Don’t be so swift to shame talented Taylor
I WAS disgusted by the description of pop star Taylor Swift ending her relationship with her boyfriend Calvin Harris as ‘Another split for Taylor . . . and it’s only a matter of time before the break-up song’ (Mail). We’re told how Taylor writes about her experiences of love and heartbreak and how Calvin must be shaking in his boots because now there’ll be a song written about him. This is just an ongoing joke. Taylor herself has said it’s ‘old and stems from a very sexist place’. Why try to shame a 26-year-old woman for having a relationship? And why concentrate on her love life without saying anything about Calvin’s? Taylor is very successful because of her songwriting skills, not because of her boyfriends or love life. To say otherwise is to detract from a woman’s success and give all the credit to a man. To talk of ‘Taylor’s growing list of ex-boyfriends’ is absurd. The eight men listed are her entire love life. She’s a young woman who has the freedom and the right to date men and have relationships. Who doesn’t when they’re that age? To call her a ‘serial dater’ — implying, as others have, that she’s some kind of ‘slut’, is repulsive. And failing to comment on Calvin’s relationships encourages the idea that it’s shameful for a woman to date, yet not for a man. Taylor has said she’s a ‘lightning rod for slut shaming’. From the age of 16, when she got into the music industry, she has been under a microscope and has been picked at by the media, which inspired her song Blank Space. I attended a session with Taylor about her songs, at which she said: ‘The media decided to paint me as this serial dater and it was wrong for me to do that, but not for my boyfriends.’ Because of this, she wrote a song as the ‘character’ the media portray her as. I understand why such things get reported, but a successful young woman shouldn’t be publicly shamed for being just that.
BETH MAIDMENT, 14, Winsford, Cheshire.