Swiftly
Dumbing Down America’s Teenage Girls
I really don't have any kind of problem with Taylor Swift. I think her twangy, fake-country pop bullshit is actually rather catchy. I’m not going to lie to you, when it comes on the radio, and I’m alone in my car, the station does not get changed. On the surface, she is relatively harmless. She seems like a fine person.
Every song she sings whines and drones about longing for some popular boy. And this is why I truly do enjoy Taylor. She comes off as very authentic in this regard. Much unlike Katherine Heigl playing a "romantically-challenged" TV producer, Taylor Swift actually looks the part. She comes off like she experienced these aching feelings of unrequited love paired with hurtful rejections. Taylor Swift looks to me like she was obviously a complete dork in high school. In her teenage years I can easily picture her with frizzy hair that never quite looks right while she towers over girls her age like a gangly, blonde ostrich. I see see her in high school as lanky, gawky and completely awkward in both her looks and her actions. Then she hits it big and some studio has a Hollywood makeup czar fix her up to look stunning on a red carpet. Wonderful, great, everyone wins. However, she isn't exactly the best role model for our nation's teenage girls. Why, you must be asking? What's your problem with her, you whiny little bitch who can't get laid? She's a good person, she doesn't have a reputation of sleeping around, she isn't into drugs, and that horrible Kanye West took the microphone from her on MTV. Fair enough, I cannot argue with you about her character. She seems lovely. However, her songs mostly touch on all the wrong bases for susceptible teenage females everywhere.
Take one of her biggest hit singles, You Belong With Me. The song is all about this geek in the school band who is in love with one of the most popular boys in school. The entire song is about how he is in love with this total bitch that (unsurprisingly) happens to be the hot cheerleader. Yet, this cheerleader doesn't understand his humor, she doesn't like the kind of music he likes, and she is always upsetting him. After all, this girl is the polar opposite of Taylor. As the song informs us, she wears short skirts, Taylor wears T-shirts, the girl is the cheerleading captain, and Taylor is sitting in the bleachers. She sings, heartbroken, asking why this boy can't tell that she has been there all along for him, not the cheer captain. How does he not see that he belongs with me?
So every teenage girl hears this and thinks "OMG! I no rite!? Y dont he see dat I <3 him more den she wud?!” Then the girl will sit around pining for the popular boy because, gosh darn it, maybe he will finally wake up and see how funny and down-to-earth she is. Because let's face it, teenage girls are not exactly the most intellectual age/sex demographic we have. A nuclear blast could wipe out half the Eastern Seaboard and Justin Bieber would still be the number one trending topic on Twitter.
Even worse is the video for this song. It shows geeky, gangly Taylor living next door to her crush, and they have windows directly facing each other's bedrooms (yawn). They write each other notes on their pads and hold them up to the window. As he gets off the phone with his bitchy girlfriend, she holds up a sign saying "YOU OK?” He holds up a sign saying "TIRED OF DRAMA". She says "SORRY :-(", then she holds up "I LOVE U", but too late, as he has already shut the curtain.
The video then plays out the same unrealistic expectations as the song, but it goes even a step further. Whereas the song could possibly hold back on the excuse that Taylor never actually gets the guy at the end, despite being infatuated with him the whole time, the video goes to another level and confirms what we suspect all along to be the sentiment lying beneath. Taylor shows up to the prom without a date. Then this boy, so fucking handsome that he should have Teen People photographers following him at his every move, actually dumps his date immediately upon seeing Taylor. Then, and I am not joking here, the following actually happens. It is not just enough that he dumps his smoking hot chick for the school band geek, but the video then goes to a level of absurdity not seen since the final ten minutes of Armageddon with Bruce Willis. Upon seeing the boy, Taylor pulls out her sign from earlier that says I LOVE U. Then, in a masterstroke of stupidity, that guy pulls out a piece of fucking notebook paper with I LOVE U written on it as well.
This brings up several breaches of common logic. Why did he have the note with him? Just in case of what? He has absolutely no reason to believe Taylor was going to that prom. As he leaves for the dance, she is in her bedroom, clearly dressed down and flat-out tells him she is studying. The textbooks strewn all over her bed confirm this. So why the fuck would he have that sign with him? This is preposterous in every way imaginable. Think about this for a moment. The football star dumping the cheerleader at the fucking prom, just upon seeing the band geek walk in, then pulling out that note he had with him just in case she miraculously shows up by getting dressed within a half hour, and without a date, to boot, has to be one of the dumbest scenes in the history of the written word. I’ve seen better writing during an hour of Sex and the City, and yes, even one of the especially pun-filled episodes. Some may dismiss it as harmless fantasy, but it is quite the opposite.
