the humanity of celebrities
are rich people allowed to be human or not? no seriously, i'm asking.
Originally I intended this as a comment on
’s post “Why are people tired of Taylor Swift?” but I cannot shut up to save my life, so now it’s a full essay. In some ways, my response actually started with my essay from the other day, “the benefits of ‘bad’ art,” if only because that essay does discuss some of the critiques I’ve heard of Taylor’s new album and her art in general. Unfortunately, I do continue to defend Taylor, but I’d like to think I am capable of nuance and criticism. I aim to counteract my bias when I can. Which is where Tess’s post comes in. She writes a fantastic little essay about Taylor and nuance and the gray areas of being a Public Figure and a Brand, and I couldn’t help but give my two cents because I have been a fan of Taylor for so long.I feel like these days I’m actively trying to fit two wrong puzzle pieces together: my desire to fight against billionaires and capitalism and celebrities who are irresponsible with their privilege, and my parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift.
I’ve seen all sides of the Taylor Problem for years. I grew up defending her from people saying her songwriting was bad, and I think a part of me is still there. If someone says her lyrics are bad, I just cannot help but bristle because, seriously? What is it 2010? Did you even listen to the ten minute version of “All Too Well?” I’ll always believe that she deserves to be celebrated for her musical genius, and I’ll probably always think that people vilify her unfairly in some regards. But I am mature enough and intelligent enough to know that she has made a lot of mistakes, and that she does need to be held to a higher standard because she’s now a billionaire and because she did spend a few years actively speaking up about how she wants to be a good ally. She has more than enough influence now that her actions have consequences, and it’s disappointing to see some of the choices she’s made when I grew up believing she was generous and caring and kind. (Which, by the way, I do still believe. Both of these things can be true.)
This is why this conversation is such a challenge for me. I want to be a “good” person, and I know that in order to be a good “ally” I need to have higher standards for my favorite people. I’m well aware of the realities of parasocial relationships, I know billionaries are not my friends, and I have taken a lot of time in my life to listen and educate myself and use my privilege in a way that helps marginalized individuals and makes the world a better place. And I know it’s something I’ll be working on for my entire life. But I was twelve when Britney shaved her head. I was fourteen when Kanye interrupted Taylor’s speech for Video of the Year at the VMAs. I was sixteen when Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning. I’ve watched all my favorite Disney stars go to rehab over and over and over again. I was born a few months before Selena was murdered at 23 by the president of her fan club. And unfortunately, I am still naive enough to believe that humanity is inherently good.
One of the most difficult things for me about this conversation - and honestly about celebrities in general - is finding the line between Public Figure and Human Being. Like yes, we need to be critical of these rich celebrities because they do hold a lot of power, and a majority of them are in fact A Brand that’s being marketed to us in order to make money or fulfill their own personal agendas...but where is the room for nuance when it comes to their humanity? How are we as consumers, as the “poor,” as The Public supposed to balance the two dueling identities in a celebrity? Are we allowed to give grace to The Human while still calling out The Brand? Or does the celebrity forfeit their humanity because they signed the dotted line for money and fame when they choose to become a public figure?
I know we’ve developed an obscene amount of parasocial relationships with celebrities, and social media has convinced us we know celebrities personally when we don’t, but I just refuse to accept that all these famous people are greedy, money-hungry assholes who themselves don’t understand nuance. Maybe that makes me naive or unnecessarily optimistic. Maybe it’s the parasocial relationships digging holes in my brain, and I’ve been manipulated by the media and my nostalgia and my inherent belief that humanity is good, but how can we so casually brush aside a celebrity’s humanity when a lot of celebrities act the way they do because of how they’ve been treated in the industry? People joke about and criticize Taylor’s asylum lyric (meme above), and sure, she literally grew up privileged and her childhood struggles have nothing on the children suffering in Gaza, but I do believe that a majority of us would not be able to handle her fame the way she has. If it were me, I would’ve cracked a long time ago and done something a little more drastic than dropping 31 subpar songs. Regardless of the fact that she “knew what she was signing up for,” that she grew up wanting to be famous, did she actually comprehend at sixteen what her fame would feel like? Did she know then all the hell she would be put through over the course of her career? Was she fully cognizant of what it meant to become A Brand instead of a human? If she could go back with the knowledge she has now, would she make the same choices?
