Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Character:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2018-08-02
Updated:
2023-09-29
Words:
92,136
Chapters:
15/?
Comments:
154
Kudos:
632
Bookmarks:
134
Hits:
40,810

Gaylor Swift: An Introduction

Summary:

An introduction to the Gaylor Swift theory, the reasoning behind it, and the possible evidence that has been collected over the years.

Notes:

Most sources will be directly linked to, where possible. Those not available for links will be cited at the end of each chapter.

Chapter 1: Introduction and Theories

Chapter Text

Introduction

 

I first came across the "Gaylor Swift" theory in early 2018. At first, it seemed strange - a female artist famous or infamous for her relationships with men, and famous as well for her defence of her right to date as she wished? But I was intrigued enough to read more, and whether or not the theory is correct, it is more complicated, more subtle, and more believable than the first knee-jerk response.

Theories of secret relationships are nothing new - they've been around for as long as there have been celebrities. And rumours and theories about secret gay and lesbian relationships have been around since at least the 1920s - it was said that Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Navarro were lovers, although Navarro denied that they had even met more than a couple of times. Hollywood Babylon, by Kenneth Agner, was published in 1959 and kicked the rumours up to another notch (the story about Valentino sending Navarro a dildo, however, has been shown to be entirely false). And in the modern day, rumours that celebrities are queer continue to be widespread - despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that increasing numbers of queer people are coming out.

Some of the most famous rumoured secret relationships of the present day include "Larry Stylinson" (Louis Tomlinson and Harry Stylinson of One Direction) and "J2" (Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki of Supernatural). But it isn't just men who attract the rumours, and the Gaylor Swift theory - that Taylor Swift is queer, whether that means exclusively lesbian or not - proves if nothing else that people are still fascinated by the romantic lives of celebrities.

Information about the theory can be found extensively on tumblr and twitter, but as AO3 is a permanent Archive with non-breaking links I felt that it might be good to have an outline of the theory here, from basics to details, for those who wish to understand what people mean when they talk about Gaylor.

 

 

 

The "Gaylor Swift" Theory: The Basics

 

"Gaylor Swift" theories and meta are not a single, cohesive narrative. But the core of them is that Taylor Swift is not heterosexual. Some fans think that she is exclusively lesbian, others than she is bisexual or would prefer not to be labelled, but there is an agreement that she has at least some attraction to women. Many believe that she has dated women in the past, and that at least some of her songs are about women. The most common names raised in such theories are Emily Poe, Dianna Agron, and Karlie Kloss.

As a result of this, it is theorised that her management and PR, either with or without Taylor's consent and support, have prevented her from expressing her non-heterosexual desires, and "straight-washed" her narrative. 

Commonly, these theories also posit that some or all of her male love interests over the years have been fake - for publicity, or in order to portray a more heterosexual image. The most commonly cited relationship for this is "Hiddleswift" (Tom Hiddleston), which even mainstream media called out as cynically performative.

Many supporters of the Gaylor Swift theories believe that there are clues and indications to be found in Taylor's work which indicate this side of Taylor's sexuality. Some also feel that as time has gone on, and with Taylor more successful than ever, these clues have become increasingly deliberate.

In contrast to some sites which treat a potentially-queer Taylor derisively (blind items gossip sites are very bad for this), Gaylor Swift fans support and understand her choices. Even if they wish that she had chosen other actions at certain times, Gaylor Swift theorists understand that Taylor's choices have been forced by a homophobic music industry and general public, and her right for her music to be heard clashing with the potential fallout of coming out as non-heterosexual.

Some theorists feel that a coming-out of some sort within the next few years is very likely, given the age and level of success and industry power which Taylor has now reached.

 

 

 

If You Firmly Believe Taylor Is Heterosexual

That's fine! This probably isn't the work for you, then, although some people may still find it interesting to look at Taylor's lyrics and writing from a different perspective and so may find the first few chapters enlightening. I'm not here to evangelise, just to collate information that has previously been across multiple sites and some of which has been eroding with the years.

But if you're feeling defensive, or angry... please take a moment and think why.

Taylor Swift's fandom is based on clues and Easter Eggs. She seems to enjoy leaving them for her fans, and her fans enjoy the challenge of unravelling them. From the picture of red shoes that she used to tease her Red album in 2012, through to the scrambled letters that revealed the vault tracks of Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Red (Taylor's Version) in 2021, she encourages her fans to actively engage with her writing and her media presence. She has been known to congratulate fans who work out clues, who make lyrical connections, who consider different explanations even if some of those explanations turn out to be wrong. The media speculation is a different issue - media is meant for consumption, not for discussion, and all too often does not come from engagement with Taylor so much as it comes from clickbait. Fans and the media are different groups.

Taylor has been an advocate for LGBTQ+ causes since 2011, to a quieter or louder extent. She's fine being friends and colleagues with queer individuals, and using her platform to speak about queer artists and boost their profiles. She doesn't think that being queer is anything negative or derogatory.

There are groups of Taylor's fans who will vociferously "defend" her sexuality - but all this does is suggest that it would be negative for her be queer, that it would be an insult. People who discuss queer themes in Taylor's music often get accused of sexualising her, but that would only be the case if being queer is inherently sexual. And it isn't. Discussing whether Taylor has experienced some attraction to women isn't automatically sexual, isn't negative, isn't a dirty secret or disgusting. It's just looking from a different angle, asking a different question, engaging with Taylor's writing in a different way.

So if you firmly believe that Taylor is heterosexual, please, don't go calling people names, or slurs, or insults, for wondering. Taylor has made it clear that she loves literary engagement, and Taylor has made it clear that she doesn't just tolerate LGBTQ+ people, she celebrates them. She wouldn't find it offensive to be considered LGBTQ+ because she has made it clear that she doesn't think it is a bad thing to be. Debate, if you want. Engage with her songwriting and discuss alternate explanations. But being repulsed by the very notion, offended on her behalf, might just have a reason that you need to sit down and consider for a while.

Taylor Swift wouldn't want her fans to be spreading hate.

 

 

 

If You Are Curious

Welcome! This work might well be of interest to you, as a collation of much of the different evidence and discussion that is online regarding queer themes in Taylor Swift's work. Maybe you won't end up believing in them - maybe Taylor Swift has just been writing about all different sorts of love since the beginning, maybe the themes of forbidden love, of secrecy, and of yearning are in her songs because they are strongly emotive and speak to a great number of people. That's fine! I hope you find the content here interesting, and that maybe it sparks a few thoughts.

 

 

 

 

If You Already Feel She Might Not Be Heterosexual

 

If you already think that just maybe, Taylor Swift has experienced attraction to women and expressed such in her songwriting, then this document will probably be of interest to you. I have tried to bring together information from a number of sources and a number of sites, since many folks tend to specialise in one area of Taylor's history (understandably! This document has been years in the making), and since some events were not well-documented as they occurred but have turned out to be very significant in hindsight. I hope that this content is of use to you in determining how you feel the story goes, and that I can clarify some of the dimmer parts of the story.

Chapter 2: Areas of Discussion

Chapter Text

As the outline in the first chapter suggests, theories regarding the fact that Taylor might not be straight are wide-ranging, and draw from various angles. Here, I will attempt to outline some of the main avenues explored and topics of discussion, and link to chapters of this meta if I have written on this subject.

 

Published Material

This refers to Taylor's song lyrics, poetry, lyric booklet art/presentation, and music videos. As she has apparently written her first original script and will be directing the movie in 2023, this will also be considered part of her published work. Topics of discussion in this area may include:

  • Pronoun use in songs
  • Use of gendered or non-gendered descriptors
  • Themes which are relevant to the queer experience
  • References to queer media, culture, or slang
  • Motifs and symbolism which continue across multiple pieces of Taylor's work
  • Self-sampling of music within her discography
  • The nature of relationships discussed in the lyrics
  • Use of reported speech
  • Presentation and description of men in songs

In this meta, see:

 

 

Public Persona and Material

This refers to Taylor's performances, interviews, public appearances, photoshoots, speeches, and social media. Topics of discussion in this area may include:

  • The narratives and presentation of songs, the songwriting process, and the stories behind them
  • Pronoun use, either gender-neutral or inclusive, when discussing relationships
  • Behaviour and interactions with interviewers, colleagues, and fans
  • Clothing and accessories (see Clothing & Accessories Part One)
  • Release dates
  • Merchandise
  • Relationship to the male gaze
  • Promotion of and relationships with openly queer artists (see Association With the LGBTQ+ Community)
  • Lighting, staging and visuals of live performances
  • Discussion of LGBTQ+ rights and the LGBTQ+ community (see Association With the LGBTQ+ Community)
  • Interaction with LGBTQ+ institutions such as the GLAAD awards and Stonewall

 

 

Interactions and Timelines with Particular Individuals

This refers to publicly documented and known timelines of Taylor's relationship and interactions with particular individuals, with whom at least some think there may have been romantic feelings or interaction:

 

 

Statements from Other Individuals, Information About Hollywood

This refers to:

Chapter 3: Closets, Bearding and Promances

Chapter Text

Closets, Bearding and "Promances"

 

Almost everyone who is queer has experienced the feeling of being in the closet. Whether it's something as short-term as playing the pronoun game for one afternoon with distant family, or it's the long-term hiding of self, partners and identity which grinds away at the soul, an LGBTQIA+ identity sooner or later means hiding part of yourself. Being in the closet is a psychological strain, othering and isolating (Berger 2008); it exposes people to microaggressions and casual bigotry; and it has been understood since at least 1990 that closeting and "self-concealment" have detrimental effects on mental health (Larson & Chastain 1990). Nowadays, even more mainstream media acknowledges the difficulties of closeting (Strudwick 2014, Zane 2016).

So why do people stay in the closet? Sometimes it's a matter of safety - homosexuality is still illegal in 74 countries. But it isn't isolated to these extreme cases; Stonewall reports that one in five LGBT Britons have experienced a hate crime or incident in the last twelve months while the Center for American Progress reported that one in four LGBT people reported experiencing discrimination in 2016. Over half of LGBT Americans are still closeted in the workplace. Closeting can be a "strategic appropriation of power" (Fuller et al. 2009) - a way to take back power, privilege and prestige that it would not be possible to gain as an openly queer person.

Celebrities face even more pressure than members of the general public. It is a double jeopardy: not only are they subject to the whims of casting directors, of managers, of bosses, but they are also bound to the bigotries of the general public who watch their films, listen to their music, or buy their products. The two can even combine: the 'public' is an easy excuse for one homophobic manager to pass over a queer actor or singer, or to demand that they stay in the closet. Marketing suffers from heterosexism: the 'general public' is assumed to be young, cisgendered, white, and heterosexual, even when it is statistically likely that such a demographic is not going to be a majority! Female-specific marketing has been around for well over a hundred years - skimming Victorian-era adverts is enough to show that - but the "Pink Dollar" or "Pink Pound" of the LGBT community has only been acknowledged since the 1990s, and only in the 2010s has Britain started to specifically reference and court the "brown pound" of non-white consumers.

So where does this leave queer celebrities? When Ellen DeGeneres - and her character Ellen Morgan - came out in April 1997, the studio received bomb threats and Ellen herself received death threats. Rupert Everett has stated in interviews that he feels that being openly gay has sidelined him to supporting roles, to 'gay best friends', and out of the main roles and the spotlight. More and more queer celebrities are coming out, with seemingly less threat to their careers, but it remains to be seen if America - and the world - will be as accepting as can be hoped.

 

 

Country Music

Chely Wright came out in 2010, at the age of 39. She was one of the first country music stars to do so. Her sales halved and she received death threats - but for the first time in her life, she was able to live openly with the woman she loved, no longer pursuing heterosexual relationships she had no real interest in, no longer lying by omission or in words.

2010 was the year of Taylor Swift's third album. Her singles were reliably breaking into the Top Ten, she was dabbling in acting, and she was preparing for the 2011 Speak Now tour. While she might have been a rising star, she wasn't the megastar which she has since become. And in chapter four, we'll be looking at the early years of the Gaylor Swift theory, which suggests that Taylor already had good reason to know that homophobia could ruin careers.

Perhaps Taylor's 2012 song, Lucky One, had the most chilling warning of all.  

And they tell you that you’re lucky
But you’re so confused,
'Cause you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used
And all the young things line up to take your place

Luckily, country music is changing. Pride has highlighted LGBT-friendly artists - a handful from the 80s and 90s, and an increasing number today including several who have now come out. Taylor Swift even ends their list, with her country roots and her increasingly forceful pro-equality stance. Advocate has gone one step further, and highlighted artists who are LGBT. But the change is also more structural: in March 2018, the Country Music Association Foundation removed Mike Huckabee from their board.

The real developments, though, have only come in the last few years - and there's still plenty of states in the US that don't offer full protection, let alone countries in the world. Taylor Swift signed on to Big Machine Records in 2005, when she was just fifteen years old. 

 

 

Bearding

"Bearding" is a pretty old term, and can seem opaque if you haven't come across it before. It's basically a fake relationship, with the specific intention of making at least one half of the relationship look heterosexual to the public. The term dates back to about the 1950s or 1960s, but the practice is far older, dating back to at least the 1920s and the rise of Hollywood. The term "beard" originally applied to a woman hiding a man's sexuality, but nowadays it is more gender-neutral. The equivalent terms "handbag", "frock" and "merkin" do occasionally pop up, though, especially in older writing.

"Morality clauses" have existed in Hollywood since the 1920s. 1921, to be precise, when Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was accused of rape and murder (and later acquitted). The 1921 Universal Studios clause read:

 

 

"The actor (actress) agrees to conduct himself (herself) with due regard to public conventions and morals and agrees that he (she) will not do or commit anything tending to degrade him (her) in society or bring him (her) into public hatred, contempt, scorn or ridicule, or tending to shock, insult or offend the community or outrage public morals or decency, or tending to the prejudice of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company or the motion picture industry. In the event that the actor (actress) violates any term or provision of this paragraph, then the Universal Film Manufacturing Company has the right to cancel and annul this contract by giving five (5) days' notice to the actor (actress) of its intention to do so."

Remember how I said that rumours like those about Navarro and Valentino started to develop in the 1920s? The decade saw the growth of Hollywood, the development of journalism, and the real birth of celebrity gossip. For the first time, there were people who were widely known beyond royalty and nobility, and for the first time there was a world of journalists ready to spread false rumours and true stories.

In 1930, the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, strictly limited what could and could not appear in movies - before this, there had been no limits, no rules. It was named after William Harrison Hays Sr., first chairman of the MPDD and easily the most powerful man in Hollywood, who had until 1921 been the chair if the US Republican National Committee and the US Postmaster General. Hays's word was once law in Hollywood, and it was only into the 1960s and 1970s that the rules about what could and could not be portrayed in film relaxed, largely due to market pressure from foreign films which could portray nudity, crime, swearing, adultery, mixed-race relationships, or any of the many other themes banned by Hays.

Homosexuality was, of course, among the forbidden themes for films. But Hays - and those who later held his position - also targeted actors themselves. The "Doom Book" was a list of one hundred and seventeen actors and actresses whose lifestyles were not considered acceptable - be it drugs, partying, being queer, or associating with other races, crossing socially accepted lines could land you out of a job.

Bearding took off during the same era, as actors and actresses found themselves hiding lifestyles which Hays and other powerful figures deemed "unacceptable". William Haines was fired by MGM in 1933 for refusing to leave his male partner and date or marry a woman. But many queer actors and actresses either did not have the choice to leave, or made the choice to stay, to closet themselves, and to date members of the opposite sex. 

The term "bearding" was not around in the 1930s; the term "lavender dating" was more likely to appear. And this term is still echoed in the next step: lavender marriage. A lavender marriage is one in which one or both partners are queer, but the marriage gives enough of an appearance of heteronormativity to ward off any casual glances. Famous lavender marriages include those of Rock Hudson and Phyllis Gates, Laurence Olivier and Jill Esmond, and all three of Cary Grant's marriages while he was with his long-term lover Randolph Scott.

But is modern bearding still an issue? Well, AfterEllen has some pretty modern examples. Chely Wright, mentioned above, was publicly believed to be in a relationship with Brad Paisley for years, which she was living with her female partner (now wife). Industry insiders point to yes. In truth, it's likely that as long as there's homophobia, there will be bearding.

 

 

Promances

While there might be some contention about how widespread bearding still is, "promances" or "fauxmances" are definitely still around. The term applies to celebrities who date for publicity, either for themselves or for projects on which they are working.

Truth be told, it's hard to discuss promances, or research them, without coming across discussion of Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston. "Hiddleswift", as the relationship was also known, was extremely highly publicised and rumoured even at the time to be part of Hiddleston's push for the role of James Bond. Even Vice cites it as a prominent promance example. Kristen Stewart has also spoken about how her relationship with Robert Pattinson may have started off as something real, but the studio pushed it for publicity until "it wasn't real life anymore".

Relatively few individuals have come forward about promances, but those who have indicate that the practice is widespread. Video blogger Shane Dawson has spoken about his experiences, while Colton Haynes discussed his arranged "dates" and rumoured romances with Andy Cohen on radio. Jessica Lowndes teased her followers for a week with posts about a secret relationship before revealing that it was all designed to spark interest in, and create publicity for, the song she was about to release. The 2017 TV series "The Arrangement" starts off with a woman offered $10 million to be the publicity-friendly bride of a powerful actor, and for all that it turns sharply into a cult-takedown thriller, the fake relationship stands out in the story and has made its way into public consciousness.

 

 

 

Taylor and Gaylor: How It All Fits

 

2004. A talented young singer heads to Nashville, Tennessee, to turn her skill and determination into something more. At just fourteen, she is already writing and producing original songs, and she signs on to a fledgling record company - singer and company both trying to break out at the same time.

Tennessee in 2004 does not recognise same sex marriages or equivalent unions, has no laws preventing discrimination for sexuality, and it has been less than two years since the sodomy laws were struck down. (To this day, the local Human Rights Commission Tennessee branch continue to work to improve LGBT+ rights and lives.) Although it would be unfair to say that most of the residents of Tennessee are homophobic, rather too many of their lawmakers have been or tried to be.

Music is a cutthroat business. One disappointing song, one bad newspaper headline, and it can all be taken away. If the singer wants to make it big, she has to play the media game.

For a young, queer singer, the closet might seem like the safest place.

Heterosexual romances mean good PR. A lesbian one could mean scandal. Her image has been created by her PR company: America's sweetheart, a good girl in pretty dresses with perfect make-up and high heels. She packages romance into catchy tunes, adolescent angst and fear into lyrical refrains. Her target audience is teenage girls, but its the parents whose good side she needs to stay on.

California Proposition 8 passes. Waves of homophobia rock the country - not necessarily new feelings, but ones which are stirred and made more public by media attention.

It's still safe, in the closet. She can't be toppled from her fragile pedestal. She isn't called upon to wade into political debates, doesn't alienate the parents of her fans who are not yet old enough to buy her music themselves.

Perhaps there is someone special. She hides it in the guise of a friendship, spends time with them but swears to the press that it's platonic. Like letting your grandma know your girlfriend as you "friend", only instead of your grandma, it's the paparazzi that your publicist has called, the cameras that follow you whether you really want them or not. As long as there's occasionally a handsome young man on her arm, most people won't suspect a thing, not expecting to see a different narrative being played out. Like a sleight of hand, played in the suit of hearts.

And maybe, just maybe, one day she'll be famous enough, and the world will have changed enough, that it won't come tumbling down if she does come out.

 

 

 

Academic Sources

Berger, R.M. (1992) Passing and Social Support Among Gay Men. In Journal of Homosexuality 23(3):85-98

Fuller, C. B., Chang, D. F., and Rubin, L. R. (2009) Sliding Under the Radar: Passing and Power Among Sexual Minorities. In Journal of LGBT Issues in Counselling 3(2):128-151

Larson, D.G. and Chastain, R. L. (1990) Self-Concealment: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Health Implications. In Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 9(4):439-455

Chapter 4: Further Resources on Industry Homophobia, Closeting, and PR Romances

Summary:

In my time in the Gaylor fandom, I've started to see more and more sources being dropped, as well as the general experience of having been queer and having been closeted meaning that it makes sense that some celebrities would as well. Here, I have tried to compile articles and examples related to this phenomenon. More will likely be added with time (especially podcast episodes, which take longer and cannot be skimmed!)

Chapter Text

Interviews and Articles

 

 

 

(Please note how many of the following articles are years or even decades after the artist has come out - once they do, it can dominate their narrative for years and still be questioned and pried into much later.)

 

Videos

 

Podcasts

 

Other

Chapter 5: Lyrics and Themes: Queering Taylor's Discography

Notes:

Please note! This chapter was originally posted in August 2018, and the pronoun %s and the like run from Debut through to reputation. Songs from Lover onwards are not taken into account but, to be fair, would not make the numbers look any more slanted towards male pronouns.

 

 

My apologies for the delay in completing this chapter. I made the foolish mistake of posting the first chapter right before a month in which I would be working 26 out of 30 days... and I did not anticipate that right after my first chapter, there would be a public Kaylor meeting for the first time in two years.

This chapter looks a lot at the lyrics of Taylor's song, and it might be helpful to have lyrics on hand.
A-Z Lyrics's Taylor Swifr Page
Taylor Swift official Youtube account
Taylor Swift Spotify

Also potentially of use, a cheat sheet (or a list from Billboard, your call on terminology) of Taylor Swift's confirmed and rumoured male love interests over the years.

Chapter Text

Pronouns and Ambiguity

 

It has been noted how many of Taylor Swift's songs have no gender pronouns in them. And perhaps it's not surprising: for one thing, it makes it easy for anyone to sing or cover, opening it up to a wider audience.

However some have found the extensive use of gender-neutral terms to be reminiscent of the "pronoun game", a method of holding conversations without revealing the gender of at least one of the people about whom one is talking. Most commonly, the "pronoun game" is an act performed to hide sexual identity, specifically by hiding the gender of a romantic partner. While it can have other uses (I have at least one friend who struggles to use my they/them pronouns correctly and therefore rearranges sentences to use no pronouns at all), it is likely that closeting is the most common use of the pronoun game to this day.

Tumblr user all-my-possessions has done an excellent breakdown and list of pronouns in Taylor's songs up to and including her album 1989. Inspired by this, I ran an analysis of all of Taylor's songs up to and including reputation; I excluded covers, and those songs which Taylor performed but did not write ("Half of My Heart" and "Two is Better Than One"). I have specifically looked at the pronouns involved in relationships; therefore "Ronan" is counted as having no gendered relationship despite containing he/him pronouns.

The following chart shows the distribution of pronouns in the one hundred and twelve songs written and (partially-)performed by Taylor Swift from 2006 to 2018.

 

 

 

Ninety of the songs, or 83%, have no gendered relationship in the pronouns - they use only first and second person; I, you, and we. 

Arguably more interesting, though, are those songs of Taylor's which do use he/him pronouns or male names - they are not often as simple as being sung from "her" to "him". Since the real-life inspirations cited for Starlight (Robert and Ethel Kennedy) and Ronan (Ronan Thompson), they don't exactly fit into the same mould, I'll be setting them aside for the rest of this chapter - they aren't songs that have ever claimed to be autobiographical or even inspired by Taylor's real life experiences, so they're not really relevant to where we're heading with this.

Only four songs out of Taylor's discography feature names - "Cory" of Stay Beautiful and "Drew" of Teardrops On My Guitar, "Stephen" for Hey Stephen, and "John" of Dear John. These were all from 2006 to 2010 respectively, and since then Taylor has been almost infamously coy about refusing to name the inspirations for individual songs. There are a number of attempts online to identify the people behind various songs, and sometimes in Rep Rooms and pre- or post-show meets people say that Taylor will reveal the inspiration behind a particular song. But these are never official announcements. For the most part, it's trying to match up clues - eye colours, hair colours, timelines, sometimes even birthdays. So over time, Taylor has becoming increasingly coy, or increasingly private, about exactly to whom she is singing.

It's also interesting to note that the original demo version of Teardrops on My Guitar, penned in 2005, was gender-neutral. Taylor has never stated why she changed them, and Drew Hardwick - former schoolmate of Taylor's whom it is generally assumed the song is about - has stated that he was never aware of her having feelings for him. Whilst this fits the narrative of unrequited affection, it does also raise the possibility that the song was never about Drew at all, and that his name was a convenient rhyme when Taylor decided to gender the song. The demo version of Teardrops on My Guitar has been touted for some years as the original. However, cowriter Liz Rose has spoken about how the version without a name was desired by the label, who wanted to make it more vague and potentially shop it out to other singers. By Rose's account, Taylor actually fought to keep the version of the song with Drew's name, feeling that the use of a name and the specificity of the story told would be more true to the story and more unique in the market.

Taylor has also released handwritten drafts of various of her songs on recent years, showing the development process; this includes the lyrics for Wildest Dreams which show markedly fewer "he"s and a lot more "you"s than the end version.

Musicians are starting to speak out about the pressure put on them to sing "straight" love songs even if they are openly queer, or simply to not come out at all. A number of Gaylor Swift theorists do wonder whether Taylor was encouraged or forced to add male names and pronouns, especially in her early albums before she had the sort of status which she now has, to appease a heterocentric view of marketing and audiences.

 

Reported Speech: He Said, She Said

A number of Taylor Swift's songs with male pronouns also have reported speech, or indirect speech. This is where the narrator or speaker relays something which was said by another person - it's not strongly marked in English, compared to a number of other languages where reported speech is in the subjunctive. This is important, because it means that in English, Taylor can sing either quote or summarise another person's words and still have them sound like her own.

Reported speech has appeared in Taylor's songs almost from the beginning. In her 2006 single Our Song, she sings "the first date, man, I didn't kiss her when I should have" twice - and the version with a "him" pronoun only once. The triumphant peak of her 2008 hit Love Story features her singing "Marry me, Juliet" - only, of course, it's reported speech. In 2010, Speak Now uses reported speech to 'reply' to the offer to leave the altar, and interestingly, the song Mine, from  2010, has reported speech without a male pronoun. Taylor never gives the gender of the person singing that they "fell in love with a careless man's careful daughter", simply says, "she is the best thing that's ever been mine".

Similar in format is How You Get The Girl, from 2014. It is a mixture of instruction and a chorus of reported speech, the reveal at the end of "that's how you got the girl" indicates that Taylor is the "her" that has been referred to throughout, but again her love interest has no specified gender. 

 

Compare and Contrast

Three of Taylor's songs explicitly contrast a relationship with "he" with a relationship with "you", and find "him" to be unsatisfactory or unpleasant. These are The Way I Loved You, from 2008, Haunted from 2010, and Begin Again, from 2012. 

The Way I Love You states, "he's charming and endearing and I'm comfortable. But I miss [...] the way I loved you" - her current relationship with a man is what other people would expect, and ticks all the societal boxes, but there is no indication of real passion or feeling for him. In contrast, her relationship with her past, gender still unspecified, lover, was tumultuous and difficult, potentially unhealthy, but at least she was in love. Haunted says "He will try to take away my pain, and he just might make me smile, but the whole time I'm wishing he was you instead", following a similar theme of a superficially acceptable relationship, one which should work, but is not because the singer still has feelings for someone who has since left. Both of these songs are about past relationships which overshadow present ones, making the men that Taylor tries to date inadequate in the shadow of her past, gender-unspecified, lover.

Begin Again takes a rather different, and sharper, direction. Here, "you" is the present, while "he" in the past is shown negatively and, to be honest, as borderline abusive. "I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did" is the clearest line of the song that makes it clear this past man has had a bad effect on Taylor - "I'm coming off a little shy" and "you don't know how nice that is" make it clear that the past relationship has hurt her, made her nervous, but at the same time made her appreciative of the "you" who is acting pleasantly and supportively. Interestingly, though, Begin Again is the only song in which the man is also thrown into direct contrast with Taylor herself: "He didn't like it when I wore high heels, But I do."

This song, third of her series with contrasting relationships, is the only one to look forward to the new relationship rather than back to the old one, and the only one in which Taylor acknowledges things about herself which make her happy. It shows a self-confidence and self-awareness which is perhaps somewhat lacking in the earlier ones, a more mature understanding of who she deserves to be and the sort of relationship which she deserves to have. 

Tumblr user all-my-possessions has an excellent essay on this topic, which goes into much more detail than I can here, about the opposition of "you" and "he" in these three songs, and about their links to Taylor's wider discography. It makes for great in-depth reading.

 

I, You and He: How Many People?

One of the noticeable features of Taylor's songs is that many of them have both "you" and "he" in the same song - and apparently having them refer to the same person. This appeared as early as her first album, with the first line of Tim McGraw difficult to make out as "He said the way my blue eyes shined" or "You said the way my blue eyes shined" ("he" appears in most official lyrics that I have been able to source online), and Stay Beautiful moves back and forth between "he" and "you" over the course of the song. It appeared famously in Love Story with "We were both young when I first saw you" moving by the end of the song to, "he knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring".

This movement of pronoun also has not stopped over time. Taylor's 2017 single ...Ready For It? also shifts from "Knew he was a killer first time that I saw him" to "You should see the things we do, baby". By ...Ready For It?, there is even a distinct musical difference between the verses with the "he" pronoun and the bridges and choruses with the "you" pronoun. The music video for ...Ready For It? is also full of duality, of Taylor fighting against another version of herself, processing through her emotions and preparing to be set free. Indeed, it is building on the same conflict-with-self seen in the Look What You Made Me Do music video.

In early songs, the movement from "he" to "you" was barely noticeable, but by ...Ready For It? the contrast has become marked, almost jarring. Of course, songs do not need to have the same clear points of view and narrators as most prose does, but for some Gaylor Swift theorists the noticeable and increasing contrast suggests that there might be something more hidden in the lyrics. By ...Ready For It?, the longing words to the romantic interest of the song (never shown in the music video) are disjointed from the male pronouns of the person Taylor calls her "jailor", and of whom she considers "holding him for ransom". Are some of the "you" figures of songs not, in fact, the same as the "he" figures at all?

 

 

 

Gendered Words?

 

Some of the songs without gendered pronouns do have words and lyrics which have gendered connotations. The most common symbols are princes and princesses (Love Story, Starlight, Today Was a Fairytale, Angelina, White Horse) or kings and queens (Long Live, Blank Space, King of My Heart), but the word "boy" appears in a number of her lyrics as well.

However, it is well worth remembering that gender-variant terms are not unknown to the LGBT community. Moreover, both neutral and 'masculine' terms can be applied to women, and have been in music. Some instances include:

  • "They say she's king of Torquay Island" - Electra, by Marianne Faithful
  • "She's my man" - She's My Man by The Scissor Sisters
  • "We should just be each other's boyfriends" - Boyfriends by Jenna Marbles

For the most part, though, these words are only connotations, never explicit meanings. Moreover, the lyrics in question often also have a fairy-tale quality, which may be more important in this case than masculine ones. The icons of princes and princesses have usually been associated in Taylor Swift's songs with romance and fairy tales, either with acceptance of them (Love Story, Today Was a Fairytale) or in feeling that such a romance will never be for her (White Horse).

