“The cold was the steel of my ax to grind / For the boys who broke my heart”, sings Taylor Swift in “Invisible String”, a song in 2020 Folklore. But things have changed, she continues: “Now I send gifts for your babies”. Both in his music and in his public personality, Swift was careful to show that he has grown a lot in recent years. It is political now; she records alleged indie albums; she remains silent about her love life in public. But every now and then, Swift proves that she hasn’t built a reputation as the biggest grudge keeper in pop music for nothing. This morning, the target of his ire was a new TV show called Ginny and Georgia and the streaming conglomerate that displays it.
Swift’s complaint is that Ginny and Georgia, a show that debuted on Netflix last week, uses her name in vain at the end of the season. Ginny and Georgia is the most popular Netflix show at the moment, at least according to the company’s top 10 public list, but it’s worth noting that it is – how can I say? – very stupid. It’s a cheesy mashup from Gilmore Girls and a crime maneuver. Perhaps you have seen the absurd clip of teenagers fighting oppression circulating on social media: Ginny and Georgia. So the idea of taking anything seriously about this show is a little ridiculous. But to put the offensive line in context anyway, it comes up in a scene where a teenage daughter and her mother are fighting after the mother finds out that the daughter is sexually active. At one point, the daughter replies: “What do you care? You pass men faster than Taylor Swift. “
Big scream, right? To call this joke “deeply sexist” is almost ridiculous. Deep sexist? To say that Swift was famous for having a lot of boyfriends? It’s a strange hill for her to die on – especially considering how Swift herself has made her personal life an important theme in her music throughout her career. In fact, she made essentially the same joke Ginny and Georgia was done years ago: Does the line “I have a long list of ex-lovers” from “Espaço em Branco” sound something?
Okay, Swift is right in saying that the joke is lazy and dated; it’s not even remotely clear in 2021. But reading your tweet carefully, the accusation of “degrading working women” also seems strangely – what does “hard work” have to do with it? And so, Swift really believes that Netflix owes her something just because it released her documentary, American Miss, last year? AND then: “Happy Women’s History Month, I think.” Uh, really? This show debuted in February, and it is likely that Swift learned of the seemingly unflattering reference to her before Monday – she postponed posting this tweet until the first day of March so that she could really hit us with the History Month connection. of the women? It is not as if Women’s History Month was a particularly sacred moment, when it is worse than normal to slap women; in my experience, it exists primarily as a topic for elementary school book reports.
Despite all that, the inevitable happened when Swift posted this tweet. She awakened her vast army of fans, and they instantly took things to DEFCON 1: Swifties are currently spamming social media with calls to “RESPECT TAYLOR SWIFT” everywhere they can, from responses to Netflix tweets to Instagram account of the actress who says the alleged sexist line in Ginny and Georgia. It was really funny when Swift urged his fans on the Carlyle Group, and Netflix can handle criticism, but what individual harassment would that tweet bring? She should have known better. What happened to the mature, new and improved baby gift-giving Taylor?
Swift grumbled that “2010 called and wants his lazy and deeply sexist joke back”, but I don’t know, while 2010 is at stake, would you also like to return to the petty 20-year-old Taylor? Because it seems to have wandered in the present
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