Most of the criticism I see about Taylor - or any rich celebrity for that matter - is that people claim they knew what they were getting into. That every time they choose to do their job by making a film or releasing an album, these Mythological Gods consent to the public opinion and the public eye. And yes. They do. Taylor chooses to put out dozens of personal tracks about her life rather than record someone else’s songs or write about fictional circumstances. She’s a grown adult, and after dealing with this life for almost two decades, she does know what she’s signing up for. But five years ago this woman was convinced she had reached her peak, that she was on the way out of her career, that she would never again reach the fame she’d achieved in her twenties…and now she’s bigger than she ever was when she was twenty-five. I guarantee that when she was in the studio making folklore, she had no idea that in four years she would not only surpass her 1989 first week sales, but she’d do it not one, not two, but three times, with one of those being the rerelease of 1989 itself. In 2018, she was fully convinced nobody would come to her concerts anymore, and now she’s on track to have the biggest tour of all time. People think she’s a mastermind manipulator, and in many ways she is, but even she was not convinced she’d become as big as she is. Is it her fault the public latched onto her so intensely, or was she just asking for it? Isn’t this what she wanted all along, didn’t she say she wanted stadiums of people screaming her name? Didn’t she want to grow up and be a billionaire?
I was curious to see what the list of billionaires looks like these days because admittedly, I actually can’t confidently name a lot of billionaires off the top of my head. Did you know Oprah is a billionaire and she’s #1145 from the top of the list according to Forbes? Rihanna is a billionaire at #2249. Lebron James is #2484. Dick Wolf (of Law & Order fame) is #2498. I’ll be honest, I was under the assumption the list was only like twenty people long, but believe it or not, the number of billionaires in the world could fill my old high school. The list currently ends at #2740, and Taylor is listed at #2527 with $1.1B. I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticize billionaires, or that they’re just like us because the wealth on that list is…obscene. But it’s interesting to me how many of these people fly under the radar. I had no idea Magic Johnson is a billionaire. Heck, nobody talks about Rihanna’s status either, and that seems pretty impressive. We all make vague headlines about “billionaires” and even I am a strong advocate of eating the rich, but the rich people who really stand out in the news are Elon and Jeff and Taylor. What about the guys who started Ikea? What about the compelling number of sports people on the list? I’m not trying to say any billionaire is better or worse than any other, but it’s curious to see some names pop up frequently and then others slip away into the folds of Forbes.
The question here is not whether billionaires are ethical (they aren’t) or whether they’re good people (it’s irrelevant), what I want to know is are they human? Or rather, do they deserve to be treated as a human when they are so incredibly rich that a fraction of their wealth could end world-hunger or homelessness or any other major poverty issue? Is there a difference between someone like Taylor who only has a little over $1B and got her money by being an artist and someone like Mark Zuckerberg (#4) who has over $155B and got his money from creating a social media website? Are they equally as unethical because they both have more money than they’ll ever be able to spend in their lifetimes or their children’s lifetimes? Can they still be kind people even if they are gods? Can they be generous even if they are inherently evil? Is God actually the devil because he does not use his almighty power to save the damned?
Yes, Taylor is a billionaire now, but there are plenty of artists and celebrities who are millionaires who fall under the same umbrella. Taylor has the capital B now but Beyoncé hit $800m in December. Even someone like Drake, who is arguably one of the more successful men in the industry at the moment has somewhere around $250m. It’s not a billion, but there’s no way that’s not obscenely rich. To the average consumer, anyone making more than $1m annually is impossible to comprehend. I know people my parents’ age (50s) who aren’t celebrities who have net worths around $1m, but even they worked hard over decades to get to that point, and they aren’t running around with their private jets.
Where do we draw the line of humanity between someone who’s a multi-millionaire and someone who’s a billionaire? Because from where I’m sitting, both Drake and Taylor are wealthier than I’ll ever be, and I don’t think I could fully understand either of them.
What’s interesting about someone like Taylor or Beyonce or Drake is that yes, each of these artists works incredibly hard, but the only reason they are successful is because they each started out as human. And I’d argue that’s why some billionaires make the list too. Someone like Lebron James whose family struggled in his youth, came from rough beginnings, and so many people latched onto him because they related to his story, because they empathized with him, because they love the story of an underdog. Taylor built her career on her humanity from day one, building a brand as the girl next door who was relatable to young girls in the 2000s and 2010s. They were all human at one point, lifted up by their fans and the general public because they made us feel seen, and it’s not easy to forget that. When did the sixteen year old who just wanted to make it big in Nashville become a household name and when did that name become a symbol of status instead of the name of that silly girl who couldn’t believe she’d won the CMA Horizon Award?