Another example of potentially gendered language used in Taylor's songs is the range of words which she uses to convey attractiveness. The distribution of the terms beautiful, handsome, gorgeous and pretty can be seen below. In songs marked with **, all or most of the song is sung in the second person, to "you", despite the male name in the first line or title of the song.

 

Although none of these words are strictly gendered, "beautiful", "handsome" and "pretty" all have connotations of either masculine or feminine attractiveness. For an easy way of visualising this, I have used Google Books Ngram Viewer, which searches for the use of phrases in written text over the last two hundred years.

Here, it can be seen that Taylor Swift strictly uses "pretty" for female figures (herself, the female classmate said to have inspired Tied Together With a Smile, or other named female figures), but that it is less clear-cut with other terms. For handsome and gorgeous, the sample is so small that it is difficult to draw conclusions. Handsome is generally used for men more than women, while gorgeous is becoming increasingly feminine in use but has not historically had so clear a trend. Pretty strongly tends to being used for women. 

Interesting, though, is Taylor Swift's use of beautiful. Historically, beautiful is much more often used for women than for men. But Taylor has used it repeatedly for the named male love interests of her early songs, even subverting "tall, dark and handsome" into "tall, dark and beautiful" for Superman in 2010. It certainly indicates that Taylor is willing, at least sometimes, to bend gendered expectations for words and to use them in new ways instead.

Taylor has rarely openly sung about women, so it's hard to find concrete examples of where she has done the same in the other direction. But this fluid gendering of words does raise questions about some of those other songs which have no genders at all. One of those most commonly questioned in this manner is King of My Heart, which uses "you" throughout and pairs the titular king with Taylor's "American Queen". The English word "King" derives from a Proto-Germanic word which was likely technically gender-neutral and meant "ruler"; throughout history, various women have been crowned as King, including the Ancient Egyptian Hatshepshut, King of Poland Jadwiga of Anjou, Christina of Sweden (who took her oath as King of Sweden), and Elizabeth I of England who ruled as Elizabeth Rex. As street artist James de la Vega declared in one of his early pieces of work, "Sometimes the king is a woman."

It all seems a little obscure for a Taylor Swift song, though... or it did until 1st July 2018, when TaylorNation on Instagram posted this image of the crowd at one of of Taylor's concerts, with the caption "Taylor is the  of our ♥'s!". (It appears to have since been deleted from Instagram, but on the internet nothing ever really goes away.) Grocer's apostrophe aside, it was clearly a reference to King of My Heart, only this time casting Taylor as the King.

Sometimes the king is a woman. 

 

Lavender Linguistics

In the 1990s, William Leap proposed a field of study called "Lavender Linguistics", which studies the way that the queer community uses language, and the way that language is used about the queer community. He went on to found the Journal of Language and Sexuality,  It recognises that language can be used to create a shared identity, and to communicate that identity to others, as well as to enforce or subvert cultural norms. Historically, there have been entire English dialects, such as Polari, which have been associated with the gay male community.

While such dialects are no longer so widely used in English, features of them remain. One of the most common is she-ing, or referring to a man using she/her pronouns either in order to disguise the queer nature of the relationship or to reinforce a sense of gay male identity. Studies indicate it has lasted across centuries, and has arisen not just in different countries but on different continents. She-ing remains with the English-speaking North American gay male community in use of terms like "girl" and"queen", seen even in 2018 on Queer Eye For the Straight Guy and used even for the male contestants (not just their characters) on RuPaul's Drag Race. 

Lesbian gender-variant language has not traditionally been as marked or distinctive, although linguists such as Robin Queen indicate that there are still indicators. Butch lesbians may not necessarily agree on whether they are performing masculinity, or performing a queer female gender identity that rejects a masculine-feminine binary, but for all their media invisibility they exist, proudly, and break social conventions of femininity. One notable use is the word "boi", such as by the Boi Society.

In short, queer people do use language differently, and perhaps it is time for language and song analysis to take these into account as possibilities. Until or unless Taylor Swift states her sexual orientation - and so far, she has not - analyses which are based on queer linguistic use are no more or less valid than those based on heterosexual linguistic use. Perhaps it's time to broaden our horizons, and think a little bit outside the closet, when it comes to looking at lyrics.

 

 

"If a Girl Sang It": Singing to 'Her'

 

So, most of Taylor Swift's songs are sung to "you", an ungendered figure, and a few are to our about "him", especially from her earlier years. But Taylor Swift has sung to and about women as well, over the years, and it isn't just Gaylor Swift theorists who have noticed. Taylor's general fanbase, and the general public, can't help but be aware. It's been one of the things which has seen her labelled as a great LGBT+ ally - but it's one of the things which has made some people wonder whether she is a member, and not an ally, of the community. Taylor's songs to 'her' include covers, songs which she has performed in duet, and a handful of her own melodies. 

Covers of songs can be tricky when it comes to the gender of the participants in romantic songs. While some changes make sense simply as an alternate interpretation of a song, sometimes, well... it comes off as rather No Homo. Even TV Tropes calls out this tendency in songs, with plenty of examples (though its 'aversions' section doesn't have any of the Taylor Swift examples which I am about to list!), and though some articles are positive about such changes, other places have been rather more critical in their discussion of trends and the No Homo implications of them.

If you haven't heard about Michael Bublé's cover of "Santa Baby", I strongly advise you to read about it. It changed the lyrics to "Santa Buddy", managed to be fiercely No Homo but also sound like Bublé would go gay for hockey tickets, and made a marvellous example of forced heterosexuality and restrictive masculinity.

And poking around the internet, it certainly clear that there is interest in covers in which the pronouns are not changed. There are a lot more articles online about 'covers that keep the pronouns' than 'covers which change the pronouns' (as I discovered while researching this section), and sites from Buzzfeed to Autostraddle to CBS News have shared lists of songs where the pronouns have not been changed. Amy Winehouse's cover of "Valerie" peaked at number two in the UK charts (the original peaked at number nine) and has sold over five times as many units as the original.

 

Direct Covers

Earlier in her career, Taylor Swift was known to sometimes change the pronouns of songs when she covered them, including her cover of "Drops of Jupiter" by Train as part of her 2011 Speak Now tour. However, it's been a few years since she has been seen to do so, and even before this she would cover songs keeping the pronouns intact. Examples of this include:

A special mention needs to go to her belting the title line of "I Wanna Kiss A Girl" while pranking Keith Urban in Kansas City in 2009. She may simply have been covering for Urban while he was laughing too hard to sing the line himself, but that video simply deserves to be seen on its own merits.

Pretty much any Youtube video of such a cover will have comments beneath from queer fans saying how important to them it is to hear someone keeping the original pronouns and, in doing so, making a straight love song into a queer one. The cover of "Riptide", however, is not only one of Taylor Swift's most recent, but also one of the best known, being available in high quality. (We'll also see in chapter ten how the end of 2014 is a critical era to many Gaylor Swift theorists). Taylor smiles throughout, lost in the song, tone and expression adoring as she sings about being "scared of pretty girls and starting conversations".

Interestingly, when Taylor talks about her cover of "Riptide", she says that she wants to hear "what it would sound like if a girl sang it" - but did not change any of the lyrics or pronouns. The result is that "if a girl sang it" appears to mean "if a queer girl sang it". The song is beautiful and haunting... and very, very gay.

 

Sharing Songs

Over the years, Taylor has also made a number of performances with other artists where she has kept the pronouns of their songs - even if that means singing to or about female love interests. Examples of this sort of cover include:

And a couple of special mentions:

It's probably pretty apparent why I've separated the two groups. When performing with male artists, Taylor has shown herself to be more than happy to sing to female love interests - but the latter two examples are slightly different. "Closer" is gender-neutral in its lyrics, sung to "you", but Tegan and Sara are of course out lesbians, and the album Heartthrob, from which "Closer" was taken, was their first to feature gendered pronouns.

"Curious", though, is something else altogether. Hayley Kiyoko is also openly lesbian, and has spoken about the decision to come out and explicitly sing to other women in her music. "Curious", as Hayley Kiyoko has discussed in an interview with Billboard, is a song to a woman who has left her for a man in order to hide her sexuality. Taylor Swift performed "Curious" on stage with Hayley Kiyoko, enthusiastically singing from the point of view of a queer woman whose lover has left her, and all but grinding on another woman onstage. While obviously no individual song can ever be taken as a statement on a singer's sexuality, Gaylor Swift theorists have noticed how much Taylor seemed to enjoy the song and the performance, in much the same way as she had enjoyed "Riptide" four years ago.

 

"Boys and Boys and Girls and Girls"

As of 2018, there were only two instances in Taylor's official lyrics which appear to refer to queer relationships. The first of these was from "Welcome to New York" from her 2014 album 1989, which included the lyrics: 

"Everybody here was someone else before,
And you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls."

At the time of its release, this lyric garnered a lot of media attention. Sites such as Time, Slate, and Teen Vogue all commented positively on Taylor's lyrics. Even if sites did not much like the song, they tended to appreciate the nod to the queer community. Taylor has said that it was inspired by the legalisation of gay marriage in New York in 2011; she moved to New York in March 2014.

The second is rather more subtle. The background singers of "Call It What You Want" (lyric video released November 2017) sing, at about 2:35, "I'm the one she's walking to". It is clearly deliberate, clearly part of the official lyrics, but has never been formally discussed or addressed.

With that in mind, then, perhaps there are a handful of other lyrics which are worth looking at with a more queer-friendly eye:

  • "When you think happiness, I hope you think of that little black dress. Think of my head on your chest, And my old faded blue jeans" - "Tim McGraw", Taylor Swift (2006) 
  • "And I broke down crying; was she worth this mess?" - "The Other Side of the Door", Fearless (2008)
  • "Your lover in the foyer doesn't even know you" - "The Lucky One", Red (2012)
  • "I can't decide if it's a choice" - "Treacherous", Red (2012)
  • "Good girls, hopeful they'll be and long they'll wait" - "Sad, Beautiful, Tragic", Red (2012)
  • "Keep you second guessing, like, oh my god, who is she?" - "Blank Space", 1989 (2014)
  • "I say, 'I heard, oh, that you've been out and about with some other girl.' He says, 'What you've heard is true but I can't stop thinking about you,' and I... I said, 'I've been there too a few times'." - "Style", 1989 (2014)

To review every song that Taylor Swift has written or performed would take far too long for me to cover! In place of doing so, I recommend some great queer song analysis by tumblr user that-curly-haired-lesbian, who has done a good number of Taylor's songs from the potential point of view of a queer performer, rather than a straight one. A lot of it is simply a matter of breaking down assumptions; the reading is just as valid as one that presumes heterosexuality.

 

"She Never Loved Me": A Slip of the Tongue?

Although Taylor's official lyrics have never had her sing to a woman, that doesn't mean that it hasn't happened. On various occasions throughout her career, Taylor has used "she" where her official lyrics say either "he" or "you".

Probably the most famous of these is her performance from iHeart Radio in September 2014. During I Knew You Were Trouble, Taylor sings "and the saddest fear comes creeping in, that she never loved me" [Original video removed, link is now to the entire performance. I Knew You Were Trouble starts at about 11:05; the bridge is at 13:40]. This was a live and televised performance with extremely clear audio. Notably, Gaylor Swift theorists were not the only ones to notice it - AfterEllen listed it as one of their reasons that queer women should enjoy Taylor Swift, and the comment is still up years later.

In April 2019, Taylor performed at the Time 100 Gala - a party featuring as many as possible of the one hundred people Time has just named the most influential - after appearing as one of those hundred. During her performance of New Year's Day, Taylor appeared twice to sing "I want her midnights" instead of the official lyric "I want your midnights". 

Footage exists of a number of other occasions when it is claimed that Taylor has sung "she". It is unclear whether these are deliberate, or are slips; sometimes it is not even wholly clear whether they are truly the word "she", or an elided "that you" becoming "thatcha". However, when taken in their entirety they provide quite a striking list.

The songs most commonly marked as receiving this treatment, as seen here, are Love Story, I Knew You Were Trouble, and You Are in Love. 

Perhaps it is also notable that, despite some digging, I have not found any claimed examples of her doing the opposite and singing male pronouns instead of female or neutral ones.

 

 

 

Secret and Transgressive: Taylor's Love Stories

 

Hidden Love

Two of the themes that have run strongly through Taylor Swift's lyrics, from Taylor Swift to reputation, have been those of secret relationships and of transgression. This certainly makes sense for her first few albums, not just as a marketing technique that appealed to her young audience but also because almost any relationship at this age feels daring, rule-breaking, and generally like the most important thing in the world. (We've all been there.)

"When you're on the phone and you talk real slow,
'cause it's late and your momma don't know"

-Our Song, from Taylor Swift (2006)

 

"You were Romeo, you were throwing pebbles,
And my daddy said, "Stay away from Juliet"
[...]
We keep quiet, 'cause we're dead if they knew."
-Love Story, from Fearless (2008)

 

Taylor was in her teens when she wrote these songs, but that does not mean that they were not still calculated to please an audience, or that their imagery was not manipulated. Tumblr user all-my-possessions has, in particular, charted the change in the narrative that has surrounded Love Story. On first release, it was portrayed as being based on a personal experience of a forbidden or undesirable relationship, but over time has changed to being inspired by the Shakespeare play, to being a more conceptual exploration of forbidden love.

But perhaps it is more surprising that these themes have continued well into Taylor's adult years. Their execution has become more elegant with time, but that does not change the fact that they remain. Perhaps the most striking demonstration of these was her 1989 song I Know Places. This song not only talks of a secret relationship, but indicates that a lack of secrecy - not just privacy, but secrecy - is dangerous.

"Something happens when everybody finds out,
See the vultures circling, dark clouds"
[...]
"Baby, I know places we won't be found
And they'll be chasing their tails trying to track us down
'Cause I, I know places we can hide,
I know places."
-I Know Places, from 1989 (2014)

 

From the same album, the song Wonderland continues the theme of secrecy and of people watching. This song was not made available on the main album, but appeared on the deluxe edition.

"But there were strangers watching,
And whispers turned to talking,
And talking turned to screams."
-Wonderland, from 1989 (Deluxe Edition) (2014)

The 2017 album reputation also includes elements of secrecy, from the overt "I, I loved you in secret" that opens Dancing With Our Hands Tied and "Our secret moments in a crowded room" of Dress to the more subtle references of "hiding my obsession" in Don't Blame Me and "your love is a secret" in King of My Heart. In all, seven out of fifteen of the songs from reputation make some sort of reference to secrecy.

Taylor certainly has reasons to want privacy in her life. As her star has risen, she has faced a number of stalkers and invasions of her privacy, above and beyond even those which are faced by other media figures. Since the 2005-6 News of the World phone hacking scandal in the UK, which would over the course of five years lead to the closure of a newspaper which had been in existence for over one hundred and sixty years, there have been a string of increasingly large and high-profile hacking and leaking incidents. In August 2014, over five hundred images, mostly of female celebrities and often containing nudity, were leaked from iCloud storage. Taylor was not affected. However, websites such as Celeb Jihad (which shares both real leaked nudes and photomanipulated images) and magazines such as Celebrity Skin continue to trade in often secretly-obtained images.

However, for many, Taylor's songs seem to go beyond this. In particular, it is worth noting the 1989 theme of outside forces pressing in; it does not seem to be a fear for herself, but for her relationships, which is reflected in Taylor's lyrics. A handy list of publicised breakup reasons by Vulture indicates that Jake Gyllenhaal (October to December 2010) and Calvin Harris (March 2015 to June 2016) may have broken up with Taylor for reasons that included high publicity - but Gyllenhaal was years before 1989 or reputation, and Calvin Harris came after 1989. 

So, to whom is Taylor singing when she promises, in I Know Places, that she knows the value of secret relationships and places that they can conduct them? Although her relationship with Harry Styles (December 2012 to January 2013) was highly publicised, this was never indicated in their break-up, and between Harry Styles and Calvin Harris Taylor was not linked with any other men or indicated to be dating anyone.

 

Hidden Heartbreak

Of note alongside these stories of hidden love is a stark one of hidden heartbreak. Taylor Swift has been both lauded and vilified for processing her relationships through songs, and it can hardly be said that any of her breakups have been all that private. And despite this, the following lines appear in her 1989 song Clean:

"The water filled my lungs, I screamed so loud
But no-one heard a thing."
-Clean, from 1989 (2014)

This implication of a hidden heartbreak could just be a reflection of the almost inevitable loneliness that comes with a break-up. But some, including Gaylor Swift theorists, have wondered whether it nods to a relationship or relationships which Taylor did not make public, ones which she was never able to openly mourn.

 

Cross the Line: Transgressions of Song

Like the matter of secrecy, love always seems transgressive to teenagers. Imagery of Romeo and Juliet (Love Story) and sneaking out (Our Song) is actually pretty rare among Taylor's early work - there are more songs of unrequited love or the transition from a normal high school student to a global musical sensation. One of the earliest songs which goes beyond this is Mine:

"You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter;
You are the best thing that's ever been mine."
-Mine, from Speak Now (2010)

This could be seen as a contrast of personality, however - and it pales beside the themes present in Ours, from the same album:

"Seems like there's always
Someone who disapproves,
They'll judge it like they know about me and you."
-Ours, from Speak Now (2010)

The music video for Ours has an admittedly very sweet romance between the narrator, played by Taylor, and her military boyfriend whose return from active service she is awaiting. However, in 2010 there was not the sort of backlash against military figures or their partners to justify this level of transgressive coding, or the amount of protectiveness. The boyfriend is white, his mentioned tattoos are not visible in the intercut home videos or during his return at the end of the video, has no visual indicators of being of a different religion from Taylor's character, and generally does not seem to have a reason for the social disapproval which the lyrics imply.

Again, this theme of going against societal disapproval has continued into Taylor's more recent albums. Whether it is Red (Red, 2012) describing loving it's subject as "passionate as sin", Treacherous (Red, 2012) saying that "this path is reckless" and "you're friction", or I Wish You Would (1989, 2014) describing "a crooked love in a straight line town", the theme of a love which is not approved continues to wend its way through Taylor's lyrics.

Taylor has certainly faced backlash over the years for her dating patterns, but usually this has seemed to be for the audacity of dating at all, and seemed to come more from the media than from her nearest and dearest. Ours is generally linked to John Mayer, whom Swift is rumoured to have dated between December 2009 and October 2010. Mayer was 32 at the time to Swift's 19-20, certainly a large enough age gap to raise eyebrows, and reports at the time indicated that Andrea, Taylor's mother, vehemently disapproved. As recently as 2016 Mayer has taken jabs at Swift in tweets and songs, which doesn't exactly speak well of him or his behaviour.

So perhaps Mayer, bad boy of the day, inspired the lyrics. But not everybody is convinced. And those doubts only grew stronger in 2017, with the release of reputation and a resurgence of what felt now like a well-trodden theme. Call It What You Want is, in tone, all but a dare to critics regarding a controversial or disapproved-of relationship, while indications of transgression continue throughout the album.

"I, I loved you in spite of,
Deep fears that the world would divide us.
So, baby can we dance
Through an avalanche?"
-Dancing With Our Hands Tied, from reputation (2017)

 

"Don't blame me, love made me crazy -
If it doesn't, you ain't doing it right.
[...]
And baby, for you, I would fall from grace,
Just to touch your face."
-Don't Blame Me, from reputation (2017) 

 

"You make me so happy, it turns back to sad.
There's nothing I hate more than what I can't have."
-Gorgeous, from reputation (2017)

 

reputation is the album with the most talk of transgression and the forbidden, the album which goes beyond secrecy and starts to reveal a reason for that secrecy - that the relationship will not meet with societal or family approval. In the time between 1989 and reputation, Taylor has been romantically linked with DJ Calvin Harris, with actor Tom Hiddleston, and now with actor Joe Alwyn. Although there has been some uncertainty about timelines, and controversy about whether Taylor may have started dating Hiddleston before breaking up with Harris, none of these relationships really seem to have drawn the sort of ire that would seem appropriate to produce such an intense feeling of criticism.

The emotional intensity which the songs carry certainly does not hurt their popularity. There is a reason that tropes like "us against the world" are so popular, and stories about forbidden relationships may have more selling power than accepted ones. But the love stories which Taylor tells have only become more forbidden and transgressive with the years - despite being an adult with the freedom to date whom she wishes, she still promises secretly and says that what she wants is what she can't have.

Other than Taylor Lautner, back in August to December 2009, all of Taylor Swift's boyfriends have been white, and single at the time of their meeting. Some may have been older than her, and some younger, but only Mayer and Jake Gyllenhaal has ever been outside the 'half your age plus seven' guideline (and then, they were both older, where an older man with a younger woman is more socially acceptable than the opposite). Harris, Hiddleston and Alwyn have all been firmly within socially accepted boundaries.

So who is Taylor's transgressive love? Who has she loved without reason, for whom has she fallen from grace, for whom did she rebel?

Some people look at Taylor's public relationships and see the sort of PR romances that have been known and practised in Hollywood for so many years, and think that perhaps these relationships have not been Taylor's real ones. That perhaps there have been other relationships driving her songwriting, ones whose influences can be seen by looking at the general news of Taylor's life and not just the images which the media are given.

Chapter 7: Sensual Politics: Queer Theory, -normativities, and the Myth of a Perfect Coming Out

Summary:

Queer theory; heteronormativity, cisnormativity, amatonormativity and allonormativity; compulsory heterosexuality or comphet; the history of "lesbian"; non-monogamy and anti-polyam sentiments; the complexities of "coming out".

Notes:

This chapter is sort of an introduction to some aspects of queer theory. It also mentions and/or discusses a lot of different LGBTIA+ orientations and identities. I will attempt to use neutral a tone as possible whilst doing so, but to frank my queer politics lean very inclusionist, so I will discuss and outline identities which might be otherwise marginalised including trans and nonbinary identities, bi lesbians, use of the split attraction model, and identity fluidity.

I will delete any comment that tries to argue about, denigrate, or gatekeep any of these issues. If I have misstated something, I will of course accept correction, but I'm not here for exclusionist rhetoric.

Also please note that this is being written in autumn/fall 2023. I have seen queer theory develop, and terminology change, over the last fifteen or so years that I have been reading on the topic and aware of debates. Any number of the terms that I use in this chapter did not exist when I began my reading in 2008. I will do my best to acknowledge historical changes in language, but I cannot predict future ones, and terms may change further in the future.

I will be using the shorthand of bi+/mspec to represent the two terms currently in most common use to include all those who are attracted to multiple genders. This includes (but is not limited to) bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, polysexual, biromantic, panromantic, omniromantic, polyromantic, experiencing fluid attraction, and queer people or those who do not claim or identify with any specific label who are attracted to multiple genders. While I appreciate that not everyone who identifies with one or more of those terms identifies with or is even aware of terms like bi+/mspec, I need a shorthand way to refer to all individuals who share these experiences or this meta will get even longer than it already is! As of the time of writing, the term mspec is coming into more widespread use, but the term bi+ has been in use for some years and is still recognisable to many.

Chapter Text

A (Very Brief) History of Queer Theory

 There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy - Hamlet 

 

It's very easy, when faced with learning about the queer/LGBTQIA+ communities, to become overwhelmed with the number of terms, definitions, overlapping and distinct identities, even without the way that terminology and language has changed and developed over time. Add into this different cultural contexts and languages, attempts by queerphobic individuals to deny, denigrate or gatekeep identities and information, and internal political stresses, and it's easy to see why it's hard to find somewhere to get started.

Queer theory developed in about the late 1980s and early 1990s, growing out of gay and lesbian studies as well as feminist studies. At the time, "queer" was still in the process of being reclaimed from its position as a slur, and was a defiant and transgressive term which contrasted strongly with the academically loaded word "theory". Over the early 90s, the term shifted and changed slightly as the field developed and self-defined, before settling around the concept that it uses to this day:

A critical discourse developed in the 1990s in order to deconstruct (or ‘to queer’) sexuality and gender in the wake of gay identity politics, which had tended to rely on strategic essentialism. Opposed to gender essentialism, queer theorists see sexuality as a discursive social construction, fluid, plural, and continually negotiated rather than a natural, fixed, core identity. [...] Queer theorists foreground those who do not neatly fit into conventional categories, such as bisexuals, transvestites, transgendered people, and transsexuals. [...] Queer theory has itself been a significant influence on cultural and literary theory, postcolonialism, and sociology, and ‘queering’ is now applied also to the ‘boundaries’ of academic disciplines.

- Oxford Reference's A Dictionary of Media and Communication, 2011 (see online)

Obviously, this is still somewhat jargon heavy, but queer theory breaks down roughly into the following tenets

  • Heterosexual and cisgender identities are neither automatic, 'standard', nor the only valid way of interpreting the world;
  • Concepts of gender and sexuality, including terms like "male" and "female" and what is considered "normal" sexual or romantic desire, are different in different times and places;
  • These concepts will likely continue to change in the future;
  • All terms and definitions are inherently relative and must be considered according to their time and place.

Queer theory has involved the study of queer individuals, queer groups and communities, and the way in which individuals and groups interact with wider social structures. Studies of queer communities have been important in mutually supporting and informing feminist and gender studies, as they allow contrast and control of factors compared to mainstream cisgender-centric and heterosexuality-centric narratives and assumptions, and has long been allied with intersectional approaches to identity and to challenging definitions of "normality" and established social structures.

Key points to take away from queer theory include:

  • People have different experiences of gender;
  • People have different experiences of romantic and/or sexual attraction or the lack thereof;
  • It should not be assumed that someone is cisgender or heterosexual if they have not stated such;
  • Cisgender or heterosexual interpretations should not be prioritised over queer readings but should be subject to the same questioning;
  • As people age and experience things, their own self-identification may change as they have new experiences and learn new things and terms;
  • The concept of "queer" exists only in opposition with the concept of "norm", and as the standards of "norm" change then so will the definition of what is considered "queer".

 

A very simply example of queer theory is to contrast the concept of two women together as being considered the norm with the 'joke' question of "Who is the man in the relationship?". Asking who "the man" is presumes and enforces a set of binary identities and roles which are then placed onto a relationship in a way that not only erases the gender identities of the women involved, but also relies on standards or stereotypes of male and female identity which do not necessarily line up with reality. Men can be primary child caregivers, women can be primary household earners, heterosexual couples can split household chores in ways that do not follow stereotypical gender lines. 

The use of the term queer to describe male-female relationships sometimes faces backlash - but queer theory itself reminds us that we should not make assumptions about individuals just because of the relationship they are currently in. One or both individuals in a male-female relationship could be intersex; they could be trans and/or nonbinary; they could be bi+/mspec; they could be aspec (on the asexuality spectrum and/or the aromantic spectrum); they could be non-monogamous and/or in a qpr (queerplatonic relationship).

There is some controversy attached to the idea of using queer to describe a couple who are both perisex (not intersex), cisgender, heteroromantic-heterosexual, alloromantic-allosexual and monogamous, because this is generally deemed to be the "norm". There are valid concerns about allowing such narratives to be head over those of LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities, and about losing the concept of the struggle for queer rights behind an "all rights matter" sort of rhetoric which is all too often used by bigots and reactionaries to attempt to silence social activists. However, some individuals choose to use the term for relationships which deliberately challenge or breach gender norms, arguing that the concept of "normal" is still tighter than the true range of even cisgender and heterosexual experience and that the term queer can have multiple meanings at the same time. While the association with the LGBTQ+ community is the most common use of the word at this time, it has had different meanings in the past; moreover, challenging the narrow definition of "normal" is of benefit to multiple different communities who can and should see each other as allies in this situation.

 

What Does This Mean Regarding Taylor Swift?

So what does this queer theory talk have to do with discussion of Taylor Swift? Well, in brief:

  • It should not be assumed that people are cisgender or heterosexual unless they have stated such. As Taylor has never called herself heterosexual or identified herself as an ally, to assume that she is either of these things is inappropriate;
  • Bi+/mspec individuals in male-female relationships are still bi+/mspec, and share experiences with other members of the queer community;
  • Queer readings and interpretations of her lyrics and poems are just as valid as cisgender/heterosexual ones, and both should be held to the same literary standards;
  • Even material written by a cisgender, heterosexual person can have deep meaning and importance to a queer person on the subject of their queerness, for example in themes of othering, isolation, the experience of societal expectations, the importance of self-identity, and the experience of growth and change.

These are all important factors in understanding literary and other analysis of Taylor's work and public persona. Without the assumption that she is a heterosexual woman, how would the interpretations of her lyrics change? Of her clothing choices, her language choices, her political expression, her choice of friends and associates?

And even if she is, that does not stop queer theory from being relevant to discussion of some of the themes within her work. Not all transgressive relationships are queer, but queer relationships are still inherently transgressive, so queer individuals may well find fellow-feeling and recognition in a song discussing a forbidden romance. Neurodivergent individuals have found relatable themes in Taylor's lyrical discussion of the split between her private self and public persona, seeing parallels to the masking that many neurodiverse individual perform to appear "normal" to others by hiding their true selves. Nonbinary and gender non-conforming individuals have felt kinship with lyrics about being frustrated by societal gendered expectations and visual imagery in several of her music videos which have blurred the lines between masculine and feminine expression. Even if these interpretations and discussions were not intended by Taylor, it does not stop their emotional impact from being valid, and does not make them inappropriate.

And in case it sounds like I'm taking side: it is also perfectly valid for heterosexual people to find relatable themes and readings in queer works! It is fine for a cisgender woman to appreciate a transmasculine person expressing their frustration with sexism and gendered expectations, for heterosexual individuals to feel a closeness to a longing love song even if that song was written about a same-gender relationship! The way in which 1970s-90s country music was dominated by male singers performing the work of lesbian songwriters shows this just as much as the way that people celebrating cross-gender covers of songs that do not change the gender of the lyrics (for example Taylor covering Riptide in 2014 and keeping the she/her pronouns). Queer theory is as much about breaking down artificial barriers as it is pointing out how experiences are not universal. 

 

Recommended listening: listen for transgressive themes in Treacherous, the need for secrecy in I Know Places, or the joy of freedom and fluidity in New Romantics. Listen for themes of societal expectations as early as Tied Together With a Smile, then in The Lucky One and Nothing New, in mirrorball and tolerate it, and most recently (as of the time of reading) in Dear Reader. 

 

 

-normativities

 

This section is definitely going to need some definitions.

Heteronormativity is the belief or assumption that heterosexuality is the only normal experience of attraction, is superior to other experiences, and should be assumed unless otherwise stated. It overlaps with cisnormativity and amatonormativity (below). It is a subtle and often unintentional form of homophobia/queerphobia, as it places non-heterosexual identities into the realm of "other". The term was popularised (some say created) in 1991 by Michael Yarner. Examples of heteronormativity include:

  • The idea that heterosexuality is normal or "just happens", while any other sexuality must be explained or justified;
  • The idea that asking if someone is not heterosexual is in some way offensive or insulting;
  • The double standard where action X with someone of a different gender is assumed to be romantic, while action X with someone of the same gender is assumed to be platonic;
  • The assumption that queer individuals are so small in number that their experiences do not matter.

