Taylor Swift Fans banger Back At MIND-BOGGLINGLY Bad Faith The Life Of A Showgirl Takes!

It has been A WEEK!

Just seven days after the midnight release of Taylor Swift‘s twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl has inexplicably become her most controversial. But are the lyrics really that offensive? Or is it the listeners who got… weird?

Look, we’re not talking about the intentional spicy lines, like Actually Romantic seemingly igniting a feud with Charli XCX, letting everyone know she might have her more controversial friends’ backs on CANCELLED!, or getting dirtier than she’s ever gotten singing about Travis Kelce‘s Wood. All that we expected. No, these are takes we could never have anticipated because, well… frankly they’re such leaps in logic they defy reason!

Tradwife Propaganda

Listeners are interpreting her desire to get married and have children as… conservative tradwife propaganda. Um… WHAT?!?

Y’all. The patriarchal tradwife thing is not about wanting a husband and kids. It’s actually the opposite! That’s about women being forced into the position of being a full-time wife and baby factory — because they’re seen as the property of men. Taylor saying she wants that stuff for herself is making a choice.

Related: Taylor ‘Braced’ For ‘Drama’ As She Picks Bridesmaids For Travis Kelce Wedding!

As this fan succinctly explains:

“The whole point of feminism is that we want women to do whatever they want to do.”

Taylor isn’t being anti-feminist here. She’s just telling everyone what she wants. Which we should all be fine with. LOVE IS LOVE, remember that? It works the other way, too!

Also, let’s not forget, even if Tay retired right today she’d remain one of the most successful humans in their chosen field OF ALL TIME. That’s not what a tradwife is. Tradwives are basically teenagers drafted into marriage like chattel. Taylor looks great, but let’s not forget she’s 35 years old! And richer than her husband-to-be by A LOT. This ain’t that.

Oh, and Tay herself said she’s NOT retiring just because she got married. And in fact she finds that assumption “shockingly offensive” by the way.

Also from WI$H LI$T? Some “fans” somehow pulled the idea Taylor wants to propagate the white race like she’s Elon Musk. Why? Because she sang about wanting to:

“Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you”

See, Trav is a white man, so she clearly is saying she only wants everyone on the block to be white. And voila, the song about not being into modern materialistic desires is actually… promoting eugenics.

Yeah. It’s all too real.

You can see a lot more about that theory and the Swifties blasting it HERE. (Oh, and also take a listen to Kylie Kelce hilariously explaining why that’s much funnier if you know the Kelces and their frustratingly dominant genes.)

Also, here’s a response we really love from Saints tight end Juwan Johnson and his wife Chanen…

So. Cute. Too bad Juwan is clearly a white supremacist, right? Y’all see how ridiculous you sound today??

Homophobia

In her track Actually Romantic, Tay takes a new tactic on the diss track. She likens someone’s nonstop, compulsive hatred of her to, well… a romantic obsession. She’s basically saying that Charli XCX — or whoever it’s about, more than one person in all likelihood — talking about her all the time doesn’t feel dangerous, it’s harmless. It’s even flattering, like a crush.

But there’s a contingent who are just champing at the bit to call out Taylor for being homophobic, so they say it’s gay panic. They figure since she’s a woman and Charli is a woman, she’s basically calling someone gay as an insult…

Forget the fact Taylor loves the LGBTQ community, was the first pop star to cast a trans actor as a love interest in a beat video, and has been vocal politically mostly about this topic.

She doesn’t speak about politics much, but she did tweet in 2021 that she had her “Fingers crossed and praying that the Senate will see trans and lgbtq rights as basic human rights.” In 2018, she also spoke out against the anti-LGBT legislation of Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, saying:

“I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent. I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love.”

You can listen to what she’s explicitly saying about the matter… or you can infer that she secretly means whatever makes her look the worst. One of those choices respects her and gives her agency.

Racism & Misogynoir

Oof, OK, this is a big one.

There’s a theory that Taylor is not only racist but specifically obsessed with Black women — as it relates to the men she dates. Travis Kelce’s most recent longterm relationship before her was with a woman named Kayla Nicole — and critics are pairing that with some lyrics and doing a hop, skip, and a jump to… misogynoir, the hatred of Black women.