If you rewatch that video of Taylor winning one of her first major awards, you may see someone who is completely different than the Taylor we know now, someone who is calculating and poised, who is no longer surprised and overjoyed when she wins Album of the Year because hell, she’s already done it more than twice. But I still see that same girl when I watch footage of Taylor at the Superbowl, someone painfully human. Watch the video of her struggling to breathe in Rio last year, which shows her snapping out of a moment of pure humanity so that she can go back to doing her job. Is it impressive that she’s that committed to performing? Sad that she even has to undergo those conditions as a result of the job she chose? How are we supposed to reconcile all of this information in one person who a lot of us grew up with pretty intimately?
Does having a lot of money and choosing to be famous mean that the general public is allowed to dehumanize you, or do you do that yourself once you pass a certain amount of money? Like, once you get that capital B, you are no longer allowed to emote or feel pain or exist outside the Brand you create, you are more of a God than a human being.
But even if we pull out a list of all the ways Taylor has failed the world, does that list actually make her the devil? Or does it just make her human? Does she owe us perfection because we’re watching her, because she has more money and power than many small countries do, because she is A God? If she was perfect - or as perfect as a celebrity can be - would we stop criticizing her, or would we still find ways to make her a villain? Is that what she deserves because she was born privileged and rich and white and blonde? If she did give up most of her fortune, would that make a difference or would people still crucify her for some other reason?
It sometimes feels like the only celebrities we allow to be truly human are the ones who crack under the pressure in a dramatic way. And even then, we don't give sympathy until things have died down or gone too far. When Britney shaved her head everyone criticized her and shamed her and gave up on her, but now almost two decades later, we feel bad for her because we didn't know what was going on at the time. When we read her memoir and learn more about the conservatorship she was under, we suddenly have much more pity and grace and sympathy, and we act like we weren’t part of the reason why she did what she did. How do we as the public come to terms with the fact that we played a part in her downward spiral? How are we so quick to criticize how she deals with her fame when we are the ones serving it to her?
Somehow Taylor writing an album explaining her feelings about a situation that felt traumatic to her is not a big enough cry for help, not worthy of grace because she didn’t actually go so far as to end up in rehab. She didn’t shave her head or attempt suicide, so all of her commentary about wanting to die is meaningless and irrelevant. Or worse, she’s appropriating mental illness. One time a few years ago she told an interviewer that she had never been to therapy, so clearly that means she’s lying about being depressed, about wanting to die, about being mentally ill. To the public’s knowledge, she’s not “crazy” enough to claim that she’s unwell, so we shouldn’t have pity on her.
But then, if a celebrity goes to rehab, we criticize them to hell and back. Hooray, John Mulaney dealt with his coke addiction, but how dare he have one in the first place! But also I have to watch his new special because I need to know what it was like when he was addicted, when he was forced into rehab, what happened to him and his first wife’s marriage. Surely, if Taylor was actually mentally ill, depressed, suicidal, she would put out a public statement and tell the entire world these things because then we would treat her kindly, then we would have pity on her, then we would stop faulting her for things. Obviously, if you were Taylor Swift, you would feel compelled to be completely upfront about your very personal mental health issues and you wouldn’t feel unsafe at all about doing that. (Sarcasm.)
It's this weird standard where we can't let celebrities be completely unwell but we also can't let them be unwell in a lukewarm way. Or rather, we can’t let them be human in a lukewarm way. The general public does not leave things alone, as if we believe we are entitled to every aspect of a celebrity’s life, that there’s no such thing as privacy because celebrities sign their life away for fame and fortune. If you want to be famous, you have to do it properly, you have to be digestible, you have to let us in to every aspect of your life and your identity. Heaven forbid you attempt to be a closeted queer person or the public will attack you for being so vague. Heaven forbid you try to figure out some new part of yourself in the privacy of your own life.
But not only are you not allowed to be unwell, you’re not allowed to be happy and healthy either. If a celebrity is too well off, suddenly they’re rubbing their privilege in our faces. Remember when Taylor said she had a fantastic year in 2017 and the media criticized her because everyone else was having a bad time? If you aren’t allowed to suffer but you aren’t allowed to be happy, then what are you supposed to do? We don’t want celebrities to hide away and disappear because we need them to entertain us, but when they’re too prominent in the news cycle we become utterly sick of them, to the point that we write hundreds of think-pieces on why we’re so tired of them. We want them to be the soundtrack to our lives, but they can’t be too loud. We expect our celebrities to be perfect, to distract us, but they’re not allowed to make mistakes or to actually be human, they just need to play human beings on our screens in a way that’s relatable to us…even though in a lot of ways, they’re not at all relatable to us. Except, they probably wouldn’t be so famous if they weren’t so goddamn relatable.