Heteronormativity can be internalised, as one form of internalised homophobia. Queer individuals affected by heteronormativity may feel that they are being told to be ashamed of their sexual or romantic orientation, may struggle with lacking older queer figures to follow or emulate, may feel isolated or as if they are the only one who is not heterosexual, and may fail to recognise same-gender attraction in themselves or in others.

 

Cisnormativity is the belief or assumption that being cisgender is the only normal experience, is superior to being intersex, transgender and/or nonbinary, and should be assumed unless stated otherwise. It overlaps with heteronormativity (above) because heteronormativity requires there to be two 'opposite' sexes and two 'opposite' genders. It also affects intersex people by expecting them to fall into one of two predetermined body types and roles, often decided within hours of birth. It is a subtler and sometimes unintentional form of transphobia, as it marginalises and others trans identities and narratives. Transfeminist Julia Serano popularised the term "cissexual assumption" in her 2007 book Whipping Girl; the term "cisnormativity" appears to have been more popular by 2009. Examples of cisnormativity include:

  • The idea that it is easy to know that you are cisgender, but that identifying as transgender needs extensive justification;
  • The idea that asking if someone is trans and/or nonbinary is insulting;
  • The practices of forcing trans and/or nonbinary individuals into medical procedures or therapy, or stating that failure to have these procedures makes someone not "really" trans;
  • The idea that trans peoples' gender identities can and should be defined by cisgender people;
  • Not stating when an individual is cis, but always stating if they are trans;
  • The idea that nonbinary individual people should and must present androgynously and use gender-neutral names and pronouns (or neopronouns) to be 'taken seriously' as nonbinary;
  • The assumption that trans and/or nonbinary individuals are so small in number that their experiences do not matter;
  • The assumption that it is better for all intersex infants to receive surgery to place them within sexual binaries;
  • The assumption that intersex individuals are so small in number that their experiences do not matter.

Cisnormativity can be internalised, as one form of internalised transphobia and/or enbyphobia. Queer individuals affected by cisnormativity may feel that they are being told to be ashamed of their gender identity or expression, may struggle with lacking older queer figures to follow or emulate, may feel isolated or as if they are the only one who is not cisgender, and may fail to identify or understand their own gender identity (eg assuming that "everyone hates being a woman") or that only certain gender expressions are appropriate (eg assuming that a man cannot wear nail varnish or that a woman cannot have armpit hair). 

 

Amatonormativity is the belief or assumption that everyone wants, enjoys, and benefits from monogamous romantic long-term relationships and/or marriage. It prioritises romantic attachments over other forms of social attachment, and stigmatises both being single or being non-monogamous. It was coined by philosopher Elizabeth Brake in 2012. Allonormativity is the belief or assumption that everyone experiences romantic and sexual attraction and desires to have romantic and sexual relationships, and that different experiences of romantic or sexual desire or the lack thereof are lesser, deviant, or do not exist at all. The earliest citation I can find is in Asexuality Zine f-ace-ing silence in 2015. Examples of amatonormativity and/or allonormativity include:

  • The assumption that everyone wants long-term relationships and/or marriage;
  • The assumption that marriage is the "end goal" of any relationship or dating;
  • The assumption that one's romantic partner is the most important figure in one's life;
  • The assumption that sexual attraction is universal, and that a lack of it is pathological, suspicious, or childish;
  • The confusion of asexuality (a lack of sexual attraction), aromanticism (a lack of romantic attraction) and/or celibacy (the state of being sexually inactive);
  • The assumption that romantic and sexual attraction are always experienced together;
  • The assumption that allosexual and alloromantic (non-asexual and non-aromantic) people cannot be content without a long-term romantic-sexual relationship;
  • The assumption that aspec individuals are so small in number that their experiences do not matter.

Amatonormativity and allonormativity can be internalised, as one form of internalised aphobia. While amatonormativity and allonormativity disproportionately affect queer individuals (aspec individuals, many of whom identify as queer because they do not fit within social norms of relationships, cisgender heteroromantic/heterosexual individuals can also be affected if they are perceived to not prioritise the pursuit, maintenance or progression of romantic relationships. Amatonormativity and allonormativity interact with gendered assumptions in complicated ways - for example, the increased criticism of women who do not seek or prioritise romantic relationships, or the perceived lack of masculinity of men who do not seek or prioritise sexual relationships.

 

 

What Does This Mean Regarding Taylor Swift?

Once again, I've thrown down a lot of theory and examples here, a little like pointing out the structures that are propping up a theatre set. But by looking at these assumptions which underpin so much of society - and which are considered mainstream, safe, and accessible even to conservative individuals - there can be seen some of the aspects which have led to assumptions being made about Taylor Swift and her relationship history, and perhaps some of the aspects which feed into her incredibly successful PR strategies of using her real or perceived romantic partnerships to their mutual benefit.

Perhaps the heteronormativity lessons are the most obvious. Firstly, even if Taylor has only been publicly linked to men before, that does not necessarily mean that she is exclusively heterosexual. Because of how society treats heterosexual attraction versus homosexual attraction, not everybody is able to express all of their romantic desires equally, and a lack of information and support for queer people can make it difficult and isolating to try to establish one's own identity. However, it also shows how heteronormativity underpins the idea that Gaylor theorists are "accusing" Taylor of being queer, or that the suggestion or questioning is in some way insulting or inappropriate. Because being queer is no less valid than being heterosexual, it is not an insult to ask the question, or to seek such interpretations in her work, for as long as she has not given herself a label or indicated that she is uncomfortable with this form of analysis.

Even within Gaylor theorists, I have seen nasty incidents of cisnormativity and transphobia. Because of how concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality are set up, it is difficult for nonbinary people or those in relationships with them to navigate these terms, and the stated identity of the individual should always be respected. For anyone digging deep into Gaylor theories, you may come across discussions of gender and the term "Theylor"; Taylor has given no indication that she uses any pronouns other than she/her, but people have found language of gender transgression in her work, and "Theylor" no more assumes the use of they/them pronouns than "Gaylor" assumes that Taylor identifies with the term gay. Gaylor is a pun name for the theory that Taylor experiences attraction to women; Theylor is a pun name for the theory that Taylor has a potentially non-cisnormative relationship with gender identity and expression.

Amatonormativity and allonormativity, though, become very telling when looking at how Taylor publicises her relationships and how the media and many of her fans obsessively follow her relationship or lack thereof, and the powerful focus on linking particular songs to individuals and to relationships. Amatonormativity mean that Taylor is expected to be either in or actively pursuing a long-term, monogamous, romantic relationship and that if she is not, many people in the public are primed to think less of her and/or ask whether there is something wrong. It may also feed into how many of her songs are romance- or relationship-focused, and how these songs tend to get outsized attention (usually people trying to link them to specific male muses) than her non-relationship-focused songs. Taylor knows what will sell, and what people want to hear (see the chapter Self-Made Galatea for just how long she has been making very deliberate marketing choices). As folklore and evermore made increasingly clear her skill in writing fictional or fictionalised songs, sadly few people seem to have also considered whether other of her songs have also been fictionalised over the years, and the common presumption even among many of her fans is that all of her songs are not just based on Taylor's own experiences, but are entirely realistic and would not have edits to dates, descriptions, timelines - or pronouns.

The fact is that Taylor has written about others since the beginning. Mary's Song (Oh, My My My) is said to be based on the romance of a neighbour, while Starlight is about Bobby and Ethel Kennedy and at least one of the explanations given for You Are in Love was that it was written about Jack Antanoff and Lena Dunham. Taylor has never claimed that all of her songs were diaristic in nature, but that is still the perception among much of her fanbase; when she was giving interviews in the run-up to Midnights in 2022, she said she was excited to move back to "more autobiographical" work, but many fans seemed to interpret this as meaning every song was once again going to be entirely accurate and about Taylor.

Taylor knows not just how to write stories, but how to sell stories. And using amatonormativity/allonormativity allows her to do so even more effectively because romance is so elevated and glorified. As well as selling the stories of her songs, she also sells the stories of herself - so when she is pictured spending time with a man, she does not even need to be seen holding his hand for it to be assume that they are romantically linked. Because people's interest in celebrities so often includes interest in their romantic lives, it is a guaranteed way to draw attention to herself - and most of the time that attention will be positive. It's a harder tightrope for women to walk than for men, but as Taylor herself has said, she is willing to "try, try, try" (mirrorball). Pre-arranging and deciding on a romantic narrative to be shown the public also grants her privacy in her real life, something which her later albums make it clear she now prizes despite the annoyance with it that she used to voice in her days of Red.

In short, -normativities should not be allowed to limit readings, interpretations and analyses of Taylor's work, but it is also worth considering that Taylor herself is clearly aware of these -normativities and actively negotiates them in her public persona.

 

 

Recommended listening:  White Horse saying how "I'm not a princess, this ain't a fairy tale"; Blank Space commenting on the combined desire for people to date and judgement when they do; Lavender Haze bemoaning "that 1950s shit"; Midnight Rain saying "he wanted a bride, I was making my own name"; You're Losing Me identifying painfully as a "pathological people pleaser".

 

 

 

Comphet, or Compulsory Heterosexuality

 

The term "compulsory heterosexuality" was popularist by poet and feminist Adrienne Rich in her 1980 essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Compulsory Heterosexuality is linked to heteronormativity, but not quite the same - while heteronormativity is the social structure and assumptions that prioritise heterosexuality, compulsory heterosexuality is the way in which heterosexuality is demanded of individuals, and the active enforcement of that expectation upon women, queer people, and people of colour, among other minorities. Even from the beginning, comphet was set at the intersection of feminist studies and queer studies, but discussion of it has expanded over the years to discuss how one form of sexual attraction and behaviour is not just expected but actively demanded of people.

Comphet sets societal standards for relationships, romantic and otherwise, with the prioritising of certain relationship types and the alienation and othering of any individuals or relationships which are perceived to stray from this "norm". Comphet is also more likely to be used for the internalisation of heteronormativity - to say that an individual "experiences comphet" is usually meant to indicate that their sense of self-identity or self-awareness has been hampered or limited by the effects of comphet and heteronormativity.

For example, comphet means that children are brought up to expect that they will feel attracted to the 'opposite' gender. (I'm going to use 'opposite' throughout because, once again, comphet does not leave room for nonbinary identities and tends to conceptualise male and female as not just different but actively opposite.) Therefore it is generally internalised by children and young people that what they feel towards the 'opposite' gender is equal to attraction, and what they feel towards the same gender is not attraction. This can result in a mis-labeling of one's own feelings towards the 'opposite' gender. The concept of Late Bloomer Lesbians doesn't exist for no reason - some women develop romantic or sexual feelings for other women at different times in their life, but some women realise that they have always actually been attracted to other women, and have projected attraction onto whatever feelings they have for men or individual men. 

r/LateBloomingLesbians has a good introductory masterdoc on comphet.

However, it is important to remember that comphet is a system which affects everyone, not just lesbians. Lesbians are the most affected by it, because they are neither male nor attracted to men, but comphet still affects gay men, affects bi+/mspec individuals, affects aspec individuals, affects trans and/or nonbinary individuals. Bisexual women, for example, may feel pressured to prioritise any attraction they have to men, and may be discouraged from identifying as bisexual if they do not experience attraction to different genders in exactly the same way. Because comphet is also so bound up in male-centric, misogynistic assumptions, it also affects women who are attracted to men but who do not want to have a relationship that falls into these sexist stereotypes; it is more difficult to navigate being attracted to men when it feels like so many heterosexual men (and so much of the media) want "that 1950s shit" and for male desires to be prioritised over female ones.

 

What Does This Mean Regarding Taylor Swift?

Now we're getting into territory that some people who firmly believe in Taylor's heterosexuality might feel uncomfortable with. So first, I'm going to link a Tweet from Taylor from December 2020, a little over a week after the release of evermore, in which Taylor replied to a tweet from Abby Wambach. Taylor said:

Just saw this and GRINNED!! Tell Tish hi and thanks for remembering my birthday!! You, my friend, are a champion in every way. And Glennon’s writing has been a huge help to me this year, what a luminary she is🙏. Sending my love to your family!!

If the name Abby Wambach feels familiar from within this meta, it's because she got a mention in Association With the LGBTQ+ Community - she was one of the openly queer women's soccer players who joined Taylor on stage on July 10th 2015 as part of the 1989 World Tour. At the time, Wambach (who uses both the terms gay and lesbian) was married to fellow soccer player Sarah Huffman. By 2020, Wambach was married to author and queer activist Glennon Doyle whose third memoir, Untamed, had been released in 2020. Doyle's first two books had been focused on emotional and visceral honesty, including about her history of eating disorders and alcohol abuse and about raising children as a progressive and inclusionist Christian. (Even during her time strongly identifying with Christianity, Doyle was pro-queer rights, as well exemplified in her post Letter to a Young Transgender Child of God which went viral in May 2015.) During the publishing time of her second book, however, Doyle met Wambach, and the two both left their marriages - Wambach's to a woman, Doyle's to a man - to be together. Doyle chooses not to use a label more specific than "not straight". Her third book, Untamed, was about the difficulties which Doyle had experienced as someone from the mainstream expanding her worldview and learning about queerness, queer identities and points of view, and trusting herself and her sense of reality even when societal structures tried to force her to do otherwise. 

Danika Ellis, runner of queer literature review site Lesbrary, reviewed Untamed and said that while little of what Doyle said or self-discovered felt particularly radical or revolutionary, the way that Doyle described that process of understanding and broadening one's horizons was much more interesting and even inspiring. 

This moment, of Taylor responding to Wambach, was noted by the mainstream, but naturally the focus was on how the daughter, Tish, had come into her own music because of Taylor. Much less attention was generally paid to Taylor's response, lauding Doyle's writing in a year in which Doyle had been more specifically writing about coming to terms with her queerness and being willing and able to speak up about her feelings and self. Its subtitle is "stop pleasing, start living" - meaning to not immediately subject oneself to what society expects and demands, but to answer to oneself.

Moreover, and this is something that only seems to increase with time, it is inappropriate for fans to project their desires onto Taylor Swift when she has stated she does not want those things. This mostly takes the form of talking about children - fans merging her pictures with those of men to see what their children would look like, imagining she had a secret baby during quarantine, talking about how great it would be for her to have children. Even in 2014, Taylor was saying she might not have children (Daily Mail link); when interviewing Paul McCartney in 2020 she discussed with him the pressure put on children of famous people; in her 2019 documentary Miss Americana she was talking to her friend Abigail about children and compared them to Tamagotchis. This doesn't necessarily mean that she will never want children, or that she is totally decided at this time, and that is okay - but the obsessive focus of some people on not just pairing her up with a man but having children with him is very noticeable.

 

 

Recommended listening: The Way I Loved You (contrast the present "charming and endearing" "he" with the past "you"); Begin Again (contrast the past "he" and the way Taylor describes doing things to please him, with the present "you"); Midnight Rain ("he wanted a bride, I was making my own name"). Special mention to the music video for Bejeweled, in which House Wench Taylor "wants the castle", rejects the proposal, but keeps the castle.

 

 

 

The History of "Lesbian"

 

The language of queer identity has changed significantly even in the last couple of decades, never mind deeper throughout history. It is fairly well known that it is derived from the name of the island of Lesbos, home of the poet Sappho; Sappho's poems are a famous example of ancient work with clear homoerotic overtones, focusing on and celebrating the lives and beauty of women. It is, naturally, not clear whether Sappho was only attracted to women or whether she was attracted to multiple genders. It is important to both acknowledge that modern concepts of and terms for sexuality would likely be alien to Sappho, but also that same-gender attraction has been experienced throughout history both exclusively and non-exclusively. 

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the word "lesbian" related to anything deriving from Lesbos. However, in 1854 Theodor Bergk produced a thorough and considered translation of her work into Latin which, notably, used female pronouns for her lovers where many previous editions had changed the pronouns to male. By 1870, the word "lesbian" was in use as an adjective for romantic, erotic or sexual relationships between women; by around 1900 it was also in use as a noun, interchangeably with the words sapphist (for a person) or sapphism (for the state of female-female desire). Note that the terms "invert" and "inversion" were also in common use at this time for anyone who experienced same-gender attraction, building on the idea that male and female genders were opposed to each other and that the only way to explain same-gender attraction was to assume an "inversion" of the tightly linked concepts of sex and attraction.

By 1925, the word "lesbian" was firmly in the category of being a slur, being used against any women who had, sought or desired relationships with other women. This was more true in some languages and cultures than in others - in Britain, Havelock Ellis considered lesbianism to be a form of mental illness, and this dominated the English-speaking world. However, in Germany, sexologists were more sympathetic towards queer identities, with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft established in 1919 and throughout its existence a focus of right-wind hatred. It was also in Germany that the term "bisexual" was first used to describe those who experienced attraction to both men and women, from a 1892 paper by Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

 

 

However, for many decades, the word lesbian was used for all women who experienced attraction to women, but especially those who preferred relationships with women or were at the time pursuing or in a relationship with a woman. In other words, it was used similarly to how terms like sapphic or wlw (women-loving women) are used today. This can also be seen embedded in other language which is still used, such as "lesbian sex" to describe sex between two women, regardless of their orientation; "lesbian relationship" to describe a relationship between two women, regardless of orientation; and "lesbian literature" or "lesbian romance" as used for novels and other writing featuring relationships between women.

The reason for this use of lesbian as broader term was complicated. Negative reasons include bisexual erasure (more widely, bi+/mspec erasure) and the lumping together of all non-heterosexual identities as "other" in a way that would lead to the shared experiences of the queer movement. However, positive reasons (which would later factor into the redevelopment of broader terms such as sapphic and wlw) included the acknowledgement of shared experiences and communities and acknowledgement of the fact that an mspec woman in love with another woman is no 'less' in that relationship than an exclusively woman-attracted lesbian woman in love with another woman. 

Having these broader terms also helps to acknowledge the fact that for some individuals, their attraction is fluid over time; not only does not everybody know their orientation from a young age, but for some people their orientation is not static. For individuals who do not experience static orientation, it can be very difficult to cope with being told that they 'cannot' use labels such as gay or lesbian because they have previously experienced attraction to other genders, even if they do not experience it now and perhaps have not done so for some time. Equally, someone with a fluid sexuality who ends up in a relationship with someone of another gender is likely to experience bi+/mspec erasure, including biphobia from within the queer community at the same time as homophobia from the mainstream heterosexual community.

It is also worth nothing that studies have shown that people of all orientations can experience fluidity of attraction. This does not mean that everybody does. It means that there are some lesbians, some bi+/mspec people, some heterosexual people who can experience sexual fluidity. It is not erasure to state that some such people exist. However, this of course still does not excuse any use of these studies to suggest that there are no people who exclusively experience same-gender attraction or experience no attraction.

 

 

Although the term "bisexual" was used to mean attraction to multiple genders as early as 1892, as noted above, in scientific literature it was still used more regularly for hermaphroditism (and is still used so today, which is how you get quotes about "perfect, or bisexual, flowers") or intersex conditions. Alfred Kinsey, of Kinsey scale fame, used the terms bisexual and ambisexual; Kinsey actually disliked the word bisexual because of its potential ambiguity with hermaphroditism, but because of his work the word "bisexual" became better known. Many prominent early figures in the queer rights movements of the 1950s to 1980s identified as bisexual, including using that term for themselves, but the movement was still often called "Gay and Lesbian Rights" unless the full LGBT acronym was used.

The term began to be more broadly used from the 1970s onwards, but it was not until the 1980s that bisexual men were recognised by the US government - and then only because Dianne Feinstein (recently deceased as of the time of writing this chapter) had health departments acknowledge both homosexual men and bisexual men as separate. Among women, the word "bisexual" in no small part spread because of increased gatekeeping of the lesbian label among lesbian separatist communities (who believed that women should interact with men as little as possible, and that women who experienced attraction to men were 'sleeping with the enemy'). While it gave people who were attracted to multiple genders a better-known word to use for themselves, it also grew from a fracture in the queer community.

To this day, bisexual individuals struggle with bisexual erasure; the term "bisexual relationship", for example, would generally be met with confused looks. The existence of bi+/mspec individuals has been used by the heteronormative society to target individuals who only experience same-gender attraction; while it is absolutely fair to acknowledge this, it is not the fault of bi+/mspec people that they have been used in this way.

Potentially complicating matters are the additions of new terms from the 1970s onwards. These include pansexuality (meaning attraction to all genders regardless of gender), omnisexuality (attraction to all genders, but with different experiences based on gender) and polysexuality (attraction to multiple, but potentially not all, genders). To be clear, bisexuality is not inherently transphobic or exclusive of nonbinary genders. However, pansexuality, omnisexuality and polysexuality are explicitly inclusive of non-binary genders. 

 

 

Modern (?) Usage: Nonbinary Lesbians and Bi Lesbians

Now I'm definitely going to get into stuff which has led me into internet arguments in the past. The term "lesbian" was coined before there was good understanding of nonbinary identities in Western Europe/North America (one could argue that there still is not), and was widespread in use before concepts of bisexuality, asexuality, or the split attraction model. However, looking at the history of the use of "lesbian" over more than a century, it is clear to see that usage has never been static.

Nonbinary individuals can still to this day struggle to place themselves within traditional sexuality labels. Labels like nblw or trixic (attracted to women, exclusively or not) and nblm or toric (attracted to men, exclusively or not) are increasing in acknowledgement. Many nonbinary people identify as queer, bisexual or pansexual. However, there are individuals who identify as nonbinary lesbians - identifying both with nonbinary identity and with femaleness, and attracted primarily or solely to women. Nonbinary identities are not a monolith entirely separate to male or female ones, and some people do identify with both. For some of them, they may have identified as lesbian for some time before coming to realise that they were also nonbinary.

For others, it feels like the most appropriate word to say they are attracted only to women and are not men. There are of course issues in moving the definition from "women" to "not men" - nonbinary people are not just "women-adjacent" and have our own identity - but it is important to acknowledge that the patriarchy is structured to prioritise men over not-men. Additionally, the only other term which was commonly seen before nblw and trixic were coined was "gynephilic" or "gynesexual", which has been widely criticised because of its transphobic overtones and use to avoid calling heterosexual trans people "heterosexual". 

Claims that nonbinary lesbians are "forcing" lesbians to include nonbinary people in their attraction are just as nonsensical as claims that trans lesbians are "forcing" women to be attracted to them. Many nonbinary people that I have met are in fact extremely nervous of how other people will perceive their identity in a relationship, and I have on multiple occasions seen nonbinary people advise each other to seek to date bi+/mspec individuals to avoid potential clashes in terms of orientations and identities. On the other hand, I know lesbians who are quite happy to identify as lesbians while dating nonbinary people, others who consider themselves 'lesbians with an exception', and a few who have shifted to using the term 'queer' while dating a nonbinary person to avoid assumptions about the gender of their partner. In the end, it is down to the people involved in the relationship what they feel comfortable with.

 

Now, bi lesbians. The term gets a lot of hate nowadays, even though as noted above it is within living memory that the term lesbian was redefined to mean only women who experienced exclusive attraction to women. However, there are various reasons that an individual might identify with both the bi and the lesbian labels, for example:

  • Someone who is biromantic and homosexual (experiencing romantic attraction to multiple genders but sexual attraction exclusively to their own gender)
  • Someone who is homoromantic and bisexual (experiencing romantic attraction exclusively to their own gender but sexual attraction to multiple genders)
  • Someone who experiences fluidity in their attraction over time
  • Someone who is attracted to multiple genders but not men (for example to women and to some nonbinary genders)
  • Someone who experiences attraction to bigender, genderfluid, or otherwise multigender people
  • Someone who considers themselves primarily lesbian but attracted to or involved with people who do not feel comfortable with being deemed "women", such as some nonbinary people, some he/him lesbians
  • Someone who is predominantly lesbian but experiences rare or occasional attraction to other genders
  • Someone who is bisexual but in a long-term monogamous lesbian relationship
  • Someone who formerly identified as a lesbian whose partner has come as transmasculine, and she wants to change her orientation label to include them
  • Someone who experiences attraction to multiple genders but chooses only to seek relationships with women
  • Someone who is questioning or uncertain

Once again: lesbian used to mean all women who experienced attraction to women. And if someone identifies as "lesbian" nowadays, it is not unrealistic to expect that to mean that they experience exclusively same-gender attraction. However, lesbianism was also a political movement and ideology which put at its forefront the needs and desires of women, which challenged male-centric concepts of relationships and -normativities, and the reclaiming of a slur. The separatism which attempted to separate bisexual women from lesbians is the same separatism which attempted to exclude trans women from feminism, and the same toxic underpinnings still exist now in "gold star" and "platinum star" concepts of lesbianism and gayness.

Additionally, as most sites talking about bi+/mspec lesbians will state: no already means no. Any man who tries to force his attentions on an exclusively woman-attracted lesbian isn't doing so because bi lesbians or bisexuals exist - he's doing it because he's an asshole and potentially a sexual assailant. Blaming the labels of other women, rather than men who will not listen to the word no, is at best whataboutism and at worst indirect victim-blaming.

A Wayback Machine copy exists of a great Carrd on m-spec lesbians. I am not the creator of this card, nor is the person who now owns the bi-lesbian.carrd address. 

 

 

What Does This Mean Regarding Taylor Swift?

A fair chunk of what it means is that certain branches of her fandom, and certain subgroups of Gaylors, need to get their heads out of their asses and stop gatekeeping each other, accusing each other of erasure for putting forward alternate theories and viewpoints, outright perpetuating discrimination and bigotries, and generally take a deep breath and calm down.

It is not necessary to try to assign a particular label in order to explain or justify queer themes found in lyrics or persona. It is not necessary to disprove every male relationship Taylor has ever been perceived to have in order to suggest that she may be queer. Some people experience their orientation changing over time, either as there are changes to the attractions they experience, or because they discover more about themselves and who they are without the expectations of society upon them. That also means that some people can identify as heterosexual for extended periods before realising they identify with another label, or that their attractions can change and they feel another label now suits them better.

However, for all fans, it means that it should be acknowledge that words change and develop, that people change and develop, and we should not allow exclusionists to force an end to alliances and support of each other. Feminism gains from queer rights; queer rights gains from feminism. Queer rights and the rights of people of colour are intrinsically intertwined - not only because of the myriad of non-Western genders and non-Western understandings of sexuality which colonial powers have tried so hard to erase, but because the structures of racism, sexism, queerphobia and ableism are all entwined to keep the same tiny minority at the top and in power.

 

 

Non-Monogamy and Polyamphobia

 

Non-monogamy is another subject which still gets people up in arms, and polyamorous people and relationships still find themselves barely acknowledged or represented in the media - and when they do appear, there are often incredibly negative tropes associated with them. But the simple fact is that non-monogamy also has an ancient history, and understanding and acceptance of it in the modern day is slowly growing and improving.

Monogamy is the state of having one romantic relationship at any time, and is in many places and cultures the expected standard.

The terms non-monogamy, polyamory and multiamory all generally represent the same concept - the desire, pursuit or practice of having multiple relationships at the same time. Some individuals explicitly use the word ethical, usually as ethical non-monogamy, but the term polyamory (as believed to have been coined by Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart in 1990) was already intended to be specifically consensual and ethical in nature. Non-monogamy covers all forms of relationship systems involving sex, love, affection, and in some cases BDSM dynamics; polyamory and multiamory usually refer more specifically to having multiple romantic partners. In recent years, the shorthand polyam has been increasingly used instead of poly to avoid ambiguity with other terms such as polysexual/polyromantic, as well as with the word Polynesian.

The treatment of monogramy as the only normal relationship structure is also known as mononormativity. Mononormativity is a form of polyphobia or polyamphobia, or the social judgement, mistreatment or discrimination against individuals who are polyamorous or perceived to be polyamorous. This includes an inability to marry or have a legal domestic partnership with more than one person, an inability to register more than two people as the parents of a child (an issue even in situations of divorce and remarriage), social judgement and discrimination, and the hyper-sexualisation of polyamorous relationships. "Morality clauses" still exist in some jobs and can be used against polyamorous individuals. Internalised polyamphobia can also exist, resulting for example in a person judging themselves for having feelings for more than one individual, forcing themselves to "choose" between individuals, and can interact with religious teachings and gendered expectations. Note how this may sound almost at odds with amatonormativity as mentioned above - amatonormativity says that a relationship is desirable or even necessary! But only if it's the right sort of relationship, conducted in a socially appropriate way, with only one person. Amatonormativity makes romantic attraction expected; mononormativity makes romantic pairings expected.

Relationship anarchy (coined in Swedish and English in 2012 by Andie Nordgren) is the practice of anarchy in intimate relationships. An individual who practices relationship anarchy seeks to practice what relationships they wish, but also in ways which they wish - for example, sexual relationships may or may not be linked to romantic ones; romantic relationships may not be linked to cohabitation or financial joining; romantic relationships are not necessarily prioritised over platonic ones. Relationship anarchy breaks down relationships into their constituent elements, and allows partners to pick which of those elements they want to have in their relationships. Please note that in the list of elements linked, sexual and romantic are only two of many.

Understanding, or at least acknowledging, relationship anarchy and the way that it breaks relationships down into elements is also important when considering what makes a relationship "real". Mononormativity prioritises the monogamous relationship and expects it to fulfil many of these elements at once - romantic, sexual, companionship, caregiving, financial and legal, domestic, physical intimacy, and others. Being perceived as "missing" one of these elements - for example, in an asexual relationship which otherwise fulfils many elements - is enough to draw judgement from many. Relationships which do not use this framework of placing many elements together are likely to face societal judgement and to be deemed less important by many.

Queerplatonic relationships (qprs), or queerplatonic partnerships (qpps), can also be understood within this framework. These are relationships which are not romantic, but which share long-term commitment, structure, primacy, and potentially cohabitation, financial and legal elements. They are relationships which have the primacy usually only afforded to romantic relationships, but which are explicitly not romantic in nature; a "significant other" without romance. (Sidenote: the term appears to have originated in only 2010 and spread in the late 2010s, which is part of why there is no tagging standard for it on AO3 which opened in 2008. More and more people are using ~ to represent it.) The term originated within the aspec communities, but there is nothing in its definition which requires people to be aspec to be in a qpr. 

 

 

So what makes a relationship "real"? If it is neither romantic nor sexual, but involves a long-term emotional, financial and domestic commitment between consenting adults, why should it not be considered "real"? The answer is often amatonormativity/allonormativity, where romantic/sexual relationships are prioritised over all others. Queerplatonic relationships are undoubtedly real relationships. Individuals who choose to co-parent a child, without being romantically or sexually involved themselves, are in a real relationship. The assumption that a "relationship" must mean the sexual-romantic fully-joined standard is narrow and reductive.