The pop delight Opalite is pretty clearly about Tay’s new romance with Trav. She sings about why this is relationship feels so right in comparison with past ones. That means, yes, a bit of a swipe at Kayla. Tay sings:

“You couldn’t understand it / Why you felt alone / You were in it for real / She was in her phone / And you were just a pose”

Folks have taken this to be about Kayla not just because she was Trav’s most recent ex but also because of resurfaced video of the NFL star and his then-WAG living this exact scenario.

That’s nothing wrong with a songwriter singing about their own relationship, and this is all personal stuff. We just know it because Taylor is the most scrutinized woman alive! But again, nothing about race at all.

However, at the same time, the whole song uses the metaphor of opalite, a bright, glittery man-made gemstone, to represent happiness, while the black mineral onyx is used to represent difficult times. People are interpreting this to say dating Black women was what made Trav upset, today he’s with her and all is white in the world. It is SUCH a stretch.

Darkness, night, stormy weather, all classic representations of sadness — ones which Tay also uses in the song. And sunshine and light represent safety, rescue, and hope. Why? Well, they pretty much always have throughout human history. Probably something to do with early man getting lost to predators and accidents in the scary dark, and being safer when it was brighter and everyone could see? In any case, it’s like all of culture, thousands of poems, songs, plays, films…

But when Taylor does it it’s a sign she’s been secretly racist all this time?? Come on, today! Really??

We’ll let some folks explain who have a little more expertise…

But seriously, Taylor has ALWAYS, quite consistently been against racism. She had the courage to blast the President of the United States for “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism.” And she’s been reaping his wrath ever since.

And when white nationalists tried to embrace her as an “Aryan goddess” in 2019, she did what Trump was never willing to do when they embraced him — she very clearly and explicitly denounced them, telling The Guardian:

“There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.”

You can listen to what she says when she’s not being poetic, making her feelings on the matter clear! Or… You can listen to a song about finding happiness, in which she sings:

“You were dancing through the lightning strikes / Sleepless in the onyx night / But today the sky is opalite”

And assume her secret intention is to take down Black women. Sigh.

Not Political Enough??

In addition to those who think the whole album is a MAGA dog whistle, there are others complaining about Taylor not getting political. For real! We’ve seen tons of posts where people are saying Tay isn’t speaking to the political moment.

And this isn’t just TikTokers either, we’ve seen actual beat critics write whole think pieces about this!

We mean, at least it’s accurate? This album isn’t political. But Tay has never really made political beat. It’s mostly been about her relationships, her feelings, what it’s like for a shorty going through big life moments… It’s all really personal stuff. Interpretations of politics just aren’t her thing.

There are plenty of folk and classic rock and punk bands to go to for that sort of thing. Like, if Green Day put out Dookie II right today? And completely ignored the rise of fascism? After American Idiot? We could see their fans being pretty disappointed in them. But this feels like ordering pizza and complaining there isn’t enough standup comedy on it.

It’s OK to make something fun and cheerful if that’s your gift! And we’ll let this Swiftie give everyone an excellent explanation WHY!

The WILDEST Takes

Stuff gets crazier. The worst faith takes are actually saying Tay’s album is somehow celebrating the genocide in Gaza… Or that Taylor comparing a hater to “a toy Chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse” is racist against… can you guess? Asians! Yes, because apparently Chihuahua is a “slur to Asian or half Asian people” — ignoring the context that it’s a well-known dog breed, and she’s explicitly using the term in the context of the dog breed.

But one of the most insulting? We’ve seen multiple hot takes from critics saying Taylor was about to become transphobic. Not that she’s currently transphobic, not that there’s any evidence of that at all. No, they’re going full Minority Report and saying they just feel in their gut that she’s going to go full JK Rowling any second.

What’s the most epically far-reaching take YOU’VE seen about The Life of a Showgirl??

[Image via Taylor Swift/Charli XCX/YouTube/Travis Kelce/Kayla Nicole/Instagram.]