Regardless of how they act, regardless of how the public perceives them, celebrities must balance this impossible feat of holding their extreme privilege while the public expects them to be The Most Human as they dehumanize them at every turn. Celebrities are expected to have the capacity and stamina to be a respectable public figure while the world refuses to allow them to have any privacy or any humanity, all because these people “chose” their lives of fame. All that matters is if the public is entertained, but only in a socially acceptable way. And we the public are entitled to treat them with disrespect all because we gave these people exorbitant amounts of our own money. We made God, therefore we are allowed to torture Her.
We’ve created a culture that revolves around gossip and oversharing and fake vulnerability that ends up biting us in the ass. We raise up our youth to believe that their story is important, that they need to be relatable to be relevant, and now TikTok is a place where everyone is fighting over whose trauma is bigger. It’s great that as a society we are more educated than ever, that everyone is held to a higher standard when it comes to oppression and marginalization and allyship and injustice, and we cannot pretend that that’s something we should push under the rug. But a lot of people are more interested in looking like a good person than actually being one. We brag about everything we’re doing to be a good ally, but sometimes I think a lot of people aren’t seeing the bigger picture. Sure, you’re speaking out about genocide - and don’t get me wrong, that’s HUGE and IMPORTANT - but how are you spending your free time? Where is your kindness and generosity when you aren’t yelling on Twitter? How are you treating people when it isn’t being broadcast on TikTok? Who are you when the cameras are off, when you’re in a small town setting, when you’re interacting with people who are ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of the world?
I’ve gotten so bogged down by being socially acceptable, by doing everything just right, making sure nobody will criticize me or perceive me as a “bad” person that I can no longer figure out exactly how to be “good.” Am I really supposed to crucify anyone who’s privileged? Because if that’s the case, then I should just nail myself to the cross. There’s no doubt I deserve it, but is that really helpful? If I’m spending so much time vilifying myself and the other people of privilege, then how is that actively helping marginalized people? If I’m spending so much of my energy yelling at someone like Taylor or Halsey or Beyoncé to speak up, to donate their money, to care more, then am I really being a good ally or am I just blowing smoke at someone who will never hear me?
And yeah, there’s something to be said about strength in numbers. If every single Swiftie spammed Taylor about Palestine, maybe that would make a difference. Maybe she’d donate millions of dollars to Gazan aid. Maybe Taylor Swift’s financial empire is the key to world peace. I mean, Halsey’s fans spoke up so loudly that they eventually made a statement and explained why they’ve been so quiet lately, and that’s great, right? But Halsey’s statement showed that they were already thinking about Palestine, maybe they were even donating and doing things behind the scenes, but yelling at her didn’t do much other than convince her to make one statement. And yeah, a lot of these artists and celebrities have a lot of money and influence that would go a long way. The Weeknd donated over $2M to aid Palestine, and that shouldn’t be discounted. But this is bigger than just poets. Dismantling this power dynamic is complex, and there are bigger fish to fry than a few popstars. We can yell at Taylor to donate money for aid, to go talk to our government and speak for us, but shouldn’t we be using that energy to send calls to congress? To put more pressure on Biden? To worry about the upcoming election that is still important regardless of whether or not the current president is actively supporting a genocide? Imagine if all the Swifties in the United States started yelling at Biden instead of their favorite pop star. Imagine if Swifties joined forces with the Beyhive and fans of Ariana Grande and fans of Halsey and every other big name artist out there and put their attention in places that really matter. What if instead of sharing our disappointment in these people with big public platforms, we united our smaller platforms in a real way to do something else that might make more headway?
What is our focus here? Shaming “bad” celebrities into being “good?” Making actual change? Is it bad if we just let celebrities be humans the same way we the general public are? Do celebrities deserve to be gods if they cannot use their influence for good things? Do celebrities deserve to be punished and harmed and attacked for doing the same things the general public does? Because I guarantee there are plenty of middle class and upper-middle class people, who in their own way have a lot of influence and privilege and power, who are not speaking out about the genocide or who are not educating themselves, who are not actively fighting for the world to be a better place, they’re just doing their jobs. There is a Taylor Swift in your corporate company, you just don’t know she exists, or rather you don’t care, because she isn’t putting out a best-selling album about how her heart was broken.