Now, when it comes to public figures, there is the question of how they present themselves - but there are also the rather more pressing matters of public narrative and expectations. If two people in a queerplatonic relationship are in the public eye, then the activities they may share - spending time together, living together, making joint financial decisions - will almost certainly be assumed by the rest of the world to be romantic, because that is the framework of which most people are aware. It would be unlikely that either individual would need to actively do much, if anything, for the public narrative to take hold - in fact, it would probably be difficult for them to correct the public narrative. Even if two people state that they are only friends, mainstream media and gossip outlets will regularly insinuate that they are in a romantic-sexual relationship, even if this would characterise them as cheating. (Naturally, this happens a lot when the friends in question are a man and a woman.)

However, there is potentially a more complex question, which is whether two people in the public eye are expected to reveal the specific nature of their relationship. Is it misrepresentation to allow people to make assumptions? Is it inappropriate to want the details of one's relationships to be private? When being anything other than heterosexual is immediate cause for gossip and judgement from so many people, is it always safe to speak openly about "non-traditional" relationships? While people in the public eye who do choose to come out - as LGBTQIA+, as non-monogamous or polyamorous, as anything outside societies strict "norms" - are brave figures and should be respected and supported in doing so, it is understandable that there are plenty of people who prefer to have privacy, even to have safety. The closet is a complicated place, and unfortunately there are room for many different sorts of people in there.

 

 

What Does This Mean Regarding Taylor Swift?

Sometimes it feels a little bit Groundhog Day to be seeing the same press narrative play out, over and over again, about Taylor Swift's life. She is linked to a man, they spend time together, they are assumed to be romantically dating; before too long, rumours of engagement roll around. Meanwhile, fans speculate on where the couple will live together, when they'll get married and have children. It is as if there is a script in the minds of many, with (appropriately enough) a blank space left for the name of the man, while the role that he is predicted to play in Taylor's life has already been predetermined. 

But if Taylor Swift hasn't publicly stated her sexuality, she certainly hasn't publicly stated whether or not she is polyamorous - though Joe Alwyn stated in 2022 that he was "very happy in a monogamous relationship" to Teen Vogue. There are valid theories with lyrical evidence to suggest that Taylor is not polyamorous, particularly the number of her songs which express a desire for exclusivity ("We said no-one else" in Babe; "I don't wanna share" in Delicate; the entirety of Girl at Home). However, her recent increasingly sensitive treatment of the various perspectives of august, betty and cardigan, songs such as 'tis the damn season and cowboy like me which heavily imply non-exclusive situations, and most recently High Infidelity which could very reasonably be read as being aimed at her listeners/fans and her breaking their expectations of her, may all be used to indicate that there has been a change in her perception or beliefs over time. Additionally, jealousy and poor communication can still exist in non-monogamous situations, as can cheating if one person breaks with agreed arrangements or boundaries. Given the lower social acceptance of non-monogamy compared to monogamous queerness, it is also very understandable why someone might not disclose their relationship status, especially in the public eye.

Finally, it's probably worth note that to many people, romantic relationships are not necessarily their primary relationship, the most long-lasting, or the one that is the most important to them. Non-romantic and non-sexual relationships can still be incredibly important - while this is to some extent accepted when it relates to relatives, other platonic relationships are sorely underestimated in their importance in much mainstream media.

In short: we don't know the exact details and nature of Taylor's relationships with other people, and that's okay. She has the right to that privacy, including the choice of which relationships she makes known to the public and how she presents them. And she certainly doesn't need to correct the assumptions and rumour-mongering of the media except when she desires to do so - frankly, correcting the media would be more than a full time job, and neither she nor publicist Tree Paine have enough hours in the day to do so. However, when people see alternative readings in her lyrics and other artistic output, it is again not insulting or negative to ask whether those themes were intentional and may be a form of deliberate signalling. 

 

 

 

The Complexities of "Coming Out"

 

So often, the concept of "coming out" is treated as a single event, a switch to be flipped between the discrete states of "out" and "closeted". Anyone who has experience of queerness, however, is likely to know that the reality is more complicated. It is possible to be out to certain individuals but not to others (such as friends vs parents) or to be out in certain social settings but not others (such as friends vs work or school). In casual settings, for many people there is no question of everybody knowing - for example, working in a customer service setting, where many choose not to make any indication that they are queer. For those that do, wearing pride badges or pronoun pins, it is frequently the case that members of the public will still ignore them, so that even though the individual is trying to be out, that state of being out is ignored.

For famous individuals, this effect is of course significantly magnified - someone in retail might interact with dozens or even hundreds of members of the public over the course of a week or month, but someone as famous as Taylor Swift may have over 100 million members of the public following her social media. Search a phrase like "didn't know was gay" and pages of articles will pop up listing celebrities who are out, maybe even having made significant statements about it, but who are generally forgotten as being queer by the public.

The issues of coming out have two factors - what counts as "coming out", and what happens when the public either doesn't notice or chooses to ignore those actions?

 

 

So what counts as "coming out"? At one end of the scale, there are figures like Chely Wright who published her memoir in an apparent need to justify her actions and went on to give a number of interviews about coming out. Tennis player Billie Jean King called a press conference to come out as having had a long-term relationship with a woman because that woman was trying to claim renumeration from King under California's common-law marriage laws. Ellen Degeneres made it a major part of her TV show Ellen, as well as appearing on Oprah and on the cover of Time. More recent examples might include Bella Ramsey, who came out as nonbinary in a 2023 interview with the New York Times (moving to they/them pronouns by June 2023), or Wayne Brady, who came out as pansexual in a 2023 interview with People. Even here, though, note that Ramsey's 'coming out' was part of a much longer interview, in contrast to Brady's interview which is all about his journey to coming out.

Many celebrities, however, come out in much smaller ways which are perhaps more easily missed by the public. Social media posts are very common - for example, in this list of 2022 coming outs, around half of them mention Instagram or another social media. In this list of 2021 coming outs, once again the majority include a social media element. These lists tend to involve people explicitly identifying themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, queer, or at least "not straight", or as trans or nonbinary. 

Although these moments may go unnoticed, they do generally leave something to which people can link or point at. In discussing the coming out of various individuals, it is unfortunately very common to be met with a response of not just 'I didn't know that' but 'I'll believe it when I see it' - so having a social media post to link to is important. This relates back to heteronormativity and cisnormativity - a heterosexual, cisgender identity doesn't need "proof", it is assumed, but it is seen as entirely acceptable to ask for "proof" when referring to someone as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. 

Perhaps this is some social media posts get uncertain statements made about them. When actor Sophie Turner posted to Instagram on 1 June 201 with a graphic that included a heart in the bi pride flag and the phrase "time isn't straight and neither am I", even Out magazine ran with the headline Here's Why People Think Sophie Turner Is Coming Out As Bisexual. Because Turner did not explicitly use the word bisexual about herself, the magazine carefully couched their language, reporting on the fact that some fans thought she had come out, even though they reference a March 2019 interview with Rolling Stone in which Turner had said "I've met enough guys to know--I've met enough girls to know" and "I love a soul, not a gender". Meanwhile, when singer Lauv posted on TikTok saying "when ur dating a girl but ur also a lil bit into men [...] I havent done much aside from kiss so tbh don’t wannna jump the gun but tbh I feel things and I dont wanna pretend i dont. :)", Out still carefully titled their article Singer Lauv Seemingly Comes Out in TikTok Post.

While there is clear being taken here to avoid applying labels to someone when they have not claimed them, and while there have been cases where someone has mistakenly believed to be coming out when they were not (Misha Collins in April 2022 being a notable example), there is still an undercurrent of heternormativity about it all. To be anything other than heterosexual still needs "proof". Then again, it was only in 2021 that New York State no longer considered it to be automatically defamation to falsely call someone gay. 

 

 

And then there are those who never realised that they hadn't come out. In 2018, some people expressed outrage when Joan Jett's documentary Bad Reputation was aired at Outfest, a film festival explicitly for LGBTQIA+ individuals who are out. In September, in an interview with the New York Times, Jett responded:

They don’t want the movie there because I don’t declare? [Holding up her necklace] What the [expletive] is that? Two labryses, or axes, crossing each other, inside of two women’s symbols crossing each other. It’s not been off since I got it. And I wear this one every day. [She turns around, lifts her shirt and reveals a tattoo with similar female symbols on her lower back.] I don’t know how much more you can declare.

People aren’t going to tell me what to do. I’m not going to be told how to live and how I can be myself — “You must say it.” It’s like, the more you want me to say it, the more I won’t say it. I’ll just do it. I’m telling my story every day onstage, loud. And if you choose not to hear it because you want me to do it in the way you want me to do it? Fine, I’m not going to make you happy then. If this isn’t for you, bye. But I think I declare every day, all day long.

It’s not good enough to say, [singing her version of “Crimson and Clover”] “I don’t hardly know her, but I think I could love her”? [Pointing to the necklace] that’s not good enough. You know what I say? Eat me.

One could, perhaps, consider this a slightly longer version of Lil Nas X posting "deadass thought I made it obvious" as his way of officially "coming out" in June 2019.

In 2011, pop star Tiffany commented how she had dated Jonathan Knight decades ago, and that he "became gay later". She was accused of outing him; he released a statement saying that he had never intended to be closeted, and said, "Apparently the prerequisite to being a gay public figure is to appear on the cover of a magazine with the caption 'I am gay'. I apologize for not doing so if this is what was expected!" In other words, there is an expectation that coming out is a big, significant event - not simply the act of not claiming a heterosexual identity. When the term "gal pals" comes from Kristen Stewart and her then-girlfriend Alicia Cargile being covered in the media as friends, it is easy to see why a statement is helpful, but if someone never actually attempts to be closeted then not all references to their sexuality are "outing".

 

 

 

Even when people do come out, though, sometimes the world seems to forget or just ignore that they did. In 1972, David Bowie said "I'm gay, and always have been" in an interview with Michael Watts of Melody Maker (a then very important music journal, probably not far off the important of Rolling Stone). Note that at this time, as with the term lesbian, there was not much distinction between exclusively gay men and bi+/mspec men; any man who experience same-gender attraction was likely to consider himself gay. In a 1976 interview with Playboy, Bowie said "It’s true — I am a bisexual"; by this time, the word bisexual was becoming more clearly recognised. From time to time, gifs from a 1979 interview which he did go viral:

Interviewer: You've been asked the question whether you're bisexual or not.

Bowie: Yes, too many times.

Interviewer: Yes, and you've never quite answered it.

Bowie: Oh, I have. I've said I was bisexual. That's enough.

Interviewer: Hm, does that mean though that you really are? Or that you're keeping something-

Bowie: I've answered the question.

It is hard to ignore the galling queerphobia, especially in the form of bisexual erasure, in the exchange. In the 1980s, Bowie would be significantly less open about his sexuality, but given that the first AIDS cases were documented in 1981 it is perhaps not surprising that in 1983 he would say coming out as bisexual "the biggest mistake I ever made" and "I was always a closet heterosexual" (a Rolling Stone article, rather gallingly titled "David Bowie: Straight Time"). In 2002, he would say more specifically that "I don’t think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America" (a Blender article), and in the same year would firmly put Jonathan Ross in his place when Ross tried to label Bowie's sexuality, mock the idea of fluid sexuality, and generally spew queerphobia concepts. The differentiating between coming out to American audiences vs coming out to European audiences is pretty telling in terms of how his concerns about homophobia/queerphobia likely impacted his decision to walk back his statements.

Dove Cameron came out in August 2020, calling herself "super queer" after her music video for We Belong was accused of queerbaiting for including LGBTQIA+ couples. However, in July 2021, she commented to Teen Vogue again about how people outside her closest fans didn't seem to notice, saying, "People need me to have a fucking megaphone. I came out a year ago and thought that was going to be it. I didn’t realize that nobody fucking knew." She had been in long-term committed relationships with male actors from 2013-6 and 2016-20. Since coming out, it has not been confirmed that she has been in any significant relationships; though she has been pictured holding hands with and kissing Veronica St. Clair in 2022, and Kiersey Clemons in 2023, googling their names together inevitably returns pages of results about how they are "best friends". (Veronica St. Clair has not publicly commented on her sexuality; Kiersey Clemons is out as not heterosexual but I am not able to find if she has stated preference for terminology). Although it would be nice to think that Cameron would be able to spend time with a single male friend and kiss him without it being suggested that they were dating, experience with the media simply says that is not the case. The heterocentric assumptions of the media remain, even when people are out.

Additionally, the term "re-closeting" is by now increasingly well-known. From a Medium writer talking about re-closeting while in a long-term male-female relationship, to discussions of millions of senior citizens re-closeting to ensure they have safe housing, to lockdowns forcing people to re-closet due to being stuck living with queerphobic family members, it is increasingly apparent to the general public, as well as to people who have lived through it, that coming out is not necessarily a one-time thing. For private citizens, something like a new house, a new job, or a new social activity can bring with it a fresh question of whether to come out to the people involved - come out too early and risk alienation or accusations of 'making it all about being queer', leave it too late and risk people thinking you have been lying to or concealing things from them. 

As shown by the example of David Bowie, above, it can even happen to more famous individuals, those who have evidence out there in posts, interviews, or other work. Lady Gaga came out as bisexual in 2009 and in 2013 lashed out at accusations that her identity was some sort of publicity stunt - but in 2016 she called herself an ally in a speech after the Pulse shooting, and in 2017 on Drag Race stated she was "not necessarily fully part of the community" (Advocate discussion/article). For some people, as noted above, sexuality is fluid and can change over time; to others in long-term monogamous relationships, their overall sexuality may feel less important than the fact that they are in love with one person. However, many times bi+/mspec people find themselves re-closeting due to a lack of acceptance from both heterosexual communities (who may still see bi+/mspec people are "other") and separatist gay and lesbian communities like those that arose in the 1970s and persist today (who may see bi+/mspec people as "not queer enough", or talk about "passing privilege" instead of bi+/mspec erasure); from both sides, bi+/mspec people face accusations of being unfaithful, greedy, confused or seeking attention. None of these are true, but the way that they are repeated from both communities makes it particularly easy to internalise them. Add to this issues such as some bisexuals claiming that pansexual people are accusing bisexuals of transphobia (a claim which I have never seen from pansexual communities, but have often seen perpetuated by bisexual ones) and it is easy to see how it might feel easier in the moment to not face the fights, and to return to the close.

Easier, but not safer - the closet still kills. But the death is slow and feels like there are still opportunities to find a new path, compared to the risk of sudden violence from being out.

 

 

What Does This Have to Do With Taylor Swift?

For some people, coming out is a book (Chely Wright, Elvira | Cassandra Peterson, Tab Hunter), an interview (David Bowie, Elton John, Adam Lambert), a social media post (Lil Nas X). For some, it's a statement at an event, either impulsive and sudden (Melissa Etheridge at the 1993 Triangle Ball) or more planned and deliberate (Katy Perry at the 2017 Human Rights Gala).

But other people, both famous and private, come out in smaller ways. Referring to a girlfriend or boyfriend. Sharing pictures of them with their same-gender significant other. Being seen wearing pronoun badges, items with pride flags or queer symbols, or even writing "queer" in rhinestones on a sleeve (as done by Aunjanue Ellis in 2022, who was then surprised how many people didn't seem to even notice). Bonding with other queer people over queer media or experiences which speak strongly to the queer experience - for example, I was once in a Dungeons & Dragons group where the DM was struggling to remember that the warlock's familiar was male, not female. Eventually, he told the warlock's player that they could have inspiration every time he got it wrong, and I snorted and commented how I wished that was possible in real life as well. One of the other players fervently commented "me too", and we made eye contact in a way that made it clear we had both just realised that we knew. After the session, I came out to him as nonbinary, and he came out as a trans man who was full stealth in social settings. While we used specific terms with each other, in many ways the moment of coming out was commenting on the queer experience - and what is more, we had essentially come out to each other without the cis/het people at the table even noticing.

Sophie Turner posted a bi pride heart and said "time's not straight, and neither am I", and people still act as if she has not come out. Lil Nas X put rainbows on his album cover, Aunjanue Ellis wrote "queer" on her clothing. Kristen Stewart and Alicia Cargile moved in together - and people still acted as if they had not come out.

 

 

So what else might be considered a coming out that people missed?

Maybe it's being in a Youtube video, being asked how you would get a boy's attention, and replying "I would not".

Maybe it's being asked what type of boys you like, and replying "I think, in our twenties, it's just kind of like - oh, I guess I'll try hanging out with him, or hanging out with her, or being single".

Maybe it's posting photos with someone of the same gender holding hands, kissing on cheeks, writing name and lovehearts in the sand, and calling each other "my girl".

Maybe it's saying "she shows the world that no-one can stop us, and no-one can judge us" when giving an award to a queer person at the GLAAD media awards.

Maybe it's posting on social media with an image of friendship bracelets that seems to center and emphasise one that says "proud" with the colours of the bisexual flag.

Maybe it's wearing a rainbow heart pin on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Maybe it's releasing a song and posting "ME! Out Now!" on Lesbian Visibility Day

Maybe it's dressing in the colours of the pan pride flag, or dying your hair the colour of the bisexual pride flag, while asking people to "just not step on our gowns".

Maybe it's singing at Stonewall and saying "let's show our pride" when talking about gay rights.

Maybe it's singing, "bet I could still melt your world, argumentative, antithetical dream girl" and "the lips I used to call home, so scarlet, it was maroon".

 

 

 

Maybe "coming out" is a little bit of a mythological creature itself, as much as the unicorns or mermaids to which so many in the queer community relate. Because of cisheteronormative assumptions, maybe "coming out" is a repeated action, a process, something that some queer people have to do again and again until their throat is sore while being told that passing - that being forgotten - is a 'privilege'. Passing is not a privilege - those who choose to ignore the existence of queer people are the ones with privilege, and should not be allowed to use that to divide the queer community. Some people do not have a choice about presenting in a manner which leads to them immediately being seen as queer, meaning they cannot shield themselves from queerphobia, but those who do "pass" are nonetheless still frequently subjected to queerphobic comments and attitudes, including from those who would not otherwise air such attitudes in front of them.

Passing or not is not the privilege, nor is it the problem; not being queer is the privilege, and queerphobia is the problem.

And if Joan Jett can wear f/f necklaces and have f/f tattoos and sing about women, why should she have to claim a label? Even people who do use labels - especially bi+/mspec identities - get accused of "faking", especially if they are in a male-female relationship at the time. If expressing one's orientation is not "enough", why does a label give any more legitimacy? And why does blame seem to fall upon the person who is not using a label, rather than society that assumes everyone is straight until proven otherwise?

Chapter 8: Association With the LGBTQ+ Community

Summary:

So, I've been trying to figure out how to frame this chapter for a while, but given what's happening with Rolling Stone right now I figured it would be better to just get it out there.

What has Taylor's association been with the LGBTQ+ community over her career, and how has she responded to discussion about them?

This chapter is still pretty under construction. But the core message is: Taylor freely associates with LGBTQ+ people and has no problem with that association. She has never called herself heterosexual, or an ally. People who call it "offensive" or "derogatory" to consider the idea that Taylor is not straight are not protecting her - they are implying that queerness is offensive, that to be LGBTQ+ is to be lesser, and that they consider Taylor better than the discussers because Taylor is presumed heterosexual.

If she is heterosexual, she doesn't seem to have problems with fans discussing theories - just some of the media moments. If she isn't heterosexual, how painful must it be to see people who claim to be her fans stating that queerness is a negative or offensive trait?

Chapter Text

Debut to 1989 Eras

  • Taylor has spoken about growing up in the 90s admiring out lesbian Melissa Etheridge, and how one of Melissa's concerts helped inspire her to become a musician.
  • Since 2008, Taylor has appeared multiple times on Ellen, hosted by Ellen Degeneres. In 2008, she also positively mentioned Ellen on her MySpace bio.
  • In 2011, the Mean music video involved a gay-coded boy being bullied for his interest in fashion but going on to work for a magazine. Taylor said in interviews (apologies for the poor quality clip, I am struggling to source the original full interview) both that she had the idea for the character, and that it was an idea she was familiar with. Her heavy pauses during discussion indicate that the 'fashion in fashion' and "not interested in the same things other guys are interested in" makes it very clear that she is aware of the gay coding that she is using, and for someone still in country music (still only a year after Chely Wright came out) it was still pretty daring to gay code. Having an explicitly gay storyline would have been unthinkable. But nonetheless, in the array of experiences which Taylor chose to tie to Mean - which was based on her own feelings - she deliberately included a gay one.
  • 1989, released October 27th 2014, opened with Welcome to New York which includes the lyrics "you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls" when talking about the positive aspects of the city. When later asked about the lyrics, she explained that it was a celebration of the fact that gay marriage was legal in New York.
  • On 1989, she also includes a song called New Romantics, named after an era of pop music which included people who deliberately broke gender expression and sexuality boundaries. Taylor said in interview that she loved how the new romantic era would have people "act how you want to act, love who you want to love". (I am trying to source a good quality copy of this quote outside of compilation videos.)
  • In November 2015, in China, fans started chanting "Kaylor" and showed pictures of Taylor and Karlie's hairstyles made of lights with the word Kaylor between them. Video, alternate link. Taylor did not look angry or upset - she smiled, let the fans chant for a while, then said " 我爱你" ["I love you", with singular you] as the crowd cheered.
  • On April 27th 2016, Taylor made a surprise appearance at the GLAAD Awards to present an award to Ruby Rose. Her introductory speech included the line, "she tells the world that no-one can judge us, and no-one can stop us".

 

Reputation Era

  • As part of the reputation magazines, Taylor included the poem If you're anything like me. One of the lines was "If you're anything like me, you've grown to hate your pride".
  • On January 12th 2018, the music video for End Game released, and Taylor's outfits included an Ashish rainbow sequin dress.
  • In March 2018, when Hayley Kiyoko pointed out double standards about executives asking why she was singing about women "again", Taylor Swift came to her support.
  • In May 2018, Taylor released an ad with Direct TV which featured her wearing a rainbow sweater and shorts and riding a caticorn with a rainbow horn.
  • Throughout the reputation tour (May 18th 2018 to November 21st 2018), Taylor dedicated every performance of Dress to Loie Fuller, an openly lesbian pioneer of modern dance and especially the use of Isis Wings. For the majority of nights, Taylor performed in a rainbow dress, but alternate costumes included one in shades of pink and orange (like the lesbian pride flag), one in blue/purple/pink (like the bisexual pride flag) and one in blue/silver-lilac/pink (like either the bisexual pride flag or the trans pride flag). (There was also a blue/pink/orange one which she described as her "Tide Pod" dress.)
  • On June 2nd 2018, in Chicago and while wearing the rainbow dress she wore for her performances of Delicate, Taylor gave an impassioned speech for Pride month - but a lot of places don't report the first half of the speech. In full, Taylor spoke about herself as well as about pride, implicitly linking the concepts of her confessional songwriting, coming out, and being queer.

 

 

 

"I’ve been writing songs since I was 12, my songwriting has a lot of the time been called confessional songwriting, which I think is really accurate. And the reason that my songwriting has stayed confessional, stayed about my real life and my real feelings, even when my life has gotten bigger in a sense – more written about, more speculated upon, I’ve still kept writing songs about my actual life, and that’s because you guys seem to care about my actual life. And I appreciate that so much. And in my opinion, I happen to feel that being vulnerable and being honest about how you feel and saying how you feel is really brave. 

It’s very brave to be vulnerable about your feelings in any situation, but it’s even more brave to be honest about your feelings and who you love when you know that it might be met with adversity from society. This month and every month I want to send my love and respect to everybody who has been brave enough to be honest about how they feel, to live their lives as they are, as they feel they should be, as they identify. This is a month where I think we need to celebrate how far we’ve come, but I think we also need to acknowledge how far we still have left to go. I want to send my love and respect out to everybody who in their journey, in their life hasn’t felt comfortable enough to come out yet … and may you do that on your own time and may we end up in a world where everyone can live and love equally and no one has to be afraid to be vulnerable and say how they feel. Because when it comes to feelings and when it comes to love and searching for someone to spend your whole life with … it’s all just really, really delicate."

 

 

 

"Thank you for everyone who decided to bring those signs that you guys all have, it's crazy. There's so many of these! How did you even do that? [Inaudible] I love you so much. I love you so... I don't even know. You know when you don't know... what to say? Cause... that happened?" 

 

Lover Era

  • In April 2019, Taylor donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) with a handwritten note which included, "I'm so inspired by the work you do".
  • On April 26th, the first album single Me! dropped. In it, Taylor performed with Brendon Urie, who came out as pansexual in July 2018. The music video premiered the same day, and was filled with camp, and with references to musical theatre. During one scene, two male dancers kiss in the background. Taylor's post about the music video opened with "ME! Out now!" and it was released on Lesbian Visibility Day.
    • In Miss Americana, released January 31st 2020, a behind the scenes clip shows Taylor describing this video as "Whatever makes you, you. Emo kids, theater, dance sequences, La La Land, everything" [Brendon: "Nailed it!"] "And when it's like me-e-e, it's like dancers, cats, gay pride, people in country western boots, I start riding a unicorn. Just - everything that makes me, me." In other words, Taylor explicitly links gay pride to her sense of self and confirms that this song, as well as YNTCD, was linked to gay pride.
  • On May 2nd, Taylor and Brendon performed together at the Billboard Music Awards, both wearing rainbow outfits.
  • On May 9th, Taylor appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly wearing a large number of pin badges. All were Easter Eggs or references, but only most were explained inside - two were left without comment. One was a rainbow heart pin, which could very easily be considered a pride pin.
  • On June 1st, Taylor tweeted a letter to her senators in support of the Equality Act. It included the phrase "let's show our pride".
  • On June 2nd, at Wango Tango, Taylor performed in full rainbow getup and spoke in support of the Equality Act. The lighting behind her was shades of pink and orange, as generally seen in the lesbian pride flag. She thanked people in another tweet which included "like a rainbow with all of the colours", lyrics from ME!.
  • On June 14th, the album Lover was released, including the song You Need to Calm Down which featured one verse about cyberbulling, one verse about queerphobia, and one verse about misogyny. 
  • On June 15th, Taylor appeared at the Stonewall Inn, something which the venue almost never grants to non-LGBTQ individuals. She again spoke in support of the Equality Act, this time saying, "let's show our pride" [emphasis mine].
  • On June 17th, the music video for You Need to Calm Down was released; in contrast to the song, the video focuses entirely on the queerphobia aspect. In it, Taylor burns down her own caravan before entering a trailer park inhabited almost entirely (with the exception of Ciara) by openly LGBTQ+ celebrities. She is alongside the queer celebrities as they are besieged by (and ignore) protestors. When she reclines in an aqua pool dressed in pink and yellow, she forms the pansexual flag (not seen elsewhere in the video), and her hair is later dyed blue, purple and pink and appears to be the bisexual pride flag. She teased the song on twitter using the lyrics "Can you just not step on our gowns?"
  • On June 18th, in an interview with Elvis Duran, Taylor said,

 

 

 

"I feel like there's so many of my loved ones, and friends, and fans, who... you know, they're in the LGBTQ community and they have to go through life either being verbally, vocally judged and criticized or wondering if the people around them are silently judging them or, or wondering if the people around them are just tolerating the way that they are. And I think that's really unfair, and I just wanted to make it known to everyone around me and my loved ones, and my fans, and my friends, and my colleagues, like I don't just tolerate the way you are, I celebrate the way that you are."

  • On August 3rd, Taylor posted a picture of blue, purple and pink heart-shaped rice krispie cookies which she had made for her secret sessions. Obviously the heart shape is a link to the Lover era, but it was also noted that blue/purple/pink is the colour of the bisexual pride flag.
  • On August 5th, Taylor posted another picture, this one a rainbow-filtered image of her hand as she wears a number of bracelets made for her by a secret session-goer. The visible bracelets spell out the names of two of her cats and two of her albums - and near the center, facing the camera, is a bracelet with beads in the bisexual flag colours saying "proud".
  • On August 26th, on winning Video of the Year Award at the VMAs, Taylor again spoke about the Equality Act and said, "you voting for this video means you want a world where we’re all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, or how we identify". While this use of 'we' could simply be stating that non-heterosexual people should have the same rights as heterosexual people, it would be unusual for a straight ally to frame themselves as part of the community in this way.
  • On September 9th, in the City of Lover performance in Paris, rainbow lights panned across the audience
  • On September 18th, Taylor did an interview with Rolling Stone in which she said "I didn’t realise until recently that I could advocate for a community I’m not a part of". This is used by some as proof of her heterosexuality - but she never uses the word heterosexual, or the word ally. She talks about "anyone who is not a straight, cis, white man" - but she is white, and is not a cis man, meaning she is both inside and outside this community at once. And if we can only advocate for communities we are a part of, then advocating is placing ourselves in that community - in other words, to support LGBTQ+ rights would be an automatic way of coming out. 
    • In the same interview, she also said "the second verse is about homophobes and people picketing outside our concerts", which is once again using 'our' in a curious way.
  • In Miss Americana, the two main reasons that Taylor gives to her father for wanting to come out as Democratic are women's rights (e.g. anti-stalking laws) and LGBTQ+ rights.

 

folklore/evermore Era

  • On June 1st 2021, for Pride Month, Taylor posted on Twitter about Pride Month, thanking "activists, advocates and allies". It is very unusual for allies to thank other allies, as the point of Pride Month is for it to be centered on LGBTQ+ individuals. Moreover, Taylor did not say 'fellow allies' or group herself in with the allies that she thanks, suggesting that she considers herself separate despite everything she had said and done in the previous year.

Image

  • On June 3rd 2021, a fan tweeted a picture of themselves with their evermore vinyls and rainbow heart stickers, saying "HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!🏳️🌈 #evermorealbumVinyl", to which Taylor tweeted back "FANTASTIC PICTURE!! Love seeing you smile like that! Happy Pride Month to you too! 🏳️🌈". This is significant because the fan was not wishing Taylor a happy Pride in particular, and the use of "to you too" implies a reciprocal, and would suggest that Taylor herself celebrates and has a reason to celebrate pride.
  • In May 2022, when Hayley Kiyoko went public with her relationship with Becca Tilley, she stated that Taylor had been one of the first to know.

 

 

Support of and Performances With LGBTQ+ Performers

(*indicates working with individuals who were publicly closeted at the time but who may have been out to their friends and family, or who may have had rumours.)

