Taylor Swift Calls Beyoncé Joining ‘Eras’ Movie Premiere ‘Fairytale’
The premiere of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was a star-studded event. Swift said Beyoncé’s appearance was “a true fairy tale.”
“1989 (Taylor’s Version)” is out now, and the five brand new songs “from the vault” aren’t the only part of the album’s release that fans on social media are discussing in depth.
People have begun to hone in on two sentences in the “1989 TV” prologue that seem to have addressed those who have speculated about Taylor Swift’s sexuality over the years.
The 12-paragraph prologue is presented in all caps on the album and CD.
After explaining in four paragraphs her decision to reinvent herself at 24, Swift says she “sworn off dating” to prioritize her female friendships because “If I only dated my girlfriends, people they couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that – could they? I would later learn that people could and people would.”
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Swift’s admission of speculation about her sexuality has drawn mixed reactions
Fans had mixed reactions to Swift’s admission that some people had sexualized her female friendships, with some saying she “put an end to the gaylers”. Dubbed “gaylors,” a subset of Swifties believe the superstar has been romantically involved with at least one of her celebrity friends.
(In a 2019 interview with Vogue, Swift said she was “not part” of the LGBTQ+ community while discussing her decision to become a public advocate for LGBTQ rights.)
Some social media users celebrated what they saw as Swift sets the record straight on her heterosexuality. A number of those fans also expressed their sympathy for what she went through with speculation about her sexuality.
One X — formerly Twitter — user, @fullerachel, the observed“The hate for Gaylor really feels homophobic and inconsequential.”
There were some fans who took issue with the idea that viewing Swift’s statement as positively homophobic. One X user who goes by the name @ursogorrrgeous noted that being gay and identifying as “homosexual” are mutually exclusive.
“Just stop projecting your sexuality onto someone else,” the user published on Thursday. “And stop saying it’s homophobic, it literally isn’t.”
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Taylor Swift says she was ‘slut-shamed’ in her ‘1989 (Taylor Version)’ prologue
Here is what Swift wrote in the paragraphs leading up to the lines that sparked the debate:
“In the years leading up to this, I had been the target of slut-shaming – the intensity and ruthlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my many boyfriends. Trivializing my songwriting as if it was the predatory act of one boy, a crazy psychopath. The media endorsement of this narrative. I had to make him stop because it was starting to really hurt.
“I realized that for me there is no such thing as casual dating or even having a male friend that you go out with platonically. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I vowed not to go out with boys, date, flirt, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in women’s liberation but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era. Being the consummate optimist that I was, I assumed I could fix this if I just changed my behavior. I swore off dating and decided to just focus on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships. If I only went out with my girlfriends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that – right? I would later learn that people could and people would.”
She continues to share her mindset while making 2014’s 1989, describing herself with phrases like “as trusting as a basket of golden retriever puppies” and having “the right kind of naivety.”
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The prologue ends with her thanking her fans: “I will always be so incredibly grateful for how you have loved and embraced this album. You who have followed my zigzag creative choices and welcomed my risks and experiments. You who heard the winks and humor in “Blake Space” and maybe even empathized with the pain behind the satire. You who saw the seeds of allyship and advocacy for equality in “Welcome to New York.” You who knew that maybe a girl who surrounds herself with girlfriends in adulthood compensates for the lack of them in childhood (and not starts a tyrannical cult of hot girls.
“I was born in 1989, rediscovered for the first time in 2014 and a part of me was brought back to 2023 with the re-release of this album that I love so much. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the magic you would sprinkle over my life for so long.”
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