aesthetics simply can't handle the truth!! [edit: sorry i know this is so sort of undermining the higher point i just feel like i have to speak my truth]
Yeah she looks incredible here! Thigh muscles are a good look. I think the strong, in charge, angry Taylor Swift is much sexier than the waifish, weepy, childish Taylor. Maybe that's because I've done both, too, and when I'm at war with my body (i.e. super thin), I'm not IN MY BODY the way I am when I'm eating and moving and happy.
"I liked it better when I thought it was just incels." If this doesn't encapsulate my descent into adult cynicism....
The little insight I have into male communities revealed that there are plenty of men who think her NFL guy is out of her league, which can only be based on appearance and is also so bizarre, probably the very shut-ins you talked about.
(In my fandom corners I've unfortunately witnessed a lot of fat shaming of male celebrities as well which is so bizarre, not your beat, but it's another case of "oh this is a bigger problem than I thought"-pill situation. It also doesn't revolve around fat men, but those who happen to have love handles or a slight tummy bulge in candid pics. Perhaps another shut-in phenomenon.)
First-person view re: male communities, if by that we mean NFL fans. Insofar as there are any strong opinions in said community on the topic of Taylor Swift, by far the most commonly encountered is annoyance at the constant intrusion of Swift-related material into game coverage. That may sometimes get expressed as derogating her appearance, in a sense. It's not that she's bad-looking in any way; her beauty just isn't so transcendent as it'd need to be for all the otherwise gratuitous reaction shots, etc., to be justified on visual appeal alone.
The other factor here is that Swift has, by fate or design, attached herself to what happens at the moment to be the most hated and envied team in the league. The Chiefs were already widely viewed by fans of other teams as overpromoted, overrated, and propped up by star-driven favoritism. And that's *before* Taylor ever got involved. With most fans, I suspect any impulse to dump on her as an overhyped mediocrity or whatever is just a natural extension of a preexisting attitude toward all things Chiefs, which she fits into like hand in glove.
I can just barely remember Soupy Sales as an old guy on Shanana (a show I adored, probably because of Bowser). He was a comedian of the variety show type, I guess.
Yeah, I too preferred the incel theory. Women ripping each other apart was never a good look. One thing I really like about the Gen Z kids I know is that they don't really seem to do it the way us Gen Xers often did.