  • *Very early in her career, perhaps 2004-5, Taylor co-wrote the song Thinkin' Bout You with Chely Wright. Note this is before Wright came out.
  • Red Tour
    • *On March 28th, 2013, Taylor was joined on stage by the Neon Trees. Lead singer Tyler Glenn came out as gay in early 2014.
    • On July 13th 2013, Taylor was joined on stage by Fall Out Boy, of whom two members (Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz) are out as bisexual
    • On August 20th 2013, Taylor was joined on stage by Tegan and Sara to perform Closer. Taylor spoke about how the album from which the song came, Heartthrob, was one she loved - Heartthrob was the first Tegan and Sara song which explicitly used female pronouns.
    • On September 21st 2013, Taylor was joined on stage by Rascal Flatts (for whom she had opened during her debut era). Rascal Flatts are known for their 2009 song anthem "Love Who You Love" which was taken on by LGBTQ+ fans as a pro-equality song.
    • *On February 2nd 2014, Taylor was joined on stage by Sam Smith. Smith came out as gay in 2014, and as nonbinary and using they/them pronouns in 2019.
    • *On February 10th 2014, Taylor was joined on stage by Emili Sandé. Emilie Sandé would publicly confirm she was in a relationship with a woman in 2022, but did not express a preference for a label at the time. From 2005-2014 she was in a relationship with and married a man.
  • 1989 Tour
    • On July 10th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by the US Women's Soccer National Team. The team included Abby Wamback (lesbian, married in 2013), Megan Rapinoe (lesbian, came out in 2012), *Ali Krieger and *Ashlyn Harris (came out as dating each other in 2019), *Christen Press and * Tobin Heath (came out as dating a woman in 2022), *Kelley O'Hara (came out by kissing her girlfriend post-match in 2019). In other words, out of 23 players, 2 were out at the time and 5 have come out since.
    • On July 19th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by trans supermodel Andreja Pejic (and model Lily Donaldson).
    • *On July 24th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Walk the Moon. Lead singer Nicholas Petricca came out as bisexual in 2020
    • *On August 14th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Fifth Harmony. Lauren Jaregui came out as bisexual in 2016
    • On August 15th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Joan Baez and Julia Roberts. Baez spoke in 1973 about having had relationships with women; Roberts has never made a statement on her sexuality but is a strong supporter of LGBTQ+ rights.
    • On August 24th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Ellen DeGeneres.
    • On August 24th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Alanis Morrissette. Morrissette had discussed having relationships with women as early as 2004.
    • On August 25th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Beck and St. Vincent. St. Vincent came out as considering gender and sexuality to be fluid in 2014.
    • On August 26th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Lisa Kudrow, who played F.R.I.E.N.D.S. character Phoebe Buffay. Phoebe is generally considered to be bisexual as she has acknowledged relationships with women, even though the word was not used in the TV show.
    • On September 25th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Steven Tyler, who has spoken about identifying with male and female genders.
    • On September 26th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Mick Jagger, who has never claimed a label but who is known to have had a relationship with David Bowie
    • On October 24th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Tove Lo, who has been out as queer since the beginning of her career and currently uses the label bisexual
    • On October 27th 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Ricky Martin. Martin came out in his 2011 memoir.
    • *On October 31st 2015, Taylor was joined onstage by Alessia Cara to perform Here. Cara has never commented on her sexuality, but in an interview with Gay Times said "sexuality is just part of who you are, you don’t need to be labelled as anything".
  • reputation Tour
    • On May 19th 2018, Taylor was joined on stage by Troye Sivan, who came out as gay in 2013
    • On September 29th 2018, Taylor was joined on stage by Hayley Kiyoko to sing Curious
  • On December 5th 2018, Taylor performed with Hayley Kiyoko at the Ally Coalition Talent Show in New York.
  • On May 9th 2019, in her interview with Entertainment Weekly, Taylor spoke about
    • Her appreciation of Lady Gaga (who came out as bisexual in 2010 as is well known for Born This Way)
    • Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her work Fleabag, whose lead character came out as bisexual in March 2019
    • King Princess, nonbinary lesbian, whose music she called "romantic" and "nostalgic"
    • Lana del Rey, who has never commented on her own sexuality, but whose song Carmen is well known for having people of all genders attracted to the subject of the song
    • Tayla Parx, an openly bisexual singer-songwriter whose songs have been in the charts
    • Sally Rooney, specifically the book Conversations With Friends whose main character is a bisexual woman
    • Killing Eve, whose queer female love story made it beloved of femslashers everywhere
    • Won't You Be My Neighbour?, a biopic about Mister Rogers; the biopic gave a nod to the question of Rogers' sexuality, but in fact a 2015 biography discussed conversations in which he said "I have found women attractive, and I have found men attractive", strongly implying that he was bi+.
    • Alanis Morissette, who had discussed having relationships with women as early as 2004 
    • The Chicks (then under former name Dixie Chicks), who are open about having a large lesbian following and make considerable contributions to LGBTQ+ causes
    • Britney Spears, who nodded to same-gender attraction in If You Seek Amy (2008) who has long been an LGBTQ+ ally

 


In fact, the only pop culture influences which she made which were not queer or tied to queer culture were Drake, Ciara (who is pro-gay rights and appeared in the YNTCD music video) and Dermot Kennedy who is extremely private.

  • On November 24th 2019, Taylor was joined on stage by Halsey (out as bisexual since at least 2018) to perform Shake it Off [Camila Cabello also present]
  • Taylor's 30th birthday party included guests such as  Jonathan Van Ness, Antoni Porowski and boyfriend Kevin Harrington, Halsey
  • On March 5th 2020, Fletcher (out as queer since the beginning of her career) and Niall Horan produced a cover of Lover, which Taylor complimented on Instagram.
    • In October 2021, on an Instagram Live, Fletcher stated that her song lyric "sipped her like an old fashioned" was inspired by a moment at Taylor's 30th birthday party where Taylor had been drinking an old fashioned, a 'man's drink', which Fletcher had found "hot".
  • On June 19th 2020, Taylor tweeted about the Netflix original documentary Disclosure, about trans experiences in and relation to Hollywood
  • On April 30th 2021, Taylor posted on Instagram about the new album of girl in red, a band so infamously for and about queer women that "does she listen to girl in red?" has become internet code for "is she queer?" It was later also revealed that Taylor had sent emails to girl in red, and done paintings for her that included daisies.
  • On December 6th 2021, Taylor posted on Instagram about the new double-single by Halsey

 

Use of Taylor's songs in Queer Media

(Remember, as writer or cowriter on every single song in her discography, Taylor has to okay every use of her music in media. Billboard has reported that her brother Austin is involved in the handling of requests. Bolded lines include the songs being used on specifically queer scenes.)

  • In April 2018, Taylor's song Gorgeous was in the TV series Druck (also known as SKAM Germany), a franchise well-known for including LGBTQ+ characters
  • In May 2019, Taylor's song Welcome to New York was in the TV series The Bold Type, whose main character realises she is bisexual in the first season
  • In January 2020, Taylor's song Lover was in the TV series The Bold Type
  • In February 2020, Taylor's song Welcome to New York was in the TV series Katy Keene, which features a drag queen as a major character
  • In May 2021, Taylor's song Shake it Off was in the TV series Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, which features a major genderfluid character
  • In June 2021, Taylor's song invisible string was in the TV series Good Witch, over a date between Joy and Zoey
  • In November 2021, five of Taylor's songs were in the TV series The Summer I Turned Pretty, which has a major supporting character (Jeremiah) who is bisexual 
  • In November 2021, Taylor's song this is me trying was included in the TV series Gossip Girl, a series which has a large number of LGBTQ+ characters and a polyamorous throuple
  • In December 2021, Taylor's song ivy was included in the TV series Dickinson, during a love scene between Emily and Sue
  • In May 2022, Taylor's song epiphany was included in the TV series The Wilds, a series which includes a number of wlw characters and relationships

Chapter 9: Self-Made Galatea: The Construction of Taylor Swift

Summary:

Taylor Swift is a brand. Taylor Swift is a person.

Both of these things can be true.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Taylor Swift: International Brand

Taylor Swift has been a household name for the better part of sixteen years and since she herself was a teenager. Unlike some, she doesn't have a stage name to separate herself from the brand that she has helped create, and until 2016 there were no rumours of her altering her appearance for anonymity in manners such as wearing wigs. Her fanbase is extensive, devoted, and many have been loyal for over a decade now. But the development of this situation is not something that has spontaneously occurred. Taylor plays a role, deliberately and skilfully, and it has helped propel her to stardom.

A parasocial relationship is one which a person imagines having with a person whom they do not know but to whom they feel strong emotional ties, such as a celebrity or a fictional character. The term was coined in the 1950s, but has become much more wildly considered in the era of social media; no longer just the bond between listeners and radio personalities, now such relationships are increasingly common and strong when considering social media influencers. And, in this day and age, it feels that many actors, musicians, sports stars and other famous individuals feel the need to also be social media influencers in turn. 

This is solidly reflected in a Google Ngram of the history of use of the word parasocial:

[Image: A graph of use of the words para-social and parasocial from 1950 to 2022. Para-social rises to around 0.000001% by 1985
and remains there; parasocial climbs with slightly increasing rapidity to 0.000006% by 2022.]

Considering Taylor Swift is one of the most-followed people on every English-language platform - and while her 10 million followers on Chinese social media site Weibo pales compared to their real heavy hitters, it's still nothing to sniff at - it is clear that she is skilled in establishing and maintaining fan interaction and engagement.

But Taylor Swift the person is not the same as Taylor Swift the brand. It is a role which Taylor very skilfully plays.

This is not a negative thing. It is not lying, it is not an insult to her as a person. If anything, it could likely be linked to the desire to be liked that she has talked about since Fifteen ("when all you wanted was to be wanted"), and a desire to give her fans what and who they want to see, as much as it can be linked to business acumen and the desire to succeed. It is also both a talent and a skill, as anyone who has worked a long shift in customer service and felt their self-restraint beginning to crack can attest. Only Taylor isn't working a ten or twelve or fourteen hour shift - her entire social media persona was for many years a sort of customer service role, and perhaps that makes it less of a surprise how it has changed with time.

 

A couple of dictionary.com definitions before we go on:

Parasocial Relationship [link]: "A relationship that a person imagines having with another person whom they do not actually know, such as a celebrity or a fictional character. This often involves a person feeling as though they have a close, intimate connection with someone whom they have never met due to closely following that person (or character) in media."

Verisimilitude [link]: "the appearance or semblance of truth"

 

I feel that it could be reasonably argued that Taylor Swift's brand focuses on authenticity, in ways that we'll see discussed below, but that means that as a person she is giving a sense of verisimilitude. Note that verisimilitude is not faking, cheating, or the like - it is the genuine use of skill to give the appearance and feel of authenticity to a manufactured product. Learning website Masterclass gives a thorough explanation and examples of verisimilitude as a literary device; it can be considered more broadly as a storytelling device. (Literary consideration tends to predominate in media studies because of the focus on the written word over the years, ignoring or devaluing other forms of storytelling and communication.) Verisimilitude can be seen in Taylor's writing - the scarf of All Too Well, which she confirmed at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 was a metaphor, being perhaps one of the most famous confirmed examples. Much of the time, she does not clarify whether the details are literal or metaphorocal 

 

 

Image and Intention

No celebrity's image is entirely truthful. It simply cannot be - there are plenty of parts of a celebrity's life that their fans simply do not want to hear about! Even celebrities must experience food poisoning, hangovers, blistered feet. But that is not what fans are after, and so celebrities must reveal enough of themselves to be relatable while keeping back parts which might turn people away, never mind considering how much of themselves they want to give to people versus how much of themselves they want to be able to keep. 

There are regular lists of celebrities who avoid social media or public scrutiny, or at least try to keep it away from non-famous family members and/or children. In an age of shows like the Kardashians, which pushed even the underage sisters into the public eye, or increasingly young social media celebrities and influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers, it might be easy to forget that this is a relatively recent phenomenon. But as discussed in chapter two, mass media in itself is barely a century old. Paparazzi - independent photographers who seek to photograph celebrities, ideally in unique ways, and sell to businesses - emerged in the 50s and were named in the 1960 film La Dolce Vita, but it wasn't until the 00s that the industry boomed. In the space of just a few years, it went from long-distance covert snaps to getting into the faces of the celebrities, resulting in famous incidents like Britney Spears chasing off a pack of photographers with an umbrella in 2007 and Justin Bieber almost crashing his car while speeding in 2014. At the same time, the rise of social media which allowed celebrities' teams to post their own images, the economic recession making lifestyle magazines less widely bought, anti-paparazzi legislation since as California's 2013 ban on photographing celebrity children, and the 2011 takeover of Splash News by Corbis which completely changed the amount paid per image meant that living as a paparazzi was simply no longer affordable.

Some consider this a good thing, and it's easy to see why. Articles such as Female celebrities, paparazzi and mental health in the 00s (Alex Stefanovic, July 16 2021) paint a bleak picture of harassment, victimisation, mockery and behaviour that can frankly be equated to stalking. This same article also discusses how social media teams allow celebrities to present their own image - it allows them to avoid the lies and narratives that the media might want to push onto them. But it also allows them to control their narratives in ways that might involve lies and constructed narratives of their own.

Some of these lies can be small and rather obvious. While subreddit r/InstagramReality does not allow the naming of individuals posted (who are a mixture of celebrities, influencers, and egregious cases people find of non-famous individuals), regulars to the sub will nod along with the Kardashians, Madonna, and Katie Price as they also make regular appearances. (There are likely more celebrities who appear their regularly but who the author of this piece does not recognise! However, the only time that I have seen Taylor Swift on there was for a Sanity Sunday, in which non-edited photos that look like real people get praised and shared.)

But there can be darker elements. Many celebrities take endorsements from brands (if you see a brand named in celebrity social media, you can be all but certain there's a benefit in it for the celebrity). This is one thing when it concerns makeup or clothing - even when taking into account the photoshop mentioned above - but it is another when a cookbook author fakes cancer to make it seem that her lifestyle advice is a cure for it; when celebrities like Laurence Fox or Joe Rogan tout Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19 instead of an animal medicine which can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, allergic reactions, seizures or even death; or when social media feeds into disinformation and the 'fake news' phenomenon. Now, those examples might be at the extreme end, but when Brazilian butt lifts are ten times more dangerous than any other cosmetic procedure but are the fastest-growing surgery in the world thanks to the Kardashians, what is the cost of vanity?

Social media needs to be considered critically. What images are being put out, and why - is it to share with fans and feed a parasocial relationship with authenticity and intimacy, or is it to appear unattainably attractive? Selling ones own products and achievements (including TV shows, movies, and music) is different to being paid by brands to promote their goods. Some celebrities control and post to their social media directly, some closely supervise a team or specialist, and some have little to no input in what their social media does. This can also change over time.

Social media is advertisement, fan interaction, profit, public record, tool and challenge. And it is a medium in which Taylor Swift has proven herself not just adept but innovative, developing with the years as her brand develops and as the technological and business landscape around her changes.

 

 

 

 

Social Media Timeline

A quick timeline of popular social media (plus a couple of Swift specials) by years, before we go ahead:

  • TaylorSwift.com - Wayback machine shows activity from at least 2002
  • MySpace [Taylor's account, joined 2005, now empty] - founded 2003, most popular 2005-2008
  • Facebook [Taylor's account, joined Nov 2007] - founded 2004, ongoing popularity
  • Youtube [Taylor's account, joined Sep 2006] - founded 2005, ongoing popularity
  • Twitter [Taylor's account, joined December 2008] - founded 2006, ongoing popularity
  • Tumblr [Taylor's account, joined Sep 2014] - founded 2007, most popular 2012-2015, ongoing use
  • Weibo [Taylor's account, joined Jan 2014] - founded 2009, ongoing popularity
  • Instagram [Taylor's account, joined Oct 2011] - founded 2010, ongoing popularity
  • Snapchat [Taylor's account, joined July 2020] - founded 2011, most popular 2014-2016, ongoing use
  • Vine [Taylor joined 2013] - founded 2012, closed 2017-2019
  • Tiktok/Douyin [Taylor's account, joined Aug 2021] - founded 2016, ongoing popularity
  • The Swift Life app - founded Dec 2017, closed Jan 2019

 

 

Early Days

Information about Taylor's early life is a little scattered these days, but can be pieced together. The second half of this podcast episode on Red (Taylor's Version) and Taylor's family gives some useful and often-overlooked information. Taylor's father, Scott Swift, is a successful financial advisor, and Taylor has said in interview that when she was eight, she wanted to follow him into the career. Meanwhile, Andrea Swift was a marketing executive, and ensured that Taylor's social media and website looked slick and professional before her first album was even put together. From a young age, Taylor also watched documentary TV series Behind the Music, which looks at the rise, success - and in some cases fall - of bands or musicians. In 2015, she told GQ that her favourite episode was about The Bangles, which originally aired in 2000 and suggests she was interested and engaged with the business practices, as well as the musical talents, of other musicians from an early age. She also mentioned in a 2007 interview that before even signing her first deal (at age 13) she had been attending annual Country Radio Seminar events about the development and growth of the country music industry.

As can be seen from the list above, Taylor was on MySpace even before her first album, and in the first two years went on to join Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, which have proven to be staples for her entire career. The website TaylorSwift.com was in existence from at least 2012 and included news of her singing events, downloadable song covers (and eventually her own songs), and a mailing list for direct updates.

A fan has made a list of things said about Taylor by her co-writers; it is clear that she is an extraordinarily talented songwriter and has been since her earliest steps into the business. She is perhaps a once-in-a-generation talent, and when Andrew Lloyd Webber, one of only 17 people to have an EGOT as of 2022, described her as perhaps the only good part of the Cats movie it speaks to her talent and the impact she can have on people.

Taylor has spoken about how being rebuffed for a record deal at 11 led to her beginning to write her own songs at 12; this story seems to be consistent, and it is known that she was interested in writing poems and prose before this time. The official story as to her guitar playing, as discussed for example in this 2009 Hot Desk interview in London, was that a computer technician who was visiting her house spotted a guitar in her room and offered to show her a few chords. In 2015, in a piece by NY Daily News [Wayback Machine for those in Europe], computer technician and singer-songwriter Ronnie Cremer took credit for giving Taylor two years of guitar lessons at the request of her parents. This was followed by a year with another guitar teacher, whom the NY Daily News interviewed, as well as a photographer who worked with Taylor when she was young. The tone of the article is pragmatic: it acknowledges that origin stories and legend-making are part of the creation of music personae, and the people interviewed seem largely to wish to be known as having been involved with such a remarkable individual.

At much the same time, The Vancouver Sun put out an article [Wayback Machine only] on the same matter of legend-making, mostly pointing out that media outlets should do research rather than taking such narratives for granted but also critiquing Taylor herself for her part in controlling the narrative of her backstory. The article itself is moderate and thoughtful. In comments underneath it, however, Ronnie Cremer made comments towards Taylor that seemed derogatory. And considering he was only one of the people involved in teaching Taylor the guitar, let alone working with her on her songwriting (see the list of cowriters above), to name his website ITaughtTaylorSwift.com does seem rather like he is trying to take significant claim over Taylor's success, when he is not implying that it is all down to money.

It is certainly clear that Taylor's family were upper middle class and could afford to support Taylor in the establishment of her career. However, her undeniable talent in both songwriting and business have been demonstrated again and again over the years. Money might open doors - but it's talent that kept them open in the longer term.

 

 

Further reading:

 

 

 

 

 

Debut, Fearless and Speak Now: Country Music Marketing

From 2006 to around 2010, Taylor's style of publicity and marketing stayed strong to its country roots. At this time (though less so since 2014) Nashville, Tennessee was very much the focus of country music. It was not until the mid-2010s that mainstream marketing would begin to take note of country music fanbases and advertising styles and draw out lessons that could be learned from country music: identifying one's target audience, personal and brand presentation, identification and aspiration, continuing to use proven formulae, emotional connection, and specificity in storytelling. All of these can be seen in Taylor's early work, from her handling of interviews to her early narrative-formation.

By the age of 16, in September 2006, Taylor was able to confidently answer questions about her start and lay out the narrative of her determination, but also emphasise that she was different in that she was a songwriter as well as a singer. While it is true that many country music songwriters were not the people who later sang the songs (remember as well the references in chapter three which talk about lesbian songwriters writing chart-topping songs for men to perform), Taylor was not wholly unique. However, by focusing on this more unusual aspect, especially and perhaps even more so than on her age, Taylor emphasised something that would give her brand a unique aspect. Writing her own songs meant that she was telling her own stories, and that gave her a marketable authenticity because she could tell the stories of the individual songs.

Taylor was an early adopter and skilled user of MySpace - in 2012, she was still number four for followers. The attraction of MySpace as a social media site included the fact that musicians could upload songs for people to stream, and Taylor particularly used this as a way to get people hooked on her songwriting.

The interviewer also talks about how the title Tim McGraw meant that the song caught her attention - by attaching herself to a more established country name, Taylor piqued peoples' curiosity. This was a very clever way to get attention from among the many new artists trying to break into music at any given time. However, it is interesting to note that the story Taylor tells - of a song that she wrote and never even demo'ed before playing it for her record label owner - cannot quite be true. A demo version exists online, with slightly different lyrics. The story about math class, though, seems to be consistent and is likely true! It is likely that the song was chosen as a lead single because the use of McGraw's name made it stand out and get coverage that would have been otherwise difficult to obtain. But that doesn't make for a good story hook, does it?

Behind the scenes, Taylor also pushed for the authenticity and specificity of her songs. Liz Rose, who cowrote with Taylor between 2003 and 2012, explained in interview how Sony Executives wanted the lyrics of You Belong With Me changed from "Drew" to "You" in order to make it more generic. Taylor refused, knowing the specific story and the attachment of a name would make a much stronger narrative - and the fact that this was RCA meant that it could only have happened when she was 14 at the most, before she moved to Big Machine Records. When touring, Taylor would play for small groups and tell the stories of her songs, giving names and details to each that made people feel as if they were being given an intimate view into her life and a piece of truth. This would continue into her formal interviews as well.

This authenticity was also implied in the liner notes of her songs, a tradition that would continue until 1989. Liner notes were capitalised letters in the listed song lyrics which spelled out a word or phrase which was heavily implied to be a clue as to the origin or inspiration for the song. This is interesting, because it implies authenticity without necessarily giving it - it encourages readers to fill in the gaps themselves. In Taylor's Debut and Fearless eras, the liner notes tended to be pretty straightforward - "Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam" or "God bless Andrea Swift" are pretty clear in their nature. However, over time these liner notes would become more cryptic in nature - we'll return to them later.

A July 2007 interview with Taylor gives an impressive look at her maturity and business acumen, even at a young age - not wanting to use her age as a gimmick, knowing the demographics of her audience, and the importance and unusual nature of the decision to leave one record label and go to another. It does not read like a conversation that many people would be able to have at 17! Later the same year, a video camera caught Jack Ingram playfully calling her a "kiss ass" for complimenting the radio representatives who had come to hear her songs. She tells him that he'll someday learn "it's how you get ahead in life", which is met with chuckles from the adults in the room as she talks to someone more than twice her age. In February 2008, the Washington Post asked why more interview subjects could not all be as ideal as her. She and Andrea send CDs to radio stations individually so that they would be able to play them, and stations which did play Taylor's music or interview her often received homemade cookies as thanks.

Throughout this time, Taylor put in the hard graft. Concert Archives shows her live performances per year - in 2007, she undertook 178 live performances, a number that dwarfs any other year of her career. Even the infamous Grateful Dead had a maximum of 136 performances in 1970; Bruce Springsteen put in 179 in 2018. While Taylor is nowhere near the top performance numbers of all time, in her early years she would play any event, travelling constantly, to raise her profile and spread awareness of herself. And in between these formal performances, she would take part in interviews, and even got into GAC Shortcuts (GAC Short Cuts/Shortcuts were commercials aired by the Great American Country music channel, which was founded 1995). It's doubtless not just these years that she refers to when she says, "they'd say I hustled, put in the work" in The Man (Lover, 2017), but it cannot be denied that even as she was completing high school, Taylor was also not just working a job but pursuing a career.

 

 

Further reading:

 

 

 

Red: The Transition

The Red era (2012-3) was not just a period in which Taylor was transitioning from country to pop music, but also a time in which the music industry itself was changing. The history of music sharing and streaming can be loosely traced back to about 1999, with the development of Napster. Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing service, one among many but the first one to specialise in mp3 files; they rose rapidly in popularity, but in 2000-1 had lawsuits filed against them for unauthorised/illegal music sharing by Metallica, Dr. Dre, Madonna and eventually a number of members of the Recording Industry Association of America (A&M Records Inc., vs Napster Inc. 2001). Despite its legal issues, Napster had made one thing clear: people liked music on demand, flexible listening, and not having to use either physical or database space to store their music. MySpace was not just a social network but allowed people to stream music and bands to promote themselves this way, and Taylor was noted as being one of the first country music performers to really make use of this. 

Apple launched the iTunes store in 2001, allowing people to buy digital copies of entire albums or individual songs, and offering a legitimate alternative to Napster and to even sketchier sites like Limewire or Frostwire. It was like opening a floodgate. Last FM followed in 2002; Pandora in 2003; Spotify in 2006; Amazon Music, Deezer and Soundcloud in 2007; with the new-look Apple Music largely replacing iTunes in 2015. In 2008, iTunes became the biggest music retailer in the United States. It's probably no surprise that the peak of CD sales was also 1999-2000, and sales have steadily fallen each year to 2020 where the numbers are so low that variations may well simply be noise.

But, with Red, Taylor managed to buck the trend. Not only did she set records for first-day iTunes downloads, but she also achieved 1.21 million albums sold, the first person to reach these sort of numbers since the beginning of the decline of CDs a decade earlier. Her use of marketing blended country-music staples of interviews (she did interviews with over 70 stations during the release of Red, as well as TV appearances such as Ellen and 20/20) and social media (largely Tumblr and Twitter in this era) with elements that started to draw from the pop/rock scene such as marketing tie-ins (with Keds, Walgreens, Cornetto and Papa Johns, among others) and using pre-release CDs to generate positive reviews. It also involved a "windowed release" - that is, it was not available on streaming services such as Spotify and Amazon for a couple of weeks, meaning that anyone who wanted it immediately had to buy a physical copy.

LA newspaper Guardian Liberty Voice called her a "marketing genius on the scale with Steve Jobs", while the LA Times said she "raises the bar". People since have talked about lessons other artists can learn from the release. Red was a well-planned event which Taylor was at the forefront and face of at every step, combining her country knowledge with pop ingenuity and taking into account technological changes to make the most of the music world.

 

 

However, the Red era also saw more of a step away from the intense authenticity and specificity of Taylor's country era. While Speak Now had mostly stopped naming names, Dear John was taken by many to be a reference to its subject as well as a nod to the concept of Dear John letters. By the time she got to Red, Taylor had stopped giving names altogether, although she continued to use her 'liner notes' to give supposed hints and drop clues. But gone were the days when she would talk about a boy named Drew in her class and how she had pined for him from afar.

Moreover, Red was marketed explicitly as a break-up album; in 2020, Taylor called it her "true break-up album" about " pure, absolute, to the core, heartbreak". But fans have noted that this doesn't seem to be quite a true description, especially once the vault songs of Red (Taylor's Version) are taken into account. The songs Treacherous, 22, Stay Stay Stay, Everything Has Changed, Begin Again, and Come Back... Be Here all seem to be more about the beginning of a relationship, to which the vault added Message in a Bottle, Run and The Very First Night. Fan site Taylor Swift Switzerland, in their extensive article on the album, discuss how the album was criticized as not being "sonically cohesive" and how Taylor has agreed and simply stated that breakups, and life, are not. "Happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time" indeed. It could well be that the break-up album narrative was chosen for its clarity and simplicity, which made it memorable and which gave fans a clear expectation. Fans wanted a narrative to the album, rather than it simply covering two years of Taylor's life; few people can chart clear narratives without side stories at any time in their lives, but by using hindsight to chose the clearest story to tell Taylor gave the album a personality and nature which has endured for more than a decade.

Finally, Red was the first album and era for which Taylor's presentation and theme was entirely overhauled. The now-iconic red lipstick appeared, along with vintage clothes, carefully-styled hair, and a curated aesthetic that broke away from the more casual country looks of her first albums or the princess-like gowns of Speak Now. But the shifts there had been more subtle, and didn't seem too surprising for a teen trying to figure out her preferences in dressing. Red, though, appeared much more deliberate. And perhaps it's no surprise that this came with the same album as The Lucky One and eventual vault song Nothing New - even at 22, Taylor was acutely aware of the pressure of time on her career and how she was no longer a novelty on the music scene. Even her songwriting, which had been novel in 2006, was now becoming expected in country music as she started a trend for singer-songwriters in the genre.

In Miss Americana, Taylor would call out this pattern of 'eras' into which Red was now moving:

The female artists have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to or else you’re out of a job.

This pattern of reinvention is much more common to pop than to country, and as Taylor pointed out it applies much more to female artists - especially, she noted, with the move from girl to woman. The cynical among us might wonder whether this is also to do with a conception of adulthood that includes a notion of sexual availability and commodity. Articles even in 2013 were calling it out, with On The Come Up TV discussing the then-recent reinvention of Miley Cyrus but pointing out as well how Madonna had been reinventing herself since the 1980s and in doing so had stayed in the charts for decades. After Miss Americana, more and more articles would discuss the trend - "Why is this expected of female artists?" by Cheyenne Roundtree in 2021, and "The Toxic Pattern of Female Artists Having to Constantly Reinvent and Reimagine" by Grace Galante in 2022. But in 2012, Taylor was already clearly aware of this perceived requirement, and stepped into the role with a thoroughness and skill that is nonetheless sad to see in hindsight.

 

 

1989: Shock And Awe (And Easter Eggs)

1989 was Taylor's first fully pop music album, but within the pop style marketing she retained some of the lessons of her country roots which made her stand out on the global marketing stage. Her continuing skilful use of social media to engage with fans and cultivate her brand personality was noted by marketing and business experts more than by the mass media, but that did not change its success. Taylor was probably one of the best-known people in the world by her 1989 era. However, by 2016 she would be privately admitting fears of overexposure, and this is likely a factor in the subsequent events of 2016 that she would describe in her Lover journals as being like "the apocalypse".

In March 2014, Taylor split from her Nashville-experienced publicist Paula Erickson, becoming the first client of a new company being established by Tree Paine. While Paine had been working with country and Christian music in Nashville since 2007, prior to that she had worked with Interscope Records from 1995 with rock, metal, pop and hip-hop artists.

While with previous albums Taylor had inserted her famous 'liner notes', and with Red was believed to have hinted at the new coming era with a photo of her red-shoe-clad feet at a recording studio, for 1989 she entered a whole new level of leaving clues and "Easter Eggs" (as she would refer to them, sometimes using the emoji 🐣to imply someone had found one). This began in August 2014 with Instagram posts which, when placed together like clues in an escape room, gave the time for a Yahoo! livestream in which Taylor announced the name of her album and released the first single, Shake it Off. In October, she began posting one lyric snippet a day on Instagram - now gone from there, but preserved on Taylor Swift Web with a little poking about - and eventually set going individual countdowns for the singles and then album. These patterns of clues encouraged both fans and more mainstream media (Bustle, Just Jared, Hollywood Reporter, Stereo Gum, and even Billboard) to engage with, theorise about, and occasionally just wildly guess at what was coming in Taylor's songs and music videos. These "Easter Eggs" made engagement and anticipation an active rather than a passive situation, and ensured that even outside the news Taylor was being discussed - and was trending - on social media.

Despite having hundreds of millions of followers by this time, Taylor also managed to make it feel as if she was engaging broadly with her fanbase. This included leaving replies to fans on Instagram, something which became known as #Taylurking and may have been inspired by Rihanna's Rihplies - or, to be fair, by any number of celebrities who engaged in this way. As will be discussed in chapter 10, she was also very active on tumblr, liking fan posts and theories, which people began to tag with #TaylorLiked and which a tumblr was even founded to track.

