Quinn Hunter
Senior layout Editor

Taylor Swift. How do I even begin to explain Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is flawless. She has seven Grammys and a white Audi. I hear her legs are insured for $40 million. She does car commercials in China. Her favorite movies are from Disney. She met Ed Sheeran at an award show and he told her she was pretty. She wrote a song about spreading rumors that a boy is gay and her fans loved it. The truth is, Taylor Swift is meaner than Regina George, and everyone loves her for it.

Taylor Swift’s image is choreographed to an impeccable “T,” with her fake “I-can’t-believe-I-just-won-my-200th- award-face”. She is never caught with a drink in her hand, a middle finger in the air, or even a slip of the tongue. She is flawless in the eyes of girls everywhere, as they chant how much they want to be in her inner circle. Tay Tay’s group is the place to be, the inner circle of the “in” crowd — the table we all wanted to sit at during lunch. She has created a clique outside of high school walls, managing to call herself a feminist while writing songs that call out her ex-boyfriends and best friends.

I will forget about the early years of Taylor Swift’s career and blame her musical indiscretions on innocence.  But wiping those years from her record doesn’t give her a clean slate. Her last album, “1989,” while catchy — and I will admit I like it — might just show how mean she really is.

Taylor Swift’s true colors have been seeping through the seams for years, but they’ve really started to show as of late. “Bad Blood” is one of most viewed music videos of all time and it is also about the betrayal of a close friend. The music video shows Swift enacting revenge while having her girl squad tag along. This persona is a far cry from the sweet and dutiful girl she is on stage. However, this doesn’t compare to the horror that is “Blank Space.” The entirety of the song, which Swift wrote herself, encompasses manipulation, blackmail, and abuse.

Let’s just take a look at a few lines: “Find out what you want, be that girl for a month, but the worst is yet to come” (manipulation); and “leave you breathless, Or with a nasty scar” (abuse)”; but that worst is the idol threat that is the tagline for the song, “I got a blank space baby, And I’ll write your name” (blackmail if I ever saw it).

If Swift was a man, this song wouldn’t have been so high on the charts without backlash. This song is filled with more than I have the room for.

Swift’s songs are not the only problem. Swift, for lack of better or more accurate words, is a hypocrite. In 2014, Swift pulled her music from Spotify, Apple music, and other similar services and demanded that artists like her be paid for their work. After negotiations, Swift’s requests were met.

I’m not disagreeing with her, I believe wholeheartedly that artists should receive fair compensation for their work. The problem is that when Swift used another artist’s work, she did not do the same for them. The artist’s image of a fox was used to promote Swift’s “1989” album on social media without her permission or knowledge.

After a yearlong battle of trying to get Swift to acknowledge the mistake, the image was quietly deleted from Swift’s page, and the artist was given a low, four-figure sum to compensate her loses. The sum does not compare to the amount that Swift gained from using the stolen image to promote herself. Swift demands fair-pay, but cannot give it herself and that sounds pretty hypocritical to me.

Taylor Swift is so much meaner than Regina George. She is Cady Heron and she knows it. After all, Taylor will even admit herself that she is “a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”

Natalie King
   Publisher

To me, Taylor Swift is the epitome of grace and class. Many people have mixed

feelings about Swift, but personally I see no reason to question her seemingly

perfect public manor and wholesome music.

To be clear, I am not arguing that Taylor Swift’s music is something for the ages; I am strictly stating that she is one of the few, so very few, celebrities that should be admired and respected. She has never once been a spectacle in the media for anything more than mindless drama and petty “arguments” between her and fellow celebrities.

Even then, she handles her responses with the up-most class. Let us not forget her innocent and lovable response to Kanye’s microphone stealing moment when Swift was accepting her first VMA award.

Swift was able to forgive, joke about the incident, and even awkwardly dance next to Kim during Kanye’s performance at the 2015 VMA’s.

Awkward dancing: another reason I love T. Swift. Somehow, people hated on her “Shake It Off” music video where Swift invited fans from across the globe to dance and be in her video. Who does that?! She was literally making fun of her self in order to make others feel as though they can be comfortable with their own insecurities. Beautiful, Taylor, just beautiful.

Touching again on her love for her fans, Swift uses the huge impact she has on social media for good. She takes the time to actually respond to some persistent fans.

This past Christmas, Swift hand-picked a number of fans to follow closely on Twitter and Instagram. She learned their likes and a general gist of who they each are.

She then sent each fan a carefully selected gift based on what she knew about them, along with a hand written note and an invitation to a party where they would meet Taylor herself.

That is dedication for your fans, if you ask me. Again, some may call me old fashioned, but I still believe it is important to have wholesome role models for children and teenagers to look up to today.

I think there is something to be said for a music career (pop music career at that) based on music and lyrics where “handsome as hell,” is as risqué as it gets. Taylor Swift empowers women without sexualizing herself or others’ bodies in her lyrics or music videos.

Despite her romantic life being constantly in the public eye, something no celebrity can escape, Taylor Swift manages to keep her private life private.

She modestly stands up for women but does not cause controversy with her views. She also refuses to comment on any accusations of conflict between her and other pop princesses, likely to avoid further issues.

All in all, I find anyone who speaks negatively of Taylor Swift annoying. My personal opinion of her is higher than most; this is the girl who nearly teared up just seeing her tour bus at the Greensboro Coliseum.

But regardless, I would like to demand people look past their opinion of her music, slightly off dance moves, love for donating to charities of her choosing, and rapid dating habits to uncover the beautiful, caring, and genuine human Taylor Swift has been and will continue to be.