Make no mistake about it; it must have an undeniable effect on teenage girls everywhere. Taylor’s hugely successful album sales confirm this. Now, young girls all across the world would want to be like Taylor and try to win that handsome guy with the cheerleader girlfriend.
You know who this hurts? Both the girl herself and the poor equally nerdy guy who secretly wants her. I used to have a crush on a girl who ended up banging some typical jock dickhead. It didn’t begin because he showed up at the prom with a sign cut out of his notebook. And it ended with her getting an STD. That's how the song goes in real life. There is no relationship and no love at first sight. That dreamy football player just got drunk one night and fucked her. And then they went their separate ways and he left her with a little present to always remember him.
Unfortunately, Taylor flat-out ignores that this is the case in ninety-nine percent of these encounters between the top of the high school social hierarchy and the bottom of the popularity ladder. She is steering young women straight into that huge fucking wave from The Perfect Storm.
In high school there are going to be a whole generation of Taylor Swift fans who will ignore the nerd with a heart of gold who stays up an hour late to do her goddamn chemistry homework. Instead, they will waste their time praying for some asshole to come to a realization that will never occur. Look, this is life. The captain of the football team is never going to fall in love with you. He's going to fall in love with the spoiled-rotten head cheerleader with the amazing breasts. He's a high school kid, okay? Give him a break. Captain of the football team in the fucked up micro-society of high school is basically the real-world equivalent of being President of the United States. He can do whatever he wants. And he's not going to waste that kind of power on some average-looking girl sitting on the bleachers and wearing a t-shirt with sneakers.
There's another song, however, that young girls everywhere should be deeply encouraged to listen to. That would be the haunting, brilliant allegory Skater Boy by Avril Lavigne. Now this is a tale that teenagers can learn gobs of essential lessons from.
The story centers on a stuck up girl who thinks she's starting to like the "skater boy" in school. Then all of her friends stuck up their nose, because they had a problem with his baggy clothes. He was a skater boy, so she said "see ya later, boy", because he wasn't good enough for her, as the song says.
This is setting up a familiar, classic high school saga of a girl who is rejecting a good guy based on what her shitty, dumbass friends think. Then guess what happens because she listened to all of them? The song flashes five years into the future. She's at home with a baby that is probably sinking her life down like an anchor, and she turns on MTV and sees him playing at one of his concerts.
He's now a famous rock star, and she ends up attending his show. Avril informs us of the girl’s fate: she tags along, stands in the crowd, and looks up at the man that she turned down. Now, in a song by a lesser artist who just wants to milk these young girls out of their money, she would, at this point, realize her mistake. The skater boy would invite her on stage, they would kiss, and now both of them would live happily ever after.
Yet Ms. Lavigne is too good to stoop to those levels. The song then gives us chills (but the good kind of chills) as the chorus is now being sung by the new woman in the previously unwanted skater boy's life: "Sorry girl, but you missed out/Well, tough luck, that boy's mine now/We are more than just good friends/This is how the story ends/Too bad that you couldn't see/See the man that boy could be/There is more than meets the eye/I see the soul that is inside."
Then, in case the point wasn't driven home enough to whatever dumb chick out there in high school is still creaming over the dude with muscles, Avril twists the knife just a little deeper. Now, as the new woman in the skater boy's life, she sings, "I'm with the skater boy/I said "see ya later, boy"...but not because she's getting rid of him, like that other girl did so carelessly. She says "I'll be backstage after the show/I’ll be at a studio/Singing a song we wrote/About a girl he used to know."
This is a positive influence. This is doing some good in the world. Avril Lavigne is helping young girls everywhere realize that you shouldn't be agonizing over the football player who isn't giving you the time of day while he screws the head cheerleader. You should be saying "fuck off" to that guy and find somebody of substance. Taylor Swift is enabling an entire generation of females to chase unrealistic goals.
So go ahead, don't listen to me, random 15-year-old girl. Be another member of the flock of sheep and say to yourself: "If you could see that I'm the one who understands you/Been here all along so why can't you see/You belong with me." Just don't come crying to me when you get herpes.
Now, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, and I'ma let you finish, but Beyonce's video at least didn't poison our nation's youth with false promises.
Great Quote
---Worm (Ed Norton), Rounders
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