More than that, she also began to invite smaller subsets of fans to more intimate events, both in the lucky draw 1989 Swiftstakes (which gave out 1,989 prizes drawn from codes provided in Canada and mainland US physical CDs) and in the first "Secret Sessions", where handpicked individuals with heavy Taylor Swift fannish social media presence were invited in groups of 89 to visit Taylor's homes and hear a preview of the album. This would go on to be considered one of the highest prizes in Swiftie fandom, because while there was an expectation - which was met - of fans keeping the content secret until the physical album release, the events themselves were not secret at all. They were covered by Vanity Fair and a Behind the Scenes was posted on Taylor's youtube, publicising the experience as a sort of reward to highly-engaged superfans. For many more-than-casual fans, it vastly increased their intensity of engagement in the hopes of receiving similar or alternate rewards - but it may have also been a contributing factor to some of the elitism, and occasionally snobbishness, which can be found in some parts of Taylor's fandom to this day. Secret Session attendees became BNFs (big name fans, for those not used to fandom parlance), a sort of microcelebrity in their own right.

In short, in Taylor's media appearances and fan interactions, a shifting pattern can be seen to account for the fact that her fanbase was now in the tens of millions. Taylor needed to - and managed to - shift her behaviour so that fans continued to feel contacted and engaged even though it was simply impossible for her to reach out to everyone who wanted interaction in a way it been in meet-and-greet lines of her debut days. Taylor expanded her parasocial relationships to millions of people, and by keeping control of her own social media accounts - something which she was confirmed to do even in her Lover days during Miss Americana - it helps to maintain the authenticity of her brand.

It's worth noting that this was still, in some ways, before the days of mega-accounts. The first Twitter with 100 million followers was Katy Perry, in June 2017; 100 million Instagram followers was Selena Gomez in September 2016; 100 million Facebook likes was Vin Diesel in July 2016 while 100 million Facebook followers was Cristiano Ronaldo in October 2014. Taylor has never held records of this sort, but the extent of her engagement across multiple media platforms puts her in a position of innovator. It also leaves her vulnerable to discovering dark sides and side effects that were perhaps not anticipated, as will be seen play out on multiple occasions.

In 2013, there had been accusations that Taylor was becoming "overexposed" (Stylecaster, The Atlantic, even the New York Times, among others), but that was a year without a new album release, and much of the criticism in the end seems to loop back to her perceived dating "habits". (Fans tend to be aware that the media massively overblew Taylor's image on this front.) Blank Space certainly hit back at this media narrative, but Taylor also publicly and forcefully took a narrative of being single and happy in New York with a large group of female friends. In her 30 Things I Learned Before Turning 30 Elle interview in 2019 Taylor would also talk about how her insecurity contributed to her building and publicising this friendship group, indicating that while the friendships were real, the publicising it may have been a mixture of her very real emotional reactions and the marketing need to readdress her media narrative and change it from the Blank Space man-hungry relationship predator that she had found herself being portrayed as by the age of just 23.

In 2014, though, the word overexposed was not applied as Taylor provided fresh content in the form of her new album. This is despite the fact that Taylor Pictures provides very clear evidence of how much more visible Taylor was in this era - it lists over 18,000 'candids' of her in 2014, more than twice seen in any other year. The mean number is just under 3,000, which shows just how much the 2014-6 1989 era stands out. Taylor was everywhere: magazines, television, radio, the internet. But as she was providing not just fresh content but a fresh 'era', it seemed to be welcomed, fresh material to be consumed, scrutinised, and picked apart.

In October 2014, in an interview with NPR, Taylor described how she felt that she was "looked at as sort of public property", but still emphasised her connection with her fans was a core part of her marketing strategy and how she sold as many albums as she did. In a way, this sums up the 1989 era: through intense social media use and brand presentation, Taylor managed to make herself appear available to the whole world, while keeping her fans feeling as if they had access to things that the general public did not.

Not long after releasing 1989, Taylor pulled all of her music from Spotify, in a move which some scoffed at. (Notably, Jacob Davidson confidently wrote for Time "Why Taylor Swift Will Lose Her Battle With Spotify"; link is to the Wayback Machine as the original has been deleted. I can't imagine why.) However, others pointed out that while it was a financial risk, it made her physical sales more exclusive and thus desirable, but also that it meant she was quite literally putting her money where her mouth was when it came to artists' rights. She also withheld her music from Apple Music [Wayback Machine link] until Apple agreed to pay musicians for plays of their music even during the three-month free trials they were offering to customers. After Apple agreed, Taylor allowed her music to be played on their system - but not yet on Spotify. Taylor had visibly taken a stand for the rights of artists to be paid for their work, and had been successful about it.

 

 

However, the outlook did not stay rosy forever. Being so central in the public eye, Taylor talked about how she had to hire extra security against death and kidnapping threats, and be constantly aware of people potentially trying to take nude or partially nude photos of her. Her twitter and instagram were hacked in January 2015, with the threat that is usually made to female stars to release nude images. Taylor had spoken about stalking threats in 2012, but they only seemed to multiply as she grew more famous; it does not even seem to be possible to find a list of them all, as one list stops with the twelve most known, while podcast Disgraceland (about music, true crime, and transgressive fiction) has an entire episode just about Taylor Swift's known stalkers. Taylor spoke about how the 1989 album spent over a year only on her phone for fear that it would leak, and became famous during this time for taking polaroids - unhackable - rather than using any digital photography.

More than just the personal threats, however, media began to turn against her again through 2015 and 2016. Some of the criticism was reasonable, even nuanced - asking why the ballerinas in Shake it Off, performing a traditionally privileged dance style, the only dancing group with no people of colour; pointing out that the Wildest Dreams music video 1950s African setting was an era of colonialism and horrific treatment of native peoples (Taylor apologised and donated proceeds from the video to charity); discussing that while Taylor seemed to be moving into feminism, it was a rather limited and non-intersectional concept. Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams covered 1989 in full, explaining that he admires Taylor Swift's work, leading to a spree of mansplaining so grand that music journalists felt an understandable need to call it out. When Taylor Swift sang Taylor's words, it was "goofy", "wistful" or "banal", but when a middle-aged man sang them they became "urgent, confessional, lonely". I would be complex, I would be cool indeed.

However, some took a much darker turn. While IBM BigFix used Taylor's image and known cybersecurity stance to encourage internet safety, others on the internet used her images for quotes from Hitler and other far-right sentiments*. Camille Paglia (who has published extensively among feminist literature but who has also viciously criticised about every famous feminist in history, identifies as transgender but has compared trans rights to "special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity", disbelieves global warming, and has spoken in favour of pedophilic group NAMBLA) called her an "obnoxious Nazi Barbie". Naturally, this assessment was widely spread without considering who was making it.

In April 2016, Taylor spoke in interview about being "a national lightning rod for slut shaming". After breaking up with Calvin Harris in June 2016 and very publicly dating Tom Hiddleston, Taylor was roundly mocked by just about every celebrity-relationship-focused media outlet for the highly performative, and perceived as fake, nature of the relationship. After two years moving away from the public 'maneater' narrative, Hiddleswift pushed her firmly back into it, even before Tom borrowed an I ❤️TS tee that a fan had sent Taylor and turned himself and their relationship into an international focus for mockery.

Then Snakegate happened. Most Taylor Swift fans know by now how Snakegate went down, but a full and clear timeline can be found with Cosmopolitan of all places.. Back in 2009, Kanye interrupted Taylor at the Grammys to protest what he perceived to be racism in the awards when Beyoncé did not win Best Female Video (Beyoncé had in fact won Best Video, and the Grammys does not like to double-award); he apologised publicly a couple of days later, then reached out privately shortly after. In 2010, he apologised again on Twitter and stated that he had written a song for her, but when she released Innocent shortly afterwards retracted his apology and complained that Taylor had never defended him for his actions. In 2013, Kayne stated he had "not one regret" about what he did; some have described this as a retraction of his apology, but it could also be that he considers the discussion and outcome to have been worth his missteps. By 2015, Taylor was presenting Kanye with an award at the VMAs, there was talk of a collaboration, and (jokingly or not) she volunteered to be his Vice President nominee when he spoke about running for President. All seemed healed. Then, in February 2016, Kanye released a track called Famous, which included the lyric "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous." He claimed to have Taylor's consent for the lyric, which she denied. At the Grammys in February, Taylor included in her speech, "I want to say to all the young women out there—there are going to be people along the way who are going to try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame", not using names but still making a clear reference. In June, Kim Kardashian joined in with a GQ interview saying that not only were the lyrics approved, but that the approval was filmed, and then Kanye released the video for Famous which at one point features a naked wax doll replica of Taylor (amid other wax dolls of celebrities, including Donald Trump, domestic violence perpetrator Chris Brown, and serial rapist Bill Cosby) next to Kanye in bed, her crotch barely covered by fabric. On July 18th, Kim posted about National Snake Day, before releasing the recording of the conversation with Taylor in pieces on her Snapchat. Taylor can be heard tentatively agreeing to the idea that from Kanye's point of view, the incident seemed to make Taylor suddenly seen everywhere, but she also talks about her fear of overexposure. The word "bitch" was never discussed, nor were the naked waxworks, but it didn't matter - hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people swarmed Taylor's social media, bombarding her with snake emojis, getting #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty to trend, and sending her the message that they wanted her to stop existing. 

From overexposure to so over it, Taylor Swift's marketing and media presence in the 1989 era may just have flown itself too close to the sun.

 

 

The public did not even know all of what was going on behind the scenes. Taylor spoke to her fans, more than to the press, about her mother's breast cancer diagnosis in 2015. However, in September 2015, Taylor was sued by a radio DJ for defamation after she had informed his place of work that he sexually assaulted her in 2013. Within a month, Taylor countersued for assault and battery, and the trial continued throughout 2016 and into 2017. At the time, however, the situation was not well-known to the public, and it was not until 2019, in Miss Americana, that the full story would be widely known. It was also in the Lover era that Taylor would talk most openly about an eating disorder which affected her during this time period, and how it linked to the social pressure and public scrutiny she found herself under. In the music video for the song Lover itself, she seemed to acknowledge the fan theory that the scene of diving into a fishbowl was a metaphor for this extremely exposed and publicised part of her life.

 

 

*Curiously, in 2017 I played Dungeons & Dragons with someone who was a regular on 4chan's /b/ at the time and witnessed the first examples of Nazi quotes being photoshopped onto images of Taylor. He said that the people who made the first images did it in jest, never expecting it to be taken seriously or copied, but that it took of in a way they did not expect.

Further reading:

 

 

reputation and Lover: Shedding Her Skin

On August 16 2017, Taylor Swift's social media disappeared. Two days later, a glitchy video of a snake was posted across her accounts, with two more following. For a few days, the world at large seemed baffled, as represented in Google search results for Taylor between August 17 and 20; some thought it might be a result of being hacked again (see 2015), some thought it might be a belated response to Snakegate as the one year anniversary had fairly recently passed, while some media outlets simply reported on the strangeness of the act. However, many of Taylor's fans already recognised the patterns of a new era (and knew that an album was in some ways overdue, with three years having already passed since 1989) and immediately predicted that new music was coming.

They were right. On August 23, Taylor announced that her next album would be called reputation, and that its lead single would be Look What You Made Me Do. The music video for this song debuted the next day, and intentionally and satirically engaged with Taylor's public image, media-created public narratives - in ways that the mass media, sadly, did not often get. Look What You Made Me Do could be its own chapter in terms of examining Taylor's brand, authenticity vs verisimilitude (and how that's not such a dichotomy after all), and the way that she has made and remade herself to survive in the entertainment industry and the media cycle.

Marie Claire did a roundup of critic takes on August 28 which frankly only go to show how critics missed the entire point of Look What You Made Me Do - it was not "verging on satire", it was satire; and writing off "I don't like your tilted stage" as "artless digs" completely misses how this line is at the same time commentary on media control and manipulation (at which Taylor had been perhaps a world leader, only to be outdone by Kim Kardashian), on gender politics, and on the disorientating media cycle which made it so that she never seemed to have a stable 'floor' beneath her. The LA Times at least spotted the musical and production skill which went into the song, belying the simplistic label that was slapped on it - but the lyrics could only really be considered simple by Taylor's historically complex, country-music-rooted standard, compared to pop music where science has shown a trend of lyric simplification and a history of word repetition. In 2003, Jay-Z had already called this out with "I dumbed down for my audience and doubled my dollars. They criticize me for it, yet they all yell holla" - note the more grammatically sophisticated use of "yet" instead of "but" that sneaks in.

As early as August 29, The Telegraph was dropping articles subtitled "all the references explained", while Entertainment Weekly was claiming that viewers "might have missed" such blazingly obvious concepts as the fact that Taylor was rising out of a literal grave at the beginning of the video. When the lyrics say, "I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time", I am frankly baffled how the media thought this simplistic of a view was insightful - but at least they were starting to realise that there were layers of symbolism and references in the music video. In 2019, Taylor spoke to Entertainment Weekly to say "I think the most Easter-eggy video of my career thus far is LWYMMD. Literally the whole video is just an Easter egg, it’s like thousands of Easter eggs. There are some that people still haven't found. It will be decades before people find them all."; sure enough, in 2022 fans are still finding new Easter Eggs and trying to interpret ones that they think are there but aren't sure of. 

Despite literally releasing a song about media narratives being simplified and parcelled up, and how she herself had engaged in that in order to succeed, critics failed to realise that Taylor was doing the same thing again. Fans, though, were starting to take notice - at least one piece from September 1 by Hazel Butler, "10 Things Everyone Got Wrong About Look What You Made Me Do", pointed out the layers of self-reference, the concept of not just metaphorical but literal death of young woman used by the media, and how Taylor's message was much more aimed at her mass public audience than at similarly famous individuals.

Following Look What You Made Me Do, the music videos for singles ...Ready For It? and and End Game were significantly tamer and more narrative; despite their clearly increased budget and pop-futurist aesthetics, the narrative structure and romantic overtones of them were more lyrically in line with what people had come to expect from Taylor. However, their existence in a world in which Look What You Made Me Do had been released encouraged people to question and critically engage with them and with the narrative they were creating - what parts were Taylor Swift, what parts were the narrative that she was creating, and what parts were the narrative that the media wanted to push onto her? This is a clear step-up from the Easter Egg-based engagement of the 1989 era, let alone the liner notes of Red and before. Taylor was encouraging her fans to engage with the nature of her fame and her narrative - something which unfortunately did not seem to permeate as deeply as she perhaps wanted. 

Gorgeous was somewhere in between the carving metatext of Look What You Made Me Do and the apparent clarity of the other two singles, with Taylor clearly referencing her own lovestruck personae of earlier years - while "guess I'll just stumble on home to my cats, alone" was both a reference to her well-known love of cats but possibly also to an interviewer at the 2015 Grammys who took it upon themselves to ask her who she was going home with instead of discussing the music that had brought her to the award show. Taylor responded with “I will not be going home with any man tonight….I’m going to go hang out with my friends and then I’m going home to my cats”, a response that was perhaps both more clever and more polite than the sexist and sexualised question deserved. This reference to the man-eater narrative that had followed her even after her release of the satirical Blank Space is cutting, but hidden amid the overt romanticism and playful nature of the song.

Then, on November 10, reputation was released - and with it came a prologue, featured on the first page of the CD booklet and the Target-exclusive magazines - which purported to outline Taylor's reputation era image and in many ways shed light on her previous ones as well. It read:

Here's something I've learned about people.

We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us. We know our friend in a certain light, but we don't know them the way their lover does. Just the way their lover will never know them the same way that you do as their friend. Their mother knows them differently than their roommate, who knows them differently than their colleague. Their secret admirer looks at them and sees an elaborate sunset of brilliant color and dimension and spirit and pricelessness. And yet, a stranger will pass that person and see a faceless member of the crowd, nothing more. We may hear rumors about a person and believe those things to be true. We may one day meet that person and feel foolish for believing baseless gossip.

This is the first generation that will be able to look back on their entire life story documented in pictures on the internet, and together we will all discover the after-effects of that. Ultimately, we post photos online to curate what strangers think of us. But then we wake up, look in the mirror at our faces and see the cracks and scars and blemishes, and cringe. We hope someday we'll meet someone who will see that same morning face and instead see their future, their partner, their forever. Someone who will still choose us even when they see all of the sides of the story, all the angles of the kaleidoscope that is you.

The point being, despite our need to simplify and generalize absolutely everyone and everything in this life, humans are intrinsically impossible to simplify. We are never just good or just bad. We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves, our deepest secrets and our favorite stories to tell at a dinner party, existing somewhere between our well-lit profile photo and our drivers license shot. We are all a mixture of our selfishness and generosity, loyalty and self-preservation, pragmatism and impulsiveness. I've been in the public eye since I was 15 years old. On the beautiful, lovely side of that, I've been so lucky to make music for living and look out into crowds of loving, vibrant people. On the other side of the coin, my mistakes have been used against me, my heartbreaks have been used as entertainment, and my songwriting has been trivialized as 'oversharing'.

When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each incorrect theory, because it's 2017 and if you didn't see a picture of it, it couldn't have happened right?

Let me say it again, louder for those in the back...

We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them that they have chosen to show us.

There is a lot to unpack in this short piece, and of all of the prologues that Taylor has released of her albums, it is the one that seems to least directly explain the music within. It even states as such - this prologue is about Taylor, and her conception of self. While it does give the album not one but two narratives - one of personal complexity, and one referred to as "their future, their partner, their forever" linking to the love story that Taylor has always described as being embedded in reputation - it does not spell them out in quite such an easy way for the listener.

Despite the abundance of Easter Eggs in Look What You Made Me Do, there were no liner notes in reputation. Through the Secret Sessions that were held again - this time with slightly larger parties, totalling over 500 people, and receiving the same publicity as they had during 1989 - Taylor told various attendants that the songs were about Joe Alwyn, whom she had publicly been revealed to be dating through UK trashy tabloid The Sun on May 16 2017. (Wayback Machine link to the article - it's still there, but on principle I do not wish to give the Sun clicks.) The news quickly spread, but as can be seen from the Google Trends graph for Joe's name, interest dropped off for a few months until September/October when reputation was being heavily marketed. Successive peaks on Joe's name tend to reflect times that Taylor is putting out new music, when interest revives in her relationship.

However, the album itself did not use names. Only one - Call It What You Want - said "he" rather than "you". Most of the general public did not particularly know or care who Taylor was dating, and in some senses that caused them to access the music itself directly. Taylor had said in the prologue that there was no "paternity test", and in a very literal sense this was because the music came from her, and her experiences, mediated only by interaction with her cowriters/coproducers. All of her songs before had been the same, of course, but this time Taylor clearly wanted to emphasise this to the people interacting with her music.

 

 

The reputation era was, to Taylor's fans, noticeably shorter than any of her previous ones. This may be partially related to the tour length - Fearless lasted fifteen months in total; Speak Now, thirteen; Red, fifteen; 1989, seven; and reputation just six and a half. However, more noticeable was the fact that by March 2019, Taylor appeared at the iHeartRadio Music Awards in an opalescent large-sequinned jumpsuit, and shortly after began posting images on her social media that were in pastels or bright colours, very different to the reputation aesthetic. By April 26 2019, ME! was released both as a single and with a music video, with Taylor indicating that the music video once again held plenty of Easter Eggs to the rest of the album. On May 9, Taylor appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly wearing a large number of pin badges which she confirmed were Easter Eggs or references to the upcoming album. Taylor returned to interviewing extensively, in magazines, on the radio, and on television; she did a number of live performances; she was once again engaging with fans on social media, and while she was not as publicly visible as she had been in her 1989 era she was back to presenting with a more affable and approachable air.

Among the shift from the reputation era to what would become the Lover era, however, Taylor was increasingly being open with the public and media about her involvement in the business side of her own affairs, speaking up regarding the ownership of her masters. Essentially, there are two shares to the copyright of any song - one held by the writer(s), the other by the owner of the masters - and it is along these lines that income from the songs, and control of them, is split. It is not uncommon for masters to be held by the recording company, meaning that a recording company can control future use of a song and gain the money from that. While song writers and co-writers have a number of rights, song writers are often encouraged to sign away these rights in return for an upfront or regular payment. For singers who do not write their own material, this means that they may have no control at all over their music once it is recorded. As a writer or co-writer of every single one of her songs, Taylor at least retained some control from that side, but she indicated that she had tried for years to buy her masters from Big Machine Records and had been repeatedly denied.

In November 2018, Taylor officially moved to Universal Music Group's Republic Records, bringing with her two major stipulations: firstly, that she owned her own masters from this point on; and secondly, that any future sale of UMG's Spotify shares result in the money going to their artists and not into their own pockets. However, in June 2019 and amidst the rising excitement for Lover, Taylor posted to her social media that she had just been informed that her masters had been sold to Scooter Braun, an individual who had been directly involved in harassment of her in 2016, who has extensive rumours of mistreating his clients (many of whom seem to have severe and public drug problems), and who bragged about not badmouthing Ariana Grande during the time he was fired and trying to get rehired by her. Perhaps inspired in part by Kelly Clarkson urging her to rerecord her songs, and because she owned or co-owned the written lyrics and thus had the right to do so, Taylor announced in August that she would be rerecording all of her original six albums.

(It would later be reported in the Financial Times [12ft Ladder Non-Paywalled Version] Braun believed that Taylor was bluffing, or at least was telling potential investors that she was. Whether this was underestimating Taylor Swift, or lying to potential investors, might be difficult to say.)

Even with this continuing, Lover was released on August 23 2019, being made immediately available on streaming services in line with Taylor's new contract with UMG and with the changes to artist payments that she had managed to force out of major streaming sites. In September 2019, Taylor announced plans for "Lover Fest", a limited series of performances in North America and Europe, which many felt was related to the decline in her mother's health and recurrence of cancer which Taylor talked about in January 2020 and which may have been foreshadowed in Soon You'll Get Better. Lover Fest was delayed, and then cancelled, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and before too long Taylor would be releasing more music and entering a new era even more quickly than before. 

During the Lover era, although the aesthetics were far more pleasant and open, Taylor also chose to be openly political in her support of the Democratic party, of women's rights, and of LGBT rights. The documentary Miss Americana, released in January 2020, was very much part of the Lover era. Although Taylor had also been advocating for the rights of singers against industry powers and streaming companies for some years, the explosive effect of her making public the matter of her masters has had a significant cultural impact. This choice to be open about her business acumen and her role in her own business decisions was also discussed in Miss Americana, where Taylor discusses how it is seen as inappropriate for women to show business knowledge and skill in as much of a way that it is seen as divisive to have a political stance - even if that stance is about equal rights and protections.

In reputation, Taylor acknowledged her media savvy and the way in which she has reinvented and redeveloped herself over the years to maintain a career longer than most can manage in pop music - and while avoiding the worst of the outcomes that normally seem to face child stars. In Lover and through Miss Americana, she also took on publicly her role as a businessperson as well as a storyteller and performer. Where 1989 had sought to engage her fans with her music, reputation encouraged them to analyse and interpret it, and Lover asked them to look beyond the music into the world that helped to create and shape it, deepening and broadening engagement both at the same time.

 

 

Further reading:

Notes:

Once again, the Wayback machine was absolutely essential in putting together this timeline. All of the information about when Taylor joined various social media sites is publicly available, either from the site itself or from documented Swiftie excitement when she finally joined a new site.

It might seem I'm being harsh against the Kardashians in this chapter. I honestly respect Kim's work in recent years, from getting the Armenian genocide recognised to prison reforms, and consider sex workers to be due all respect and hope that she was consulted, and consented to, the release and marketing of her sex tape. (Given that in 2018 she indicated she was on illicit drugs during the filming, I fear that this may not be the case.) However, I feel that the way that Kris Jenner uses her family as a brand and as marketing tools is distasteful, including the plastic surgery performed on all including the youngest members (which is blatant in images despite denials), and the way that she seems to have used the rumours regarding Kendall's sexuality (in 2018 Kendall spoke to Vogue and denied being gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgender) to build up publicity about her talking about deep secrets only to have her "come out" as having acne and anxiety. While these are issues which it is valid to talk about, the build up to them seems to repeatedly play on sexuality rumours and coming out narratives in an uncomfortable manner.

Chapter 10: Easter Eggs: Clothing & Accessories [Part One: General]

Summary:

A summary and light analysis of clothing and accessories over the years which some feel may be deliberate indicators by Taylor that she is not heterosexual. This chapter would absolutely not have been possible without Taylor Swift Styled, they are an incredible record of over a decade of Taylor's wardrobe and styling.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Clothing as Easter Eggs

 

Taylor is famous for dropping "easter eggs" - references to past or present information, or clues and foreshadowing as to future releases - into her public persona, media, interviews and appearances. An example discussion can be seen in her 2019 video interview with Entertainment Weekly, where she says

I love to communicate with Easter Eggs. I think the best messages are cryptic ones.

For her first example of material, she then continues:

Easter Eggs can be left on clothing or jewellery. This is one of my favourite ways to do this, because you wear something that foreshadows something else, um, and people don't usually find out this one immediately but they know you're probably sending a message; they'll figure it out in time. Lots of examples of this exist over the history of my career.

And, for some, the clothing which Taylor has worn over the years, particularly but not solely during her Lover era, may indicate that she is deliberately signalling a non-heterosexual identity, as well as in some cases indicating muses or other information.

 

Confirmed Clothing Easter Eggs

I'll start with a few examples of clothing easter eggs which have been confirmed, in the above video and elsewhere.

Red shoes = Red as an album name. On 13 December 2011 (her 22nd birthday), Taylor posted a picture on various social media of herself wearing red shoes. The full announcement of the album would not be until 13 August 2012, eight months later, on a live webchat. The image of these shoes was included in Taylor's 2019 Entertainment Weekly video, officially confirming them as an Easter Egg.

 

 

"Haters Gonna Hate" = a line from Shake It Off. On 19 May 2013, at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards, Taylor performed 22. During this performance, she wore a t-shirt with a unicorn whose rainbow thought bubble features the words "Haters gonna hate". On 18 August 2014, on a livestream, Taylor announced information about her album 1989 and debuted Shake It Off as the lead single. Once again, the image of this shirt was included in the 2019 Entertainment Weekly video.

 

 

Lightning jacket = This is What You Came For. On 15 April 2016, at Coachella, Taylor had a photo posted of her wearing a black jacket with a lightning strike symbol on the back. A few days later, Calvin Harris updated his social media to show the same image, and on 29 April (two weeks later) the song This is What You Came For was released. The lightning strike image was revealed to be the single artwork, to go with the lyrics "lightning strikes every time she moves".

 

 

Butterfly shoes = Lover imagery. On 14 March 2019, Taylor attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards in a shimmery pastel sequined jumpsuit and butterfly-heeled stilettos. At the time, it was speculated that she was wearing the work of British designers because she was living in Britain most of the time and dating a British person; however, with hindsight it became apparent that butterflies were a central part of the Lover-era aesthetic and that this was their first appearance. Once again, the image of these shoes was included in the 2019 Entertainment Weekly Video.

 

 

Pin badges = various references. For her May 2019 cover of Entertainment Weekly, Taylor wore a denim jacket covered with a number of pins, various of which would later be confirmed to be easter eggs or references. These included:

  • The "Cats" the musical pin referring to her appearance in the movie
  • The "Awesome" pin referring to lyrics in Me!
  • The "Calm" pin referring to lyrics in You Need to Calm Down
  • The "Dixie Chicks" pin referring to the band now called The Chicks, who would appear as a collab on Soon You'll Get Better

(Yes, this chapter will return to these pins later on, but for now I'll stick to the ones which are easily confirmed as easter eggs).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally, in the last couple of weeks of the first US leg of the Eras tour, Taylor wore an ever-increasing number of pale or bright blue designs for the various sections of her performance. Fans expected the use of this colour to be linked to an upcoming announcement of 1989 (Taylor's Version), and were proven right when on 9 August (or 8/9 in US date order) Taylor proceeded to announce that exact thing.

 

 

Unconfirmed But Considered Highly Likely

 

Naturally, many of Taylor's easter eggs have not been officially confirmed over the years, but are generally accepted by fandom. These include, but are not limited to:

  • In the Look What You Made Me Do music video, Taylor at one point dances with eight male dancers who are all wearing "I ❤️ TS", generally believed to be a reference to the tee with the same words on worn by Tom Hiddleston at one point in 2016. During the video, Taylor also stands on top of a pile of her former selves in various famous outfits which she has worn, and at the end a number of replicas of her appear in different outfits from events and music videos.
  • For her performance at the 2019 American Music Awards, Taylor wore a boxy, prison-uniform-esque white shirt with the names of her six previous albums printed on it, which was then torn away before she performed her medley. This is generally accepted to be a direct challenge to the way that Scott Borchetta had sold her masters to Scooter Braun (whom Taylor considers the worst possible owner) and how both had then threatened to prevent her from performing her own songs at this event. 
  • In early December 2012, Taylor was photographed with Harry Styles in a zoo in New York City wearing a sweater with a fox on it. Whether this is supposed to have inspired the lyrics for "they are the hunters, we are the foxes" in I Know Places, or was inspired by it, is more heavily disputed, but the link has been made.
  • On 28 August 2022, Taylor attended the MTV Music Video Awards in a stunning Oscar de la Renta dress made up of strings of clear jewels over a nude base (in some places called a "chandelier dress"); it has been described both as a reference to the silver dress she wore 13 years earlier when Ye interrupted her on stage at the same events, and as a reference to the image of her in a bathtub of jewels in the Look What You Made Me Do music video. The same dress would appear in the finale of the second season of HBO's Gossip Girl. (It also looks quite a lot like a dress she wore for Vogue in May 2016, during her "Bleachella" era which some speculate was related to an era/album concept which was cancelled or heavily reworked into reputation.)
  • In November 2021, Taylor appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers in a sleek black dress with dropped shoulders and a dipped neckline, drawing comparisons to Princess Diana's 1994 "revenge dress" - a not-dissimilar black dress which Diana wore and looked fantastic in right after her husband Prince Charles had admitted on television that he had been unfaithful to her. It is speculated that this song is a reference to "lately I've been dressing for revenge" in the track Vigilante Shit on Midnights. 

 

 

Colours to Watch Out For

So, there are a lot of pride flags out there(!), and I don't expect everyone to be familiar with all of them. For quick visual reference, these are the flags which are most commonly in use and which are most often considered to be relevant to discussion when it comes to queer colour palettes which Taylor Swift may be wearing.

First row: pride flags/LGBTQIA+ flags/queer flags. The most common traditional pride flag is a rainbow formed of stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. The Philadephia Flag or Rainbow POC flag is stripes of black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. The Progress Pride Flag has a right-hand chevron of black, brown, pale blue, pale pink and white pointing into stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. (There are a number of other variants of the rainbow flag; the truly original flag includes a pink stripe at the top, and a cyan colour between green and blue; the Intersex Progress Pride flag has at the centre of the chevron a yellow triangle with a purple circle to represent the intersex community.)

