In which I discuss my fickle relationship with my own whiteness
Taylor Swift (TS) has been my friend, idol, obsession, and enemy. This is the story of us. At nine, I was enchanted. Borrowing my friend’s CD copy of Fearless, its plastic jewel case cracked, I marveled at the golden-haired girl on the cover, her curls whipped in the air like a halo. The CD had a bonus feature of the Love Story music video, which, upon discovery, I watched on repeat for the rest of the night. I was transfixed by the music, the visuals, the aureate twinkle of the spectacle. Once she caught my attention, I couldn’t look away.
Obsession was inevitable — I was an impressionable tween girl, old enough to imagine dating popular jock boys in my near future, young enough to not have fully outgrown the hope that fairytales and woodland magic existed. Of course, Taylor, with her fancy dresses and wish-fulfillment storytelling, would become my idol for the next few years — she was a living, breathing princess, and I was a kid with a proclivity for romanticized worldviews.
Fearless, followed by the Speak Now, left me wonderstruck. TS was kind of a marketing genius that way — she knew that no suburban tween like me couldn’t resist the dreamy stories she told us — we were captivated by her like a firework show. There were afternoons in my childhood where I would pour over the Speak Now liner notes, flipping through the glossy pages for hours as I played it again.
At the time, Taylor Swift was “America’s Sweetheart.” She was the definition of white American suburban female idealism — she was sweet without being saccharine, shy but still unreserved, ingenuous but poised, she dressed modestly but not matronly — she was gorgeous, she didn’t swear, she was “age-appropriate,” she could have been your daughter, sister, best friend, or lover. And with any sort of celebrity worship, there is the desire to become that person, or at the very least a faint aspiration to adopt some qualities of the object of one’s admiration. My case was no exception — I wanted to grow up and look like Taylor — I wanted to grow up to be that thin, tall, blonde, and blue-eyed all-American girl. How else was I supposed to be Juliet and get the hot guy from the Love Story music video? Yet, there was a slight problem, which was the crushing reality of having black hair, dark eyes, an overall, decidedly un-American disposition, and my genetically predetermined fate of being 5’. Sociologically speaking, I can retroactively diagnose myself with a very, very bad case of double consciousness, internalized racism, etcetera etcetera, as I was delusional enough to think that somehow, I would grow up and transform into an actual blonde, white person. “You’ll be like Taylor in a few years,” I would say to myself in the mirror. “You are a mere 10-year-old child who doesn’t know why all the trees change in the fall. You have time, and potential, maybe you’re not as pretty as all the other kids in your grade, but you’ll be hot, just wait, you’ll see.”
And then it all broke down. At first, I tried to like Taylor Swift, I really did. But with the arrival of Red and the move to a more commercialized, electronic sound, I almost felt that she was betraying her old country roots, which was ironic because I didn’t even like country music. With the new record, some of that literary, flawless magic — that whimsical, dramatic, literary quality of her storytelling — died to suit more mainstream tastes. Her songs became of an almost contrived, forceful quality: how could “we are never getting back together, like ever” compare to “and I don’t know why but with you I’d dance/in a storm in my best dress/fearless”? Where was the Taylor that would sing me into a fairytale? And where was her! Curly! Hair! She lost her luster, she seemed like any other pop star radio sellout.
What’s worse, I felt as though she was betraying me. By Red’s reign, seeds of doubt were sewn into my Magical Future non-Plan of Becoming Hot. There was a specific point — I remember being 11 — where I was looking in the mirror again and was hit with the cold, hard epiphany that my irrational dream of becoming white and blonde was physically impossible, that almost all of my classmates at my ~90% white middle school were far more likely to be Miss Americana, Prom Queen, and the like, that they were far prettier than me, and finally, that I would never ever be beautiful more beautiful than them, (like, ever). What was it like to grow up so beautiful, with their hair falling into places like dominoes? I would never know. And why try to shoot for an impossible standard that would just lead to hurt and rejection? After realizing that I was irredeemably cursed to be an ugly duckling, I was done with trying to fit in with the whites (though I wanted to). And Taylor represented the whitest of white America; I no longer saw myself in her storytelling, her kingdom lights did not shine for me.
From 2013–2017, I refused to listen to Taylor Swift, opting for some indie record much cooler than hers (actually, I just listened to a lot of Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky). I used to want to know everything about her, and now, I just really didn’t care. Yet paradoxically, she was everywhere. There was one afternoon where What I did see — whispers and rumors and photos of her and her glossy friends on their yachts — only seemed to confirm who I thought she was. During this time, there was talk of her being a white supremacist, of neo-Nazis adopting her as an alt-right Aryan goddess (this is true). Along with a growing mass of people who found her Squad to be exclusionary, her Victoria’s Secret fashion show appearances to be fat-phobic, I started to find Taylor Swift to be very problematic. Album of the Year, Bleachella, Calvin Harris, and finally, the Taylor Swift is Over Party, and then, silence. When she broke, it was in a million pieces.