The problem here is that I can’t figure out how much sympathy I’m supposed to have for anybody, especially celebrities. How bad is it that I automatically want to write essays defending a billionaire’s humanity? Is it parasocial of me to believe that Taylor’s pain is genuine? Is her seemingly-meager pain irrelevant because she chose to pursue fame and fortune and she just so happened to be privileged and lucky enough to become as successful as she is? Would it be more acceptable to have sympathy for her if she really did end up in a psych ward or if she attempted suicide or if she shaved her head? Where is the line?
If I am sympathetic to a celebrity’s suffering does that cheapen my sympathy towards the children of Gaza? The unhoused people of my city? The victims of police brutality?
The other thing people fail to acknowledge in situations like Taylor or Britney or Beyoncé is that a lot of times we the general public are the root of their issues. We squeeze the humanity out of celebrities until they become either Gods or Monsters. Celebrities get so big, so successful, that we turn them into brands more like mythological legends than actual people. Clara Bow and Stevie Nicks and Taylor Swift aren’t people, they’re just concepts.
Beyoncé is inhuman, not because we’ve pushed her to rehab or crucified her for not speaking out on public issues, but because she is advertised and perceived as a god who can do no wrong. And yes, it’s important to note that she is a Black woman who has faced a lot of criticism and marginalization over the course of her career - she made COWBOY CARTER in part because the country music industry is racist, and even though she has the most Grammys of any artist ever, she still has yet to win Album of the Year. (I’m not bitter, it’s fine.) But when the public talks about her, she is ✨Flawless✨. There’s hardly any talk about her private jet. We could never hate her because she’s so beloved, because she’s Black, because she’s been oppressed too. She’s not allowed to be human and have flaws or feelings because she’s too good at what she does or because she herself is apart of a deeply marginalized group. The deification of Beyoncé may not be as harmful as the deification of Taylor Swift, if only because Beyoncé is more marginalized and she does a better job of speaking up about certain public issues, but surely people can recognize that they aren’t letting Beyoncé be a human either. Even someone like ADELE, who sold over 3M albums with her release of 25 is revered as a god because she doesn’t let people into her personal life in the same way Taylor or Halsey do. Beyoncé shares her personal experiences to an extent, but I’d argue that a lot of who she is and what she does in her own life is hidden behind a smokescreen to protect herself and her family. Taylor has had periods of her career where she disappears for a bit, where she isn’t entirely forthcoming about her personal life, but at the end of the day she’s the kind of person who would rather speak her truth (again, hers, not necessarily others who are marginalized) than stay silent, even if her truth is that Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist. And because she is more open than a lot of other celebrities, that makes it so much easy to point out her flaws and faults. She puts herself on full display, and therefore we believe we are justified to point out all the ways she’s a bad person.
But what about someone like Demi Lovato? A Disney starlet who was pushed to the brink by the public and by the industry, who ended up in rehab and almost died. She’s released a number of personal songs over the course of her career, like “Warrior” or “Dancing With the Devil” or even “SKIN OF MY TEETH,” but there’s still a level of mystery about her. We know she has issues with her dad because she’s written and spoken briefly about it, but she writes with cowriters, and she isn’t really famous for her personal songwriting. She opens up here and there about the important stuff, but she’s definitely not as forthcoming as someone like Taylor. And a lot of the information we have about her personal life is stuff we didn’t know about until years down the line. We know she went to rehab, but she wasn’t releasing music about it while she was there. She’s made headlines for some statements in the past, and every once in a while she does something that turns public opinion against her, but all in all, most people don’t yell about Demi Lovato on a daily basis. She’s big enough to be known, and well-known enough to be called-out when she does something wrong, but people move on quickly and nowadays she’s allowed to live her life in privacy for the most part.
Taylor can live in privacy when she chooses, 2016 and 2017 are proof of that, which means most of the time she is actively choosing to live a public life. But anyone who’s done research into her life since 2016 knowns that there are sacrifices made when a celebrity chooses privacy over a public life. It’s damnation on all sides, so why not do what she wants and to hell with privacy? Would you sentence yourself to house arrest in order to live a private life in peace or would you too say “Fuck it,” and go to Coachella with your famous footballer boyfriend because you want a fun night out? I mean, we all lived through lockdown in 2020. Think about it.