Second row: lesbian flags. Until 2010, the most common lesbian flag was considered the Labrys flag, which was purple with a black triangle and a white double-headed axe (a labrys). The lesbian flag created in 2010 had stripes of dark pink, mid pink, light pink, white, light reddish-pink, red, and dark red (with or without a lipstick kiss mark). The current most common lesbian flag, or sunset lesbian flag (created in 2018), has stripes of orange, light orange, white, pink and dark pink.

Third row: m-spec flags, or flags relating to attraction to multiple genders. The pansexual flag has stripes of pink, yellow and cyan. The bisexual flag has stripes of pink, purple and blue. The omnisexual flag has stripes of light pink, pink, black, blue and light blue.

 

 

Additionally, the colour purple, especially the shades and words violet and lavender, has long been associated with the LGBTQ+ community. The earliest links may go back to Sappho, as early as the sixth century BCE! As she described a lover as having "many crowns of violet", in the nineteenth century the flower came to be used as a form of queer coding or flagging, where queer individuals try to communicate with each other or sympathetic allies without gaining the attention of those who would do harm. In at least 1895, the term "lavender marriage" was used to describe a marriage between a gay man and a lesbian woman for protection or to gain rights. Lesbian poet Renée Vivien revived interest in violets in the 1890s and 1900s both through her translations of Sappho's poetry and through her own frequent use of the words violet or purple, likely in reference to her childhood sweetheart Violet Shillito. Oscar Wilde described his time with a male lover as "purple hours", By the early twentieth century, it is said that queer women would wear violets as a form of public flagging. In the 1927 play "La Prisonnière" (The Captive) by Édouard Bourdet, which is about a lesbian woman pining for another woman while being engaged to a man, the female love interest leaves violets as a sign of her love. The play was banned under obscenity grounds after 160 performances, and even in 1934 Harpers Bazaar reported that the association of violets with queerness was still strong enough to be affecting the flower industry. In 1920, in Weimar Germany, pride song Das Lila Leid (The Lavender Song) was written amid a burgeoning queer subculture.

By the 1940s, the term "lavender set" was being used as a vaguely derogatory term for queer men; into the 1950s, the terms "lavender scare" accompanied harsher anti-LGBTQ+ fearmongering and even mainstream feminists called lesbians a "lavender menace". In response, the term was reclaimed, through terms such as "Lavender Brotherhood" and even the term "Lavender Menace" itself, and purple was used as a colour of solidarity and visibility in pride marches, events, stores and publications. The first queer bookstore in Scotland was called "Lavender Menace"; the queer rights movement was also sometimes called the "lavender revolution". 

See Violet Delights: A Queer History of Purple or How lavender became a symbol of LGBTQ resistance for more examples.

Obviously, purple is also just a great colour! But for certain words, especially violet and lavender, the association is very longstanding, and the fact that purple can be seen in so many pride flags today (not just the rainbow and bisexual flags, but also asexual, labrys lesbian, nonbinary, intersex, demisexual, graysexual, genderqueer, genderfluid, and more!) seems to indicate that it still holds a special place in the heart of many queer individuals.

 

 

Possible Queer-Flagging in Outfits

During the 1989 tour, the palette of Taylor's clothing included metallics, bright colours, and sharp lines. On the tour, her costumes included the following:

 

 

Firstly, for her performance of Welcome to New York (which noticeably includes the line "you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls"), Taylor wore a custom Jessica Jones jacket (information per the incredible Taylor Swift Style) with blue, pink and purple sequins; this is the colours of the bisexual pride flag. Secondly, one of her costumes for Style was a multicoloured two-piece custom Joseph Cassell costume (Taylor Swift Style); this may be the colours of the rainbow/pride flags.

 

 

In the midst of her reputation era, which was largely dominated by black, grey and khaki, there were marked flashes of rainbow and other bright colours in Taylor's clothing. These included:

 

In her September 2017 advert for AT&T ("Taylor's Up To Now", viewable on Youtube) Taylor wore a pair of Marc Jacobs 'Empire Strass Lace Up Sneakers' (Taylor Swift Styled) featuring a rainbow on them. During this advert, she also hid "in the closet" after eating someone's cookie dough, was locked into the closet, and had to crawl her way back out to the studio. 

  

First glimpsed in a commercial produced for Target to advertise reputation, this rainbow dress and shirt would go on to appear in the album art and on the 2018 calender. It combined an Ashish rainbow striped mini dress (Taylor Swift Styled) and matching shirt (Taylor Swift Styled). In the End Game music video, Taylor wore a long-sleeved, high-necked dress from the same line, and later went on to wear a Miu Miu jacket (more clearly visible in behind the scenes clips) with nearly a full rainbow of colours in it (Taylor Swift Styled).

In May 2018, Taylor was involved in another commercial, this time for Direct TV. Riding a giant caticorn (her own cat CGId to a huge horned creature!), Taylor wore a Marc Jacobs 'Rainbow Cotton Blend Sweater' (Taylor Swift Styled), and Ashish (again) 'Sequin Shorts w/ Rainbow Stripe' (Taylor Swift Styled). In this advert, she also looked pointedly at the camera and said, "Because I'm subtle".

 

Over the course of the reputation tour, Taylor wore a number of dresses for her performance of Delicate. The most common was a rainbow fringed dress, the first one as seen above. However, over the course of the tour she had alternate dresses: a navy/black/pink purple dress (which she described as making her feel like "a Tide pod"), a red/pink dress which could match the colours of the lesbian flag, a black/blue/blue-purple-pink dress which could match the omnisexual or bisexual flags, and a pink/purple glittering dress which with the fringing could match the bisexual flag.

In released rehearsal photos, Taylor also wore a white tee with a rainbow stripe across the chest (Taylor Swift Styled); in some meet and greet photos she also wore a pixellated rainbow hooded jacket (Taylor Swift Styled); in the Rep Room she wore a Marc Jacobs oversized sweater with blue, pink and yellow sequins (Taylor Swift Styled describes it as rainbow, but it is not as clear as the other items she wore during this time). 

During the reputation tour, specifically while performing Dress, backup dancers used extended poles with fabric (known, at least among bellydancing where the author of this meta first met them, as Isis Wings) to dance. These performances were inspired by, and each night dedicated to, Loie Fuller who pioneered their use and many other aspects of modern dance. Loie Fuller championed the rights of artists to own their own work - while Taylor's full fight to own her masters would not become public until 2019, it was doubtless known to her at this time. Her Sepent Dance combined light and fabric in synaesthetic experiences of colour. However, Loie Fuller was also openly lesbian, her performances ending with women showering violets onto the stage, and would later go on to found an all-women's dance company and recentre her work and art around women in a male-dominated world. The movement of the fabric was transformative, hiding Fuller's body and freeing her from constraints, but also rather illusionist in nature (fitting, giving the lyrics of So It Goes...). Fuller carefully crafted her stage persona, behaving and acting quite differently offstage by all accounts, and despite her 2016 biopic straightwashing her story, Taylor chose to honour Fuller every night of her award-breaking reputation tour.

 

 

Moving into the Lover era, rainbows were part of the core aesthetic, but it is still noticeable quite how many of them Taylor wore. The first appearance generally linked to the Lover aesthetic is the March 2019 iHeartRadio music awards, noted above for the inclusion of the butterfly-heeled shoes. They were paired with a pale purple sequined jumpsuit which seemed to look blue-purple-pink in the light, and which certainly surprised Taylor Swift Styled with it's small-brand affordability - indicating it was a meaningful choice for Taylor. This is also the outfit of hers that drag queen Jade Jolie would wear for her appearance in the You Need to Calm Down music video.

    

In her Time 100 photoshoot in April 2019, Taylor paired a very similar top with an Alexander McQueen pale purple blazer and fitted trousers (Taylor Swift Styled/trousers); she was also seen in a tie-dyed pink-blue or pink-purple-blue denim jacket the same month (identified by Elle), then made an appearance in Nashville in a two-piece butterly-embroidered lavender outfit from Rococo Sand (Taylor Swift Styled) to confirm and officially reveal the ME! mural.

 

Also in April 2019, Taylor appeared for a live interview during the NFL draft wearing a very brightly coloured rainbow robe from Retrofete (Taylor Swift Styled) and an EF Collection 'Rainbow Pinky Ring' (Taylor Swift Styled). and announced her new single ME!. In the Spotify canvas (short background video) for ME! Taylor wore a pastel rainbow tie-dye shirt (Taylor Swift Styled). The following day, the music video for ME! dropped, featuring a number of new outfits.

  

These included a custom Jessica Jones dress (her costume designer, not the Marvel character) (Taylor Swift Styled) and Luisa Alexander 'Multicolour Sapphire Rings' (Taylor Swift Styled) turned so that the full rainbow look was emphasised.

 

In her post on 26 April to officially announce that she had adopted Benjamin (usually Benji), Taylor wore an Amiri men's shirt which appears to have either a rainbow or the colours of the pansexual flag on it. She also released her ME! merchandise, which included a number of shirts with yellow/blue/pink cloud patterns, rainbow applique lettering, or shuffled pastel rainbow coloured lettering. Meanwhile, one of her sweaters read "You can't spell awesome without ME!" with the colours fading from lilac to pink. In August, she would show another collaboration piece, this time a hoodie in cloudy, tie-dyed yellow, pink and blue. On 7 May 2019, Taylor did a video interview with Capitol 1 in which she wore a pink-purple-blue ombre plaid shirt (Taylor Swift Styled) and talked excitedly about announcements she was going to make with the album.

  

On 1 May 2019 (a few days earlier, but ordered for the ease of grouping photos) Taylor attended the Billboard Music Awards in a ruffled lavender dress with jewellery that included the rainbow pinky ring seen previously, a 'Multi Diamond Rainbow Chevron Spinning Ring' from the same collection (Taylor Swift Styled) and a custom Moritz Glik ring with purple stones (Taylor Swift Styled). She and Brendon Urie then went on to perform in matching custom outfits from Jessica Jones and Joseph Castell. Beneath the metallic tones, both Taylor and Brendon are wearing shades of cyan, yellow and pink - the colours of the pansexual flag. (Note that Brendan Urie came out as pansexual in 2018, only around a year previously.)

On 9 May, the Entertainment Weekly cover referenced earlier appeared, with Taylor wearing a variety of pins. Among those which were not explicitly explained within the magazine itself were the rainbow heart pin, the Banana Sparkl 'Rainbow Palette' pin with a rainbow of hearts on an artist's palette, and a pin of a tombstone saying "I tried" with a daisy in front of it, also from Banana Sparkl (Taylor Swift Styled). It was later assumed that the rainbow heart was a reference to the LGBTQ+ song You Need to Calm Down and support for GLAAD and the Equality Act which very publicly accompanied it, but technically speaking this was never confirmed. Taylor wore a rainbow heart pin, and never did say why.

 

On 14 May, Taylor posted to Instagram wearing a Free People 'Rainbow Wash Tee' (Taylor Swift Styled); it's unclear whether 'Free People' could be considered a reference to "The best people in life are free" from New Romantics, or is a coincidence. She was also photographed in the same top 24 May in Paris (Taylor Swift Styled). On 23 May, Taylor revealed a curated playlist on Apple Music featuring an emoji avatar over a real jumper, with a glittery rainbow heart (Taylor Swift Styled).

 

On 1 June 2019, the first day of pride month, Taylor performed ME! at Wango Tango. For the meet and greet, she was seen wearing Balmain palm-patterned denim shorts in muted pink, yellow and blue (Taylor Swift Styled), while for the performance itself she wore a custom piece from Jessica Jones and Joseph Castell with Stella McCartney sneakers (Taylor Swift Styled). While the piece can loosely be described as rainbow, the colours emphasised are bright yellow, blue and pink, the colours of the pansexual flag. Brendon Urie, who was again present for the performance, wore a DKNY white tee with rainbow text saying "100% love 100% equality 100% loud 100% proud 100% together 100% me" (Pop Buzz article). 

 

The music video for You Need to Calm Down dropped on 17 June 2019 (Youtube link), and over the course of the video Taylor wore an array of clothing and accessories. (For details of each costume, see Taylor Swift Styled on the pool outfit, the sunbathing outfit, and the purple-and-gold outfit.  While many of the rainbow items seem immediately appropriate for a music video specifically themed to gay rights, some of the details surprised people more. The combination of pink jacket, yellow floaty and cyan pool once again put people in mind of the pansexual flag, as did the H. Crown rings (pictured on the furthest right), while discussion immediately erupted whether Taylor's hair was blue/purple/pink (the colours of the bisexual flag) or green/blue/purple/pink (half of a pride flag).

Noticeably, in the You Need to Calm Down music video, various other pride flag palettes can be seen. As well as areas decorated and individuals clad in rainbows, there are shots which showcase the trans pride flag (for example 01:18 in the video, where Laverne Cox and Chester Lockhart are amid baby blue and pale pink), the blue tones of the gay male pride flag (for example 01:22 with Hayley Kiyoko and two individuals whom I could not identify) and orange and pink which may represent the lesbian flag (at 1:05 in the video, with an individual who has not to my knowledge been identified). The participants in this movie are not necessarily wearing flags which match their identities - note again Hayley Kiyoko in the colours of the gay male flag, while Jonathan Van Ness looks stunning in a rainbow sequined cape but is not specifically in the gay male colours (as he identified at the time; he would come out as nonbinary and begin using a variety of pronouns by 2022). However, the use of the different flag palettes did make one thing clear: Taylor Swift knew about pride flags beyond just the rainbow that most people recognise. It made some of her other palette choices look more as if they could have been deliberate.

  

In June 2019, Taylor posted behind the scenes footage of her wearing a sweater with a rainbow of stars on it (Taylor Swift Styled) with pastel-toned Stella McCartney shoes which had at least two-thirds of a rainbow on them (Taylor Swift Styled). The jumper would reappear on 9 August. In clips from the You Need to Calm Down post-filming party, Taylor was seen wearing a multicoloured sequined dress (Taylor Swift Styled), while to the Teen Choice Awards on 11 August Taylor wore a brightly coloured Versace outfit (Taylor Swift Styled) and a multicoloured custom ring from jewellery creators VRAM (Taylor Swift Styled). On 20 August, footage was also revealed of her working with Stella McCartney on their collaboration, wearing another pastel tie-dyed tee very similar to her ME! Spotify canvas one but this time from McCartney herself (Taylor Swift Styled).

On 5 August, Taylor posted to Instagram with a rainbow-filtered image of herself wearing a number of friendship bracelets made in one of her Secret Sessions. Among he names of her albums and cats, many people spotted a bracelet saying PROUD with pink, purple and blue beads - the colours of the bisexual flag. It was later confirmed that Taylor had been given the bracelet by one of the Secret Sessioners who was herself bisexual and had relatively recently come to terms with it.

But that still doesn't explain why Taylor wore it so prominently, making sure that the beads were readable and fairly central. Meredith's name, for example, is only partially visible. Taylor could easily have turned the bracelet so that the word was not visible - or explained to the creator that it wouldn't be appropriate for her to post pictures wearing a bisexual pride bracelet if she does not identify as bisexual. Plenty of people thought that this was Taylor coming out, and articles were written about (I'll go into that in full depth when I write up the Lover era in full.) and while the explanation of the creator being bisexual followed, that didn't actually explain why it was being worn and shown off like this.

 

  

On 22 August 2019, Taylor performed on Good Morning America in a pink blouse and custom shorts with what appeared to be pink, purple and blue sequins (Taylor Swift Styled). The music video for title song Lover was also released on this day, again featuring Taylor in a variety of outfits including a Stella McCartney jacket featuring a rainbow-winged heart (Taylor Swift Styled) and a pastel rainbow dress from Ralph & Russo where the front panels are again yellow, blue and pink (Taylor Swift Styled).

  

To celebrate Lover becoming her fourth #1 album in the UK, Taylor posted a picture of herself in a Saint Laurent shirt with sparkling stars in pink, yellow and blue shades (Taylor Swift Styled). Though the Apple music ad of 31 August was largely sepia-toned, the dress beneath was bright rainbow sequins from Attico (Taylor Swift Styled), while on 12 November Taylor returned to the bright sequins of Ashish (from reputation era) with a pink, yellow and blue plaid dress (Taylor Swift Styled) and rainbow platform heels (Taylor Swift Styled). As the Lover era went on, however, even Taylor Swift Styled noted that there was a marked dichotomy that appeared in her clothing between the rainbows-and-pastels, feminine brights and the dark/black, suitlike outfits that became more prevalent with time. Taylor Swift Styled speculated that this was more drawn from The Man and deliberately masculine dressing; some people with a measure of Gaylor information wondered whether something had happened during the album's rollout to drive Taylor away from most of the rainbows and bright colours - something such as the purchase of her masters in late June 2019.

For a while, not least because of lockdown making sure that there were few photographs of Taylor at all, rainbows and potentially flag-related palettes vanished entirely from Taylor's wardrobe.

On 1 December 2020, Taylor appeared as part of the ninth annual Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards. Attitude is the highest-selling LGBTQ+ magazine in the UK, and the Attitude Awards are for LGBTQ+ individuals and allies, and Taylor received the Attitude Icon Award. As well as wearing a red ribbon in honour of the fact that 1 December is World Aids Day, Taylor wore a 'space dye' sweater (Taylor Swift Styled) where each item is unique but all draw from the same rainbow palette. (Note that most of the awards from this event went to out LGBTQ+ individuals, while some went to individuals who had confirmed themselves to be cisgender and heterosexual such as Paloma Faith receiving the "Honorary Gay" award and Michelle Visage receiving the "Ally" award. Of the individuals who received prizes, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa did not fall into either category, as neither has publicly stated their orientation although both have been subject to speculation.)

 

When Wildest Dreams went viral on tiktok in September 2021, Taylor dropped Taylor's Version earlier than people expected (and while certain other songs, notably Shake It Off, were facing legal issues). While doing so, she wore a 'Rainbow Merino Wool Sweater' (Taylor Swift Styled); the colours here are darker, but did seem to mark the beginning of a return of rainbow patterns. More noticeable to some was the October 2021 appearance of the Awe Inspired Jewelry 'Le Duo' Necklace (Taylor Swift Styled), which features two women styled in gold. The brand confirmed that the piece was theirs, while their page for the necklace reads,

“These embracing figurative forms remind us that no matter a person’s gender, race, sexuality, or physicality, we are all worthy and in need of human connection and touch. In a time of profound isolation, an embrace is all we desire to feel whole again.”

 

 

 

For June 2022, Taylor's stylist Joseph Cassell posted a collage of Taylor wearing the six colours of the standard pride flag, captioned "Happy Pride🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️✨", with a second picture of himself with his husband and children. While Taylor is the most famous of Cassell's clients, and the pictures that he posted do represent his work, she is not the only client that he creates costumes for - yet all six of the photos are Taylor, when including even one would have been enough to get the attention of Swifties and the boost of her name. Note that he has also made a stunning rainbow dress previously for Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (December 2021), who does not label her sexuality but has made it clear that she is attracted to people of multiple genders (pride.com article).

 

  

In the run-up to Midnights, including the release of track names, Taylor wore a variety of vintage and vintage-inspired pieces in colours that evoked a 70s feel. Among these, individuals noted an open backed tank (Taylor Swift Styled) and ruffled gauze top (Taylor Swift Styled) which seemed to some to be right on the cusp of 70s colours and the sunset lesbian flag colours. Additionally, in the run-up to Midnights and then in the Lavender Haze music video, Taylor wore a lavender faux fur coat, again from Free People (Taylor Swift Styled). This outfit has reappeared on stage during the Eras tour, paired with a similarly-coloured shirt dress.

 

In the Bejewelled music video, Taylor went on to wear a custom bodysuit and boots from Michael Schmidt Studios (Taylor Swift Styled) featuring hundreds of Swarovski crystals. These were paired with a rainbow-toned loaned bracelet as well as the necklace, pictured, featuring jewels thought to represent all of her albums colours.

By Midnights and her Eras tour, Taylor has more strongly associated each album with a colour - for example, Speak Now is more strongly than ever associated with purple in turns of Eras costumes and in merchandise, when in fact the original album had purple on the main cover but red on the deluxe edition. By Eras, Taylor's association of the rainbow to owning her own music - her own past, her own voice - has become quite noticeable, and in Bejeweled it is noticeable that in wearing this multi-coloured outfit does she return to "sparkling", proving she is "still bejeweled".

Without the potential association with the pride flag, colour is clearly important to Taylor, and with each album that she rerecords she reclaims part of her own identity. However, because of the emergence of rainbows in her reputation era - an era of 'shedding' her old self and refusing to explain or apologise - and their preponderance in the Lover era which was not just one of placing LGBTQ+ at the centre of her narrative but also of owning her own masters for the first time and perhaps believing for a while that she had gained independence and control over her identity, it is possible that there is a tie between these two meanings. Rainbows are pride, and pride is freedom, and freedom is "sparkling". 

 

 

 

Fetish, Unicorns and Seagulls, Oh My!

 

Picture this: Sarah, creator and owner of Taylor Swift Style, feverishly searching through hardcore BDSM sex shop online inventories looking for clothes worn by Taylor Swift. 

It makes a little more sense in context - in the Bad Blood music video, Taylor wears a latex body suit which Taylor Swift Styled managed to locate on a fetishwear and BDSM gear website. They later mentioned that it had been confirmed that thousands had been spent on fetishwear for Bad Blood alone - $13,000 per some reports, though that number feels a little on-the-nose for Taylor. The writer of this meta can only imagine that Look What You Made Me Do ran up a similar sort of bill for the scenes of Taylor wearing a collar and wielding a riding crop in front of a large number of latex-clad models. (The crop would usually imply more of a dominatrix vibe, but the collar is very much a submissive symbol, so definitely some mixed messages there!)

Taylor also wrote and provided vocals for I Don't Wanna Live Forever, for one of the Fifty Shades movies (Zayn originally claimed he had done half of the songwriting, but later walked back this claim and said it was mostly or wholly Taylor's lyrics). 

Although Taylor's own lyrics have always tended more towards suggestive and sensuous, rather than overt, she has not been shy over the years about singing more sexual songs. She performed Pour Some Sugar on Me with Def Leppard in 2009, Yeah! with Usher during the Speak Now tour in 2011, and various other songs over time. The general public acted shocked when Taylor was caught on mic saying "shut the fuck up" at the VMAs in August 2013, but stories from meet and greets had been circulating for years about how Taylor was casual and comfortable with swearing, and how in her MySpace days she used to joke about her friends' boobs and joke about driving a "sex van". In other words, while Taylor's public image was kept pretty clean for several years, that doesn't mean that she considered herself above making sexual references even during this time.

In August 2015, she was seen wearing a fashion harness (which was strongly inspired by BDSM harnesses)... backwards. Although she joked that it was to always be ready for rock climbing, this could not exactly be a serious explanation.

One of the sections of Look What You Made Me Do which seems to have confused people the most is a section in which Taylor, clad in leather and studded clothing, poses on a motorbike with a group of other similar-clad women. She then lifts both bikes in the air, one in each hand. Speculation abounds as to the meaning or meanings - that she 'carried' Big Machine, that it is aimed at a motorcycle company called Lucky 13 who sued her for copyright infringement in 2014, or even a dig at Kanye who had a motorcycle-themed image in at least one of his music videos. In short, there has been no consensus.

 

However, there is a notable similarity with Dykes On Bikes, an international lesbian motorcycle club and charity involved in fights for feminist and LGBTQ+ causes, and have historically often provided marches with a feeling of security and protection. The association between queer women and motorbikes in the USA went back to at least the 1940s, with queer women finding relatively safe and steady employment in the US military during World War II, and with motorcycle riding as a form of rebellion, defiance, and independence. Dyke Marches, which often overlap with Dykes on Bikes groups and organisations, often run non-commercial marches and events as alternative option to mainstream capitalist/commercial pride events, and are usually explicitly inclusive of bi+/mspec and trans/nonbinary/GNC participants. In 2014, a Dyke March and Dykes on Bikes members appeared in Sense8.

   

 

Unicorns are legendary or mythological creatures, a medium or large mammal with a single long horn from the forehead. Versions may go back to the Indus Valley Civilisation (around 2,000 BCE) but seems to have solidified as meaning a horse with a single horn during the late Medieval period. A similar creature with two horns is called a bicorn; a winged unicorn is also called a pegacorn. Unicorns are fun, whimsical and beautiful creatures - but they do also have links with queer culture.

Unicorns have been linked to rainbows since at least the Victorian era as lucky, magical things; as the rainbow flag developed and spread in popularity from the late 1970s onwards, the unicorn seemed to spread with it. Many queer people, who are often treated by media as myths or as something other than human, feel closeness to mythological stories and legends as a result, including the unicorn. In particular, many bisexual, bi+ or m-spec individuals feel particular association with the unicorn, as acknowledgement of m-spec identities has lagged behind the acknowledgement of gay and lesbian ones, and biphobia can be experienced even within the LGBTQ+ community. As some bisexual people put it, they feel as if according to the media, neither exist. Others go further, and point out that not only are you more likely to see unicorns in mainstream media, but they actually get to be called unicorns and not "horses that don't like labels".

It is also worth acknowledging that 'unicorn' can have another meaning within the queer community, one which is not always meant as positively: it gets used for a bi+/m-spec woman who will date, act as a third for, or have threesomes with f/m couples. Because of the number of f/m couples that seem to flood lesbian dating sites looking for a woman to have threesomes with them, along the line it became sarcastically called 'looking for unicorns'. In recent years, I have seen this term start to be reclaimed by some individuals who are actually interested in these relationship dynamics, and begin to be used in a more positive light when talking about oneself.

For her New Year's Party from 31 December 2018 to 1 January 2019, Taylor dressed as Ariel from The Little Mermaid, and posted on Instagram indicating that the general theme of the party was to be dressed as one's childhood hero. Ariel was the first princess of the Disney Renaissance, debuting in Taylor's birth year of 1989, who fights for her independence and for her right to love despite the loss of her voice. It's not hard to see how all of these elements might appeal to Taylor! But mermaids also have a meaning to the queer community - not just because of their status as a mythical creature, an othered being that is treated as beautiful and dangerous, but also because of their links with transformation and the way in which their fishy lower halves separate them from narrow concepts of genitalia and sex. Den lille Havfrue, the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, was strongly inspired by his love for another man and his inability to publicly express that love or be with the man. Howard Ashman, known as the man "who gave a mermaid her voice and a Beast his soul", was the lyricist for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin; a queer man, he died of AIDS-related illness very shortly after Beauty and the Beast was released to the cinema. "Mermaids" is now the biggest and best-known UK charity supporting trans, nonbinary, and gender-diverse children and young people. Not only do mermaids have a long tradition of association with queerness, but Ariel specifically does as well.

See also: Mermaids, a queer twist in the tail.

 

But... seagulls?

Taylor's famous sweater from the cover if 1989 was apparently recreated based on a vintage sweater which she found and liked in the early 2010s (Taylor Swift Styled). These seagulls returned on the primary cover of 1989 (Taylor's Version), this time in the sky rather than in shirt form, and also this time specifically five in number. However, "Lesbian Seagulls" is not just the name of an Engelbert Humperdink song (although it is also that) - it is a reference to a study of nature which finally pushed homosexuality in animals into the scientific and then public consciousness, making it clear that it was not only humans who were gay, and that variety in sexual orientations was natural and widespread, not limited to humans.

In the 1970s, scientist Molly Warner-Hunt noticed female seagulls who were paired off and raising chicks together; although her partner George Hunt was initially skeptical due to a lack of reports of homosexuality among animals, he soon realised that it was the case. Their study revealed that as many as 14% of gulls were lesbian (note: I'm struggling to find whether this means 14% of female gulls, 14% of all seagulls meaning 28% of females, or 14% of nested pairs were female-female). Queer rights activists noticed and immediately pointed out how the discovery of homosexuality among animals undercut any idea of homosexuality being fake or socially mediated in humans.

In 1978, Congress threatened to cut the funding to the National Science Foundation if they kept supporting research into the gulls! And this was under the presidency of Jimmy Carter who, although far from perfect, was the first president to openly campaign for as well as support LGBTQ+ rights. Homophobia was simply that ingrained, the voices of homophobes that amplified. However, between the massive publicity of the seagull studies and other organisations and charities offering funding, Molly Warner-Hunt and George Hunt were able to return to studying the seagulls and their sexual behaviour until DDT overuse led to a decrease in their numbers. (Medium.com article.) Homosexual behaviour has since been documented in hundreds of (some claim over a thousand) species - both in terms of individuals showing exclusive homosexual preferences, and in terms of individuals who will display homosexual and heterosexual interactions.

Homosexuality in animals was one of the major pieces of evidence in Lawrence vs. Texas, in which two men challenged the laws stating that they could not have consensual sex in a private setting. The American Psychological Association (APA) and other organisations discussed homosexual behaviour in animals in their briefs to the Supreme Court. Lawrence vs. Texas helped to remove sodomy laws in fourteen states of the USA - in 2003. Within less than a year, gay marriage would become legal in Massachusetts, and LGBTQ+ rights in the USA would start to tread into new areas of hope and pain.

Notes:

Because some people prefer not to have muse-specific discussion, or speculation regarding specific women, mixed in with broader consideration, this will be put into a separate chapter.

Chapter 11: Sparks Fly: Emily Poe

Notes:

A lot of the original sources from this era have been lost to Taylor's removal of her social media presence over the years. However, a number of sites to retain information from this time - nothing ever really disappears from the internet.

This tumblr has backed up Taylor's MySpace posts from 2006 to 2008.
Rare Swifts, also on tumblr, collects and shares rare and/or old Taylor Swift images; their Emily Poe tag provides important records from this time.
Likewise, 10yearsoftaylor has an Emily Poe tag, and includes years where known
KarliesKupkake has perhaps the definitive masterpost from this period.

Chapter Text

The Road to Stardom

 

Taylor was interested in music and performance from a young age, and in her tweens started to develop her songwriting and guitar performance. The family moved to Nashville in 2003 to facilitate her break into country music, and from 11th grade (age 16 to 17) she transferred to a high school which allowed partial homeschooling, in order to give her time to create music (starting recording in Nov 2005) and, before too long, to start touring. Her first single, Tim McGraw, released in June 2006, her first album Taylor Swift following in October, and over the following months Taylor toured the country promoting her music through live radio and studio performances.

By July 2006, Taylor was getting used to being on the road. Her performances consisted of herself on guitar and vocals, further guitar provided by Todd Lombardo, and fiddle by Emily Poe; an example of such a performance can be seen in her 24 July 2006 performance at Whisky a Go Go, in West Hollywood. As well as solo performances, she also worked as an opening act for various country singers, including Rascal Flatts, George Strait, and Brad Paisley. She continued to perform as an opening act throughout 2007 and 2008, but also made increasingly regular TV or event performances, such as the America's Got Talent season two finale, and the 42nd and 43rd ACM (Academy of Country Music) Awards.