Time passed, it seemed like my coming of age came and went. By senior year, I didn’t really give two shits about impressing boys nor looking good. High school had been the opposite of romantic, and part of me cursed the rosy expectations that my childhood painted for me. I wasn’t a princess, this wasn’t a fairytale, and I lived in a small town that I detested. I never went on my very first date and felt like I was flying. But then, Taylor spun herself around again, this time shining as the dark, edgy persona of Reputation. After ignoring her for years, I had no idea who this was: what the fuck had happened to bubbly, annoying supermodel Taylor Swift and who was this vindictive, wild mess? And oh God, was she trying to do hip-hop now?
Still, for the first time in years, Taylor Swift seemed human, shedding a plastic veneer, and I couldn’t look away. Sure, the record was severely flawed and sonically confusing, but hey, that Gorgeous song was kind of boppy. So this was how America’s sweetheart fell. I liked her better this way. It was by no means a good album, but it led to rediscovery, and me finally listening to 1989 — which I soon incorporated into my life’s soundtrack. If the goal of Reputation was to reinvent the story of the past few years, then the album had been very effective.
Thus began a period of secret admiration — one of which I would neither admit to myself nor anyone who asked me. It was an illicit affair I carried with me to college, where, for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by a substantial population of peers who looked like me. In college, I had hoped to find a sense of belonging, but I was at once intimidated and uninterested by most of our campus activities and felt too unworthy of others. As a milquetoast first-year student with a bad case of imposter syndrome, I thought that the only thing interesting about me was my racial identity, so I wore it like armor. I went the other way: instead of trying to be white, I tried to be as Asian as possible, or at least to live up to my shallow understanding of what it meant to be Asian American. I tried to feign an interest in K-dramas and I joined the board of the Chinese Students Association.
Still, alienation — the old feeling I knew all too well — tinted every interaction; I could never shake it off. I wanted to scream, sometimes, because I lived and died in moments that I stole. Whatever I did, I never felt Asian American enough — only among a handful of people could I shed the mask of learned wokeness, of this image that I had cultivated and hated. It rang so false in my ears, these affinity groups that touted inclusion, yet isolated anyone who deviated from their narrow definition of Asianhood. And I was so, so white, a white girl with a yellow face who listened to the lamest, blandest White Person Music, who listened to Taylor Swift on clandestine playlists — this white girl who sang about an untouchable world of high school football games and romance and yachts, of weddings and proposals, yet whose music transported me back to a different time shouting “she wears high heels/I wear tee shirts” in the car, those fearless-speak now meet me in the pouring rain-drop-everything-now days, where I could like what I wanted without assigning racial baggage and a value of social currency, and the sky was gold. No. People of color shouldn’t like Taylor Swift. Why would we? She didn’t like us. We’ve never felt represented in any of her creations. Her music was exclusionary. Right? I’m not supposed to like someone like that. She doesn’t write for me. Right? Right? This was the way?
I was lost, for a long time. Taylor released the bubblegum mess known as Lover and reassured us that she wasn’t a secret white supremacist. The album had its moments, but I still found myself in a love-hate relationship with its saccharine soundscape. When the pandemic brought me back to my parent’s house, I listened to her old records, retiring into the comforts of memory.
And then, Folklore. Seconds into the Cardigan music video, I knew that Taylor Swift had come back home sonically. It was the enchanted woods of my childhood personified and she wrote with that old authenticity. The last time I had so fervently poured over an album was Speak Now; Taylor Swift recaptured that level of cultural relevance she hadn’t seen since the likes of 1989. Taylor went into the woods and I followed, only this time, we were a little older, too wise to believe that love was forever and always. There, as she spun her soothing dreamscapes with both a renewed literary quality and melodic prowess, and I was wonderstruck, again, rediscovering some intrinsic part of me that I had buried.
I have known Taylor Swift for twelve years. I have tried to emanate her, I have hated her, and I have felt ashamed that she is a part of me. At times, she seemed menacing, silly, out of touch, psychotic. At others, she was magical, admirable, beautiful. Yet, despite it all, a single thread of gold tied me back to her music. Perhaps she didn’t always sing for me, but I claim her music as mine all the same. And perhaps Taylor was changing herself — I cheered at the Asian male lead in Willow — a small step in the right direction.
Home, a gentle acknowledgment of who I was in entirety, an unapologetic love for what I loved. That’s what the Folklore era became for me. In the woods, I discovered that there are parts of my personality — that — call it erasure or internalized racism or what you will — Taylor Swift will always appeal to. But it’s cool with me. It’s a sort of regression, or perhaps it’s just going back into the woods and embracing it for all its moss and ivy and dirt. All this time I was trying to read my mind, trying to figure out how to love myself, to self-actualize in my identity where all it took was embracing every part of who I am, even the parts that are a product of my upbringing. We could call it even. And I’ll never truly be out of the woods.