And true, Taylor Swift has never been to rehab (to public knowledge), and she doesn’t really release music while she’s in the middle of a crisis, but when her break-up with Joe Alwyn went public, she only lasted a few weeks before releasing a song that was implied to fill in the gaps of public knowledge and explain what was going on in that relationship. She didn’t tell the public exactly what happened, and maybe she fabricated a few things in order to write a good song, but based on her Brand of open vulnerability, “You’re Losing Me” is the closest thing we’ll get to Taylor showing us her mental breakdown. It may not be as severe or dramatic or life-threatening as when Demi literally almost died, but are we really going to ignore all the lines in THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT where Taylor says that she wanted to die? Is an upbeat pop song like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” less authentic, less believable than that crushing line in the 10 minute version of “All Too Well” when Taylor screams, “AND THAT MADE ME WANT TO DIE!” just because Taylor did her job too well on The Eras Tour last year? Why do people automatically discount Taylor Swift’s humanity because of her Brand? Especially because her entire brand thus far has been marketed as emotionally vulnerable and openly honest to the point of oversharing in the most ridiculous way? Is all of that emotion less valid, less real, less authentic just because she’s wildly successful and rich now? Or does it even matter if she’s telling the truth because her pain matters less just because she’s a celebrity?
We need our celebrities to be more like Beyoncé, keeping their personal problems contained to elevators, only blowing up behind closed doors, only giving us the most socially acceptable version of themselves in public. As if public opinion isn’t always changing, as if The Public themselves are perfect, as if it isn’t our fault that someone like Demi was pushed towards drug addiction, that someone like Britney felt compelled to shave her head in a state of defiance, that someone like Taylor would put out songs about how she was raised in an asylum because the public has been crucifying her since she was a teenager. We want “Single Ladies” Beyoncé, the Pop Diva we can play at parties, or we want “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” Beyoncé, the outspoken activist who reminds us that we need to be better allies, but we refuse to accept “JOLENE” Beyoncé who is just a woman hurt by her husband’s infidelity, who was hurt by a woman who may or may not be a victim in her own right. But the thing is, all of these Beyoncés exist. Believe it or not, Bey can make a sick beat and she also is someone who is passionate about justice…but she’s a human being. She makes mistakes and has flaws the same way Taylor Swift does, the same way Joe Biden does, the same way John Mulaney does. She can handle herself fairly well, and we accept that she has good intentions at heart, but she’s still just another celebrity we’ve deified.
And yeah, we gotta hold rich people to higher standards, I get that. I do think that if all the rich people of the world reprioritized a few things and were a little more generous, the world would be a drastically different place, but I also think that many of us are losing our humanity along the way. You can criticize Taylor’s privilege and her lack of political activism and her hypocrisy in claiming that she wanted to do better, while also acknowledging that she is a person who is managing a lot of unique stress in ways that you and I will never fully comprehend. Just because she is a billionaire it doesn’t mean she isn’t depressed. Just because Beyoncé is actively speaking out against racism in country music or the police brutality of the United States it doesn’t mean she can’t be criticized for ragging on a woman when her husband isn’t a perfect man.
Two things can coexist. There are shades of greige in everything. Like it or not, we are all human being just doing our best. Put your energy towards people who will actually make a change, or people who are at the center of the injustice, or people who hold real positions of power because I promise you rich artists will disappoint you every single time.
I’m going to keep believing people are inherently good even if it kills me. It’s all I have. And yeah, maybe it makes me just another privileged white girl to think that Taylor is a kind person even though she’s bad at being an activist and she is a fucking BILLIONAIRE, but I’m a human being. Unlike celebrities, I’m allowed to have flaws. I’m working on it.
I agree.
I have stopped clicking posts with “Taylor Swift” in the title because it seems to now, again, be the trend to criticize her. I am also a big fan of Taylor Swift but I don’t think I am blind to the things the she does (good or bad). And I think alot of fans are.
But I am also confused with these current criticisms that she is trying to be “normal” and “relatable” even though she’s rich and famous. So I’ve been thinking, is our view now that rich and famous and successful people aren’t allowed to feel bad or hurt? It kinds of remind me of Billie Eilish when she was told by people what could she be depressed about when she’s still so young and her family/childhood is okay.
Of course, there are other critics that are valid and not everyone is required to like her or her music, but that particular comment kind of bothers me.
This is so raw and so true: "I’m going to keep believing people are inherently good even if it kills me." It's really all we can do to believe theres' good in humanity. You've written an insightful piece!