Considering recent events I would be remiss not to address the whole 1975 guy and Taylor “dating” so I’m just going to briefly pause the Taylor Swift’s Gay Moments series to talk about it. I have the next 2 posts all ready to go when we resume.
But before I get into that let me give you a history of my exposure to Taylor Swift:
It’s hazy (excuse the pun) when I became a fan of Taylor Swift. I just vaguely remember her being there. She sort of snuck into my life through hearing her singles at the grocery store, or on the radio on the way home from work. I wasn’t really her target audience- I was a bit older than her, just a peripheral country music fan, and I don’t like dudes.
More and more I was hitting repeat on my ipod on her songs. I especially like what I consider her red marker songs. All the ones with anger and bitterness and revenge as the main themes. I don’t know what that says about me, but my insurance only covers 3 counseling sessions per year, so I guess I’ll have to wait to find out. Anyway, I was especially moved by You’re not Sorry, Mean, and Should’ve Said no. I listened to those over and over (no literally, as the song was ending I would push that left side of the circle and play it again) in the car to and from my IVF appointments.
Sidenote: I had to drive 2.5hr from my college town to Kansas City to get paps, blood tests, and hormones as an egg donor. Each session was 3 or 4 months, and the appointments would start out every 3 weeks or something like that, but as it got closer to harvest the appointments could be as many as 3x a week. I was doing a LOT of driving! And Taylor was with me the whole time.
So I have a lot of sentimental attachment to Taylor’s songs. I did not really know anything about Taylor the person, or even marketer. I was a college student with a job so I legit didn’t have that much time to check it out. Also, I couldn’t afford like a TV package with good channels (this was before streaming was mainstream), had a purple Razor, no data (this was before iphones), and I was on Myspace (hated) Facebook, so you had to proactively search people, they didn’t just fall into your feed. Also, it was during the Limewire and Frostwire days (I wasn’t fancy enough to be able to engage with Apple except for my little ipod) so getting music was a whole ordeal.
When Taylor didn’t have Red on Spotify, I really lost track of her, except for hearing the ubiquitous songs out and about. I knew nothing of her personas, eras, fashion, friends, or concerts. I was working and studying (and poor) most of the times, OK? I sort of heard scuttle about her dating constantly, but didn’t know the specifics. Just heard the misogynous comments around school or in the media.
When I saw the rainbows, butterflies, and adorable aesthetic of the Lover era I re-engaged more than ever. That was my jam. The Me! video (not song) is SO ME. It’s everything I ever loved and I wanted EVERY interview, behind the scenes video, and easter egg decoding. I never even knew the easter eggs were a thing before that.
In searching for content I saw these Kaylor compilation videos on YouTube. Before that moment I had not heard of Kaylor, did not know who Karlie Kloss was, didn’t even know what “shipping” was and was completely oblivious of stanning and fan culture. Boy, did I get an introduction! I clicked on the video because Taylor and a model looked very pretty on the cover. As I watched I was agog. As a lesbian, I knew THE LOOK and the way these two looked at each other, the body language, the chemistry–was undeniable. Nobody told me about Kaylor, I had never read about this, but I could see it. After that I found two very interesting podcasts: Taylor Talk and TayDar. I loved the song analysis, and was very curious to find out about everything I had missed over the years (hint: everything but the popular songs). I got on Tumblr, went to Reddit, and Googled a lot of power-points. I was down the rabbit hole.
Then I became obsessed, as you’ve seen. Part 2 we’ll discuss what’s happening now.
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