In 2008, she released her second album, Fearless, and came to widespread public attention not just for the success of singles Love Story and You Belong With Me outside the country music scene but for the infamous incident of Kanye West interrupting her acceptance speech for the 2009 MTV Music Award for Best Female Video. In early 2010, she was awarded her first Grammys, and became the youngest ever artist to be named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association. By now, though, Taylor Swift was not just a name in country music - she was hitting number two in the charts (for You Belong With Me), taking multiple American Music Awards, and from February 2009 was appearing and performing overseas in the United Kingdom (for TV show Loose Women) and Australia (for charity concert Sound Relief).

In less than five years, Taylor Swift had travelled from musical high school student to worldwide star. She had gone from local tours to international flights, and from performing on stage with two other people to having an entire band, known as The Agency, with her. It was a change of breathtaking proportions.

She had also embarked on the dating career which would be splashed all over the papers for years to come, with Joe Jonas in summer 2008, Taylor Lautner in autumn 2009, and John Mayer some time in early 2010. But some Gaylor Swift theorists wonder whether there was someone before Jonas, and whether Taylor's need for secrecy and for silence began just as her star blossomed.

 

 

Emily Poe

Emily Poe (now Emily Stumler or Emily Poe Stumler) was Taylor's fiddle player from July 2006 to January 2008, during her days as an opening act. Her introduction to Taylor's life appears to have been in mid-late July 2006, as Taylor posted on her MySpace about her band, including: 

I have my little posse too now, Emily and Todd. Emily’s my fiddle player, she’s 21 and absolutely adorable. And it’s awesome, after every show there’s always a little group of people wanting her autograph. haha. She’s THAT good.

It's clear that there was strong admiration from the start. For much of this two years, Taylor and her band would be on the road together, sharing an RV and all but living together as Taylor went from opening act to a star in her own right. RareSwifts gives good examples of the images we have from this period of Emily and Taylor together, including:


http://rareswifts.tumblr.com/post/168865872500
Unknown date or location

 


http://rareswifts.tumblr.com/post/160125495559 
Opening act for Rascal Flatts, Oct/Nov 2006

 

Known as the "Gay Texan" picture, this image is particularly well-known in the
Gaylor Swift fandom. It is often described as being in an unknown location but is in
fact the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Centre in Grapevine, Texas. Given the
Santa hats, this is probably her Nov 2-3 2007 opening for Brad Paisley and Rodney Atkins. 

 

Emily appeared as an extra in the Teardrops on My Guitar music video in January 2007, presumably in-between marathoning Grey's Anatomy and pranking Rodney Atkins. In May or June 2007, Taylor posted a video on her MySpace dedicated to Emily; this post is now lost, but naturally many versions remain online. Set to Stolen by Dashboard Confessional, the video features extensive footage from the first year or so that they toured together. It also strikes a lot of Gaylor Swift theorists as looking rather like - at the very least - Taylor had an intense crush on Emily.

Note the repeated lyric, "You have stolen my heart", and that at the end the handwritten sign saying "I love you, Emily ♡" which is handed from person to person before ending up with Taylor just in time for the fade out of the song.

People have also successfully transcribed the letter (visible at 0:28) which Taylor wrote for Emily. It reads:

Emily - I feel as if our relationship has been taken to the next level over the past few months and with much contemplation I decided I would bestow upon you one of my most prized possessions: my flamingo bandanna. This is a 3rd generation family heirloom and I suggest you frame it. I think it will look perfect in your apartment with the cat pillows. Enjoy.

In Summer 2007, Emily joined the Swift family on their vacation to the Grand Canyon, and in October she and Taylor paired up their Halloween costumes to go as The Wreckers (an American country duo).

In November 2007, Taylor performed at the Country Music Awards for the first time; her band by now had grown to five people accompanying her (while she continued to play guitar), still including Emily. This was the only time that Emily would perform with Taylor at the CMAs; at about 2:20 Emily comes out from behind the microphone so that she and Taylor can play and dance together at the front of the stage. Around this time, Taylor changed managers (from Rick Barker, to Robert Allen of the newly-created 13 Management).

It is known that on 13th December 2007, that Emily attended Taylor's 18th birthday party - images from that night, featuring her, appeared in the music video for Beautiful Eyes. However, by this time, Emily's contract had been terminated, and in January 2008 she had her last documented live performance with Taylor.

In May 2008, Taylor said in interview that she had not so much as kissed a boy in two years. And somewhere around 2008 or 2009, when answering fan questions, Taylor's response to "How would you get a boy's attention?" is "I would not." 

 

 

Taylor had one of her Speak Now shows the night before Emily's wedding. During the Speak Now tour, Taylor used to write song lyrics on her arm; on this night, she had written "Where would we be today, if I never drove that car away", which is from the song Don't Think I Don't Think About It by Darius Rucker. The full verse from which this line is taken reads

When we make choices we gotta live with them
Heard ya found a real good man and ya married him
I wonder sometimes if I cross your mind
Where would we be today If I never drove that car away

Comparisons have been drawn between this and Breathe ("I see your face in my mind as I drive away") and White Horse ("There in my rear-view mirror disappearing now").

 

 

Life After Taylor

Thanks to her connection with Taylor Swift, an update on Emily surfaced in 2017, for Today's Woman. After leaving the band, she took the LSAT, and studied at the University of Tennessee between 2008 and 2011. In 2010 she reconnected with old school friend Eli Stumler, and in 2011 they got engaged, she graduated, and they were married. Nowadays, she is Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, representing the State of Indiana in Harrison County. In 2022, she did another interview [Wayback Machine for those in Europe], with a video alternative, which covered much the same story but stated that she had signed up to take the LSAT without telling anyone.

In the 2022 video, a number of images and clips of Taylor and Emily together are shown, and Emily (at 2:20) reads from the back of a framed image on which Taylor has written what seems to be a farewell message:

Emily You're my sister and I love you so much. Thank you so much for being there across the aisle from me [to] talk about everything. We've been [pretty] much every place in the country together [and] you've helped me get through so much!! I adore you. Thank you.

In late 2022, Emily also joined TikTok, joking (probably) about it being an attempt at being an influence. She has only posted four videos as of late 2023 (all visible here), one of which is a clip of her days with Taylor titled "My kids will never believe I used to be a rock star. Good thing there are videos." She briefly interacted with various Taylor-focused TikTok accounts, including some Gaylor ones (though never only posts which were explicit Gaylor theorising) and seems to view the era with nostalgia and fondness

 

 

 

The Story Unravels?

 

VH1 Pop-Up Video

At the time that Emily left the band, it was portrayed as entirely consensual - she was leaving the band in order to go to law school. However, a 2011 VH1 Pop Up Video for Our Song [still viewable at the Internet Archive - the video also contains an uncomfortable line about girls being in "full bloom" at 17, Taylor's age at the time] was more than half about Emily, and included the following:

In full, the pop-up text slides read:

Emily was Taylor's first fiddle player and a close friend. Taylor's management said Emily left in 2008 to attend law school. She did go to law school - but that's not why she left. They fired her. No reason was given to Emily and a new fiddle player was hired immediately. Taylor never talked to her again. Taylor has said that all of her exes end up in songs. Her song "Breathe" is about having to say goodbye to someone close. In it she sings, "I'm sorry" repeatedly. Emily's never heard it.

There's perhaps a lot to unpack here. Details that have come out since indicate that Emily was handed her notice in November and played her final concert in January, so it was not as on-the-spot as the text suggests, but it was still clearly very sudden. The new fiddle player was the more established Caitlin Evanson, who would continue through the Fearless and Red tours. Note that VH1 do not outright say that Emily is an ex of Taylor's - but by placing the sentences beside each other, they quite clearly imply it. And yes, the song Breathe is widely rumoured to be about Emily.

Breathe was likely written in December 2007, based on one of Taylor's MySpace posts which talks about working with Colbie Caillat. As Breathe is the only song which they have ever co-written, this gives us a fairly firm time for the recording. all-my-possessions talks about Breathe in more depth; in short, the song is usually described as being about losing a friend, but from time to time has been described as a "break-up" song. Emily's Twitter is private, but at least some of her Facebook posts are public; on 19th September 2017 she shared a video listing the proposed inspirations behind all of Taylor's songs, and matching Breathe with Emily. On sharing the video, Emily wrote:

I guess the rumors are true... you should be careful or Taylor Swift will write a song about you. Happy Tuesday Facebook!

When one of her friends commented with "Now I have to look up the lyrics to Breathe..." Emily responded with "Me too..."

(Screenshot of this exchange, which can also still be seen on Emily's Facebook.)

Breathe would not be played live until Taylor Swift's 2018 reputation tour.

 

 

Earlier Rumours

The thing is, while the VH1 video was the first media questioning of what happened with Emily Poe, it was not the beginning of the rumours. Those had been on the internet for quite a while.

In 2009, Taylor Swift performed in the "Roomies" sketch on SNL. In a sort of homoerotic comedy, the main girl seems far more attached to and interested with her roommate (Taylor Swift) than her boyfriend. This was picked up on by AfterEllen, who described it as "subtly gay". In the comments of this article someone left a comment - which is still present - stating:

so tay gives no gay vibe for anyone?


a couple young cousins of mine went through Hendersonville High when Taylor was there, they stayed on and graduated after she left.  They say the inside talk about her was she was a pillow queen, she never gave so didn't consider herself to be bi. Also it was rumored that her fiddle player Emily that had been with her for a couple years and was suddenly gone was fired because she was caught "relieving Tay's stress in an inappropriately oral manner."  No idea if there was any truth to any of it, or if it was just jealous high school manufactured gossip.  She was always very close to her close girlfriends and still is as can be seen in the end of this home video she made http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w4A1vVaNmE  Maybe the SNL skit was co-written by Taylor herself if she has first-hand experience at running off boyfriends because she and her best friends are too close.  I have to say I never get a gay vibe from her myself, and she always is such a sweet and adorable person you can't help but love her.

Clearly, this was second-hand gossip at best, but it does indicate that the rumours about Taylor Swift go back to at least 2009. 

In the comments of the previously-linked Youtube copy of Taylor's video for Emily, someone also commented (in 2011):

ok. I cant say its a fact cos ugh.. i love taylor so i dont like rumors but i heard from a friend who was very close to one of taylors friends in school and that she was bi? and then this whole rumor about emily poe surfaced about how she and taylor were into each other and as a step to protect taylors image, her manager fired emily .. I read that online, but the bit about taylor in school, is very very likely

In other words, rumours about Taylor may have gone back to 2006 or 2007, before she was even a household name.

Note the distinct difference between the content of the two rumours - the first is clearly meant to be salacious gossip, and the commenter doesn't seem to be aware that they are speculating on the sex life of a seventeen year old Taylor. The second is much tamer and perhaps more likely to be accurate - rumours might get out about a romantic entanglement, but it's hugely unlikely that anyone would talk openly about underage Taylor's sexual preferences. A link can probably be drawn from these sort of comments to things that will persist later into the narrative - the othering, exotification, and sexualisation of female-female romantic desire. LGBTQ+ individuals still experience this sexualisation of their experiences today, but female-female relationships in media in the late 00s definitely still tended to veer towards the "hot girl-on-girl action" nods rather than real explorations of the lives of queer women. Most TV shows with LGBTQ+ characters were unabashedly for an adult audience and included sexual content, a reason that Glee (we'll get there) was so groundbreaking by being meant for teens.

 

 

Media Speculation

The VH1 video was probably the first general media speculation on the nature of the relationship between Taylor and Emily Poe. However, other sources have done so since.

 

 

 

First Public Boyfriends

Taylor has talked in interviews how she was kissed for the first time at fifteen, and over the course of high school was briefly involved with Brandon Borello, Jordan Alford, and Sam Armstrong. Borello came out well (Tim McGraw is allegedly about him), while Alford got Picture to Burn and Armstrong was called out by name in the secret message of Should've Said No.

 

Joe Jonas

But Taylor's first famous boyfriend was Joe Jonas, whom she dated from July to October 2008. There is relatively little information about their relationship; Taylor implied on KIIS-FM Radio that they were unable to go out publicly together, and there are few pictures of them. More infamous, perhaps, is the fact that he broke up with her over a 27-second phone call, as she revealed on Ellen in November 2008. Jonas left her for Camilla Belle, whom he was allegedly spotted kissing in October 2008 and dated until June 2009.

But could it have been more Promance than romance? This was at the peak of the Jonas Brothers' popularity, and he and Taylor probably had the potential to be popular with the tween and teen audience in the way that Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron were at much the same time. In the same episode of Ellen, Taylor asserted how very impossible it was that she could be pregnant.

 

Taylor Lautner

Taylor went on to act opposite Taylor Lautner in Valentine's Day, and the two are rumoured to have dated from October to December 2009. The stated reason for the split was that Lautner was much more into Swift than the other way around.

This one had glaring red flags of being a Promance - the Taylors were playing the romantic leads in a film, it was more rumour than any actual photographs of them together, and it is rumoured that there were concerns about Taylor Lautner not appearing heterosexual enough to play a romantic lead. The Taylors both had the same agent, and it would have been very easy to arrange a brief 'relationship', either in the hopes of drumming up publicity for the film or as a bearding situation. Lautner would later return to appear in the I Can See You music video, and relations between him, his wife (who took his name on marriage to also be called Taylor Lautner) and Taylor Swift were clearly friendly and fond.

 

John Mayer

John Mayer was on the scene from December 2009 to February 2010. Mayer is famous - or infamous - for a string of famous ex-girlfriends (including Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Aniston, and J-Lo) and a 'bad boy' lifestyle with clubbing, marijuana use, and pranking the paparazzi. He and Taylor performed together on Half of My Heart, and rumours circulated about them and about Andrea Swift's disapproval of him, but neither acknowledged the rumours at the time. In 2010, Taylor released the song Dear John, which might have been passed off as a reference to Dear John letters were it not for Mayer's outraged reaction in Rolling Stone.

Even Gaylor Swift theorists are torn on what to make of Mayer. Some consider him an attempt to having an edgier look, and perhaps a more 'adult' appeal. Others think that it may have been an attempt by Taylor to deny her queerness and find a male love interest, or that there was a genuine infatuation there. 

 

 

Songs About Emily

These songs will be listed in the rough order that they seem to apply in the relationship, rather than necessarily the order in which they were written or released. Links will be to Spotify unless otherwise noted. With the release of Fearless (Taylor's Version) there have also been songs released from the vault, which adds more material to these earlier days. On Instagram, Taylor described these songs as being cut for various reasons, but being part of "the whole story" of Fearless. On Twitter, with the release of Mr. Perfectly Fine, she also stated her newer work was "based in fiction to avoid drama" - an interesting choice of words which rather implied there was drama to be avoided. Some of these songs had been reworked or edited since their earliest form, although it is not clear when, and this will be noted below.

Taylor performed the original version [Youtube] of Sparks Fly a number of times in summer 2007, with a polished studio version not appearing until 2010. A song about falling in love. The lines "Close enough to touch/Close enough to hope you couldn't see/What I was thinking of" point to an attraction that is unspoken, or perhaps that Taylor does not fully want at this time to be recognised. However, the "I really wish you would/Drop everything now" belays an attraction that she cannot ignore. Motifs: green eyes, stairwells, haunting

A song about finding courage in love. Once again, the theme of longing comes through - "I want to ask you dance" - and the early-Taylor era of references to driving in which she is being driven in the (front) passenger seat. [In later songs, she is the one who drives; later still, she is being chauffered.] In 2007, she described it as "the best first date I haven't had yet". The lines "My hands shake/I'm not usually this way" are interesting in light that Taylor's songs on her debut also included longing and the inability or unwillingness to speak up - this may suggest a first (recognised) attraction to someone of the same gender, and the associated uncertainty about how to behave or show that. It's relatively easy for a woman to express that she is flirting to a man - much harder to a woman, especially when young and/or inexperienced. Motifs: driving, rain [on pavements], reluctant dancing, small towns, taking hands

It is speculated - but far from clear - that Love Story was written for or about Emily. In April 2018, Taylor gave an interview which firmly placed the writing of it in summer 2007, disproving the early versions of the Love Story mythos in which the song was directly inspired by a young man whom Taylor's parents did not want her dating. As noted above, summer 2007 was towards the end of a period in which Taylor said she had not kissed a boy in two years. In 2008, she told The Morning Call that the original draft of the lyrics included "this love is different, but it's real". However, the other common analysis is that it was written based on the concept of forbidden love, not inspired by a real relationship, but portrayed as such in order to fit Taylor Swift's brand. Motifs: princes & princesses, stairwells [in music video]

As noted above, this song was written in December 2007 and was likely in anticipation of Emily leaving. It is canonically acknowledged to be about her, and so gives the links of motifs and ideas that we can with more certainty relate to other songs. Motifs: breath, driving, "people change"

This song appears to be a revision of One Thing, an unreleased song which has been listed and cited various times over the years, with a number of edits.

Lyrically, it shares the motif of driving with several songs, and the opening "It wasn't just like a movie" which links to White Horse and If This Was a Movie. The updated lyrics reference "all the pages are just slipping through my hands" which links to Story of Us, which in turn refers back to Sparks Fly. Another major change, "you took me home, but you just couldn't keep me", probably links to later uses of the word "home" throughout Taylor's songs. The change from "all you have is to walk away" to "all I have is your sympathy" is an interesting change which is still under discussion as of the time of writing this addendum.

This seems to exemplify the pain of the separation actually hitting. Contrast "you" and "he" where "he will try to take away my pain". The concept of "won't finish what you started" could be linked to an awakening of sexuality, especially in the mind of someone young and experiencing their first recognised same-gender attraction who may blame the person for "turning" them. (This was definitely a narrative that still circulated in the late 00s.)  Motifs: breath

Again, versions of this song have been listed and leaked over the years, and even occasionally pop up on Youtube. It was officially released with Fearless (Taylor's Version). 

This song is less lyrically connected to others, though "porch lights" may refer to the idyllic story of Mary's Song (Oh My, My, My) and the subject is once again gender-neutral. However, Gaylor theorists find the continued theme of secrecy ("No one could touch the way we laughed in the dark") and the implication of outside condemnation in "I hate those voices telling me I'm not in love anymore, but they don't give me choices". (Note later lyric in Treacherous, "I can't decide if it's a choice". There was still debate in the public about whether sexuality was 'a choice' in these days; Lady Gaga's Born This Way, released in 2011, was a deliberate pushback against this ideology. The concept of losing choice may be familiar to bi+ people who can express some attractions, but not others, with social impunity.) People have also noted the detail of "you threw your arms around my neck", which is not just a word with gendered implications but a movement which is very, very rarely done by boys, even those who might be shorter than their girlfriends. 

The lyrics and tone of Last Kiss contrast and reference Fearless. The late night here is not just Taylor's, but shared with another person - "your face/Lit through the darkness" - indicating that this was an individual who had been allowed to spend nights with Taylor. The song mentions July 9th; Emily is first mentioned in Taylor's MySpace in late July 2006, while a Joe Jonas timeline indicates that he and Taylor were dating by July 4th 2008. Motifs: 2am, breath, rain [on pavements], reluctant dancing

This song appears to be a little later, once Emily has left and Taylor is reflecting on the outcome. Stands in stark contrast to Love Story in mood and references, and presages a breakdown of the princess/fairy tale motif that would not happen in her image until much later. Motifs: Hollywood, princes & princesses, small towns, stairwells

Continuing the theme of disenchantment which appears in White Horse, contrasting messy and unpleasant real-world endings with fictional narratives. Motifs: "people change", rain, stairwells

It is commonly believed that the "he" of The Way I Loved You is Joe Jonas, and that Taylor is contrasting her arranged and theoretically ideal relationship with him to her previous true relationship with Emily. "[He] talks business with my father" is thought to refer to an arranged or contractual relationship, and "I'm not feeling anything at all" is a reference to the fact that Taylor does not want this relationship. Motifs: 2am, rain

Released 7th April 2021 (and not previously leaked), this has generally been linked to Joe Jonas, not least because Sophie Turner (his wife) tweeted about the song in a complimentary manner, and it generally seems to have been taken with good humour by all parties. The phrase "perfectly fine" also appeared in The Way I Loved You, while Forever and Always had the line "looked me in the eye and told me you loved me" which is echoed in Mr. Perfectly Fine's "looked me in the eye and told me you would never go away". The phrase "casually cruel" would later appear in All Too Well, but since these are in different albums and about different subjects (in both heterosexual and Gaylor explanations) this is more likely to be a phrase which Taylor liked and repeated. Once again, this song also shifts between "you" and "he", leaving the actual gender of "you" to remain ambiguous. Fans have also noticed the specific word "sashay", which is not a word generally associated with men (although see chapter four for Taylor's choices of using words in ways that perhaps oppose gender expectations). 

In light of The Way I Loved You, it seems that following her separation from Emily, Taylor entered into a 'relationship' with Joe Jonas that was encouraged and/or arranged for PR cred and good attention. While at the time Taylor brushed off their abrupt break-up on Ellen, it could well have been that it exacerbated the feelings of breaking up with Emily because she no longer had anything to 'show' for it. With its release in 2021, it also feeds into a post-Kaylor narrative (likely to be chapter 10 or 11, unwritten as yet) of a breakup which Taylor was still in the wake of by 2021.

A more distant look back on the relationship, and more of an apology for Taylor's own actions. December was the month in which Emily's contract ended, and her last month with Taylor; the song references a relationship which persists through summer and fall before ending in December. Motifs: driving

Versions of this song were listed on now defunct website darkbluetennessee.com (a website dedicated to rare and unreleased Taylor songs) as early as 2010, and copies were passed between fans, but its official release came on 26th March. (A remix of Love Story was released on the same day.) Note that people who heard the leaked version of this song indicate that the lyric "the best and worst day of June" was initially "the best and worst day of truth", so June may be a conflation of timeline.

Lyrically, this song is connected to Last Kiss ("I do recall now the smell of the rain/fresh off the pavement" in Last Kiss, "Once the last drop of rain has dried off the pavement" in You All Over Me; "hands in your pockets" appearing in both songs). Promotional images for the single of You're Not Sorry, including the album cover, showed Taylor in a bathroom covered with the scrawled words "I'm sorry" (Image one, image two, album cover) which may link to the concept of bathroom graffiti in You All Over Me. The word "freedom" features prominently, as in Back to December, while "every breath of air I breathe" links to Breathe. 

Given that it links lyrically to other songs associated with Emily, this song is generally considered in Gaylor circles to be related to her. But the overall sense of being unable to escape a relationship has also been linked to a realisation of one's sexuality - that even ending a same-gender relationship does not remove the realisation that one is not heterosexual, and that the haunting stigma and knowledge of difficulties one will face as an LGBTQ+ person can cling to awareness. Notable is "I cried, and I lied, and I watched a part of myself die" which reminded many people of the feeling of being closeted.

The (original) last of the songs associated with Emily. It was written in late 2010 [reblog of original tumblr source], with Taylor in a highly emotional and upset state, screaming and crying as she wrote the song on the spot. It's said that there is an uncut ten minute version somewhere out there, even though the album cut of All Too Well is still one of her longer songs. Late 2010 was when Emily Poe reconnected with Eli Stumler. While Taylor is not known to have given Emily a scarf, she did give her that flamingo bandanna. The muse is usually considered to be Jake Gyllenhaal - but Maggie Gyllenhaal has no idea what the scarf reference is about. The line "plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own" also stands out to a lot of Gaylor Swift theorists - stereotype though it is, plenty of queer women do love their plaid, and here Taylor is clearly using the plaid to represent something more. For an extensive analysis from a queer perspective, see that-curly-haired-lesbian. Motifs: driving, small towns

At least, in 2018, it is possible to end this list on a more positive note. Taylor has said in various interviews that All Too Well used to be a source of pain for her, but has now come to mean something more and something better when she hears fans singing along with it. She can now be proud of her songwriting work, including the ones that used to hurt her so much.

While the "ten minute version" of All Too Well had long been a piece of the Taylor mythos, and Liz Rose has certainly confirmed that Taylor brought with her enough material to produce a ten minute version, its actual existence has always been a little uncertain. Supposedly, her original outburst of song and lyrics were recorded - and this version was rumoured to contain multiple f-bombs, not just the one we hear here. In the journal entries that came with the Lover deluxe editions in 2019, several pages were given over to what were purported to be original drafts for the elusive ten minute version. Then, with the release of Red (Taylor's Version) in 2021, a ten minute version (specifically, 10:13) was released, followed by a short film and then All Too Well (Sad Girl Autumn Version). 

Red (Taylor's Version) was originally supposed to release on 19 November 2021 - Emily Poe's tenth wedding anniversary. To folks on the Gaylor side of the fence who know about Emily, this was pretty jaw-dropping in and of itself. The date was moved to 12 November 2021 because Adele declared she was releasing an album on the 19th - probably one of few musicians in the world who could force Taylor Swift to change a release date! In addition, Taylor's cameo at the end of the shot movie is noted as "Thirteen Years Later" - thirteen years ago from its release was 2008, the year that saw the end of Emily's contract in January and the late release of Fearless. Additionally, some feel the line "kept you like an oath" may refer to Emily's later legal profession.

The short film points undeniably at Jake Gyllenhaal, with Dylan O'Brien not just looking the part but commenting about how he did not shower for months to prepare for the role, in reference to discussion in the media in 2021 about whether and how often Gyllenhaal showered or washed himself. Sadie Sink was 19 at the time of filming, to Dylan O'Brien's 30, putting them at the ages of Taylor and Jake in 2010. The ten minute version and the music video also put in stronger ties to The Moment I Knew, a song supposedly about how he did not come to Taylor's birthday party. Taylor publicly stated that the short film was a work of fiction inspired by the themes of the song but not intended as autobiographical, but that did not stop people from seeing the abusive and unequal relationship dynamics and looking suspiciously at Gyllenhaal.

Now, the phenomenon this ten minute version represents honestly deserves its entire own chapter eventually, but suffice to say some people are suspicious that a number of the new lyrics were not written at the time and were more recent additions - "fuck the patriarchy" was not a common phrase until 2012, long after this song was first written; "I'll get older, but your lovers stay my age" makes no sense as having been written in 2010 or 2011 as even Taylor cannot see the future. It's possible that Taylor was playing into public narratives about her previous relationships, was drawing from more recent relationships as inspiration for further lyrics for her most famous heartbreak song, or simply wanted to flex her storytelling craft. It's also possible that this is part of her way of speaking out about the manipulation of young female celebrities by older men - whether the original All Too Well had anything to do with Gyllenhaal or not would not matter when it comes to whether they had a relationship and whether it may have been abusive.

With Taylor's statement that Midnights was inspired by sleepless nights throughout her life, people were nonetheless surprised by how far back some of the references seemed to go. It is speculated that the "Picture perfect, shiny family" described is just what Emily now has, with a successful job, husband and children, while "And he never thinks of me, Except when I'm on TV" does seem to line up with the TikTok interactions from Emily talking about how her record of her time with Taylor is in film and pictures. Most notably, the phrase "some kind of haunted" may link back to the Speak Now song of the same name. 

Would've, Could've, Should've (sometimes abbreviated to WCS) was part of the 3am version of Midnights, and is a raw song about regret and feeling taken advantage of a young age. While it is most commonly linked to John Meyer ("danced with the devil at nineteen" referring to the fact tha she was 19 when she was linked with him, and "stained glass windows" perhaps related to the fact that Meyer at that time lived in a converted church), there are also theories that it relates to either Taylor's relation with/desire for fame, or that it may be to do with a realisation of her sexuality in her late teens which caused or contributed to her relationship with John Meyer. Young queer individuals are substantially more vulnerable even among the general public, never mind among individuals in show business such as Taylor.

 

Age Gap Controversy

 

I have decided to add this short additional section in light of comments that I have seen both from those who staunchly believe that Taylor is heterosexual and from some parts of the Gaylor community. Claims have been made regarding exploitation of a minor, statutory rape, and as a result some people have claimed that discussing such a potential relationship or song interpretation amounts to accusing an acting US lawyer of such actions. (Especially a US lawyer who is now involved in prosecuting offences against children.)

Firstly, regarding Taylor's age. She was sixteen when she first met Emily, and turned eighteen shortly before Emily left.

Age of consent varies across US states as well as across the world. Taylor grew up in Pennsylvania (where the age of consent is 16 as long as the other partner is not in a position of power) and moved to Tennessee (where the age of consent is 18, with exceptions where the parties are over 13 and within 4 years of age). Emily comes from Indiana (where the age of consent is 16 without restriction). Federal laws in place to protect minors from exploitation are somewhat vague in their wording, but specifically apply with most stringency to people under 16 years of age. The writer of this meta is not here to enter into a long discussion about age of consent laws. Such laws must strike a difficult legal balance between the way that different individuals mature at different rates, as well as allowing young adults the right to bodily autonomy while protecting them from predation. In short: it's complicated, and Taylor was right in that complicated area.

(They also often deal solely with penetrative sex, which combined with abstinence-only sex education doesn't always make for a great understanding by young people of what 'counts' as sexual activity. A rant about the uselessness of abstinence-only sex education would probably be less contentious at this point, but still pretty off-topic. The relevance to this situation also lies in the fact that sexual activity is more of a spectrum of behaviour than an on/off switch, and that romantic behaviour can be entirely detached from sexual behaviour as best exemplified by alloromantic asexual individuals.)

But the thing was that Emily was not in a position of power over Taylor. If anything, Taylor had power over her, as her employer/the daughter of her employer depending on who exactly had control over the musicians during her first touring years. This makes a lot of difference, particularly in that grey area, because it is generally assumed that at these sort of ages older people will be in positions of power over younger ones.

 

 

 

More to the point, Gaylor theories regarding Emily only hinge on the idea that Taylor had romantic feelings for Emily. They do not require that those feelings be known, reciprocated, or acted upon. WLW relationships are infamous for being played out in marginal ways - what is the difference between a friendly kiss on the cheek and a romantic one? Between a platonic pyjama party and Grey's Anatomy marathon, and one that constitutes a sort of date? Between a joke between friends and intentional flirting? It is difficult enough to navigate some of these questions in heterosexual relationships at this age, let alone same-gender ones, and let alone same-gender ones that aren't occurring in schools or in other settings where there is plenty of room for comparison to other people.

A lot of Taylor's songs from Fearless are about yearning - "lead me up the staircase, won't you whisper soft and slow" (Sparks Fly, 2010, my emphasis), "I wanna ask you to dance right there" (Fearless, 2008, my emphasis), "I had so many dreams about you and me" (White Horse, 2010, my emphasis) - and not always so much about the actual actions. (The publicised narrative about Fearless being a time when Taylor stopped waiting to be courted and started going after her love interests was... just that, publicity. In fact, most of Taylor's publicity lines for her albums have not necessarily matched the content, as we will see.) Last Kiss indicates that kisses may have occurred, but does not exactly state that they were on the lips or intended as romantic by both parties, and while All Too Well has probably the most suspicious lyric of "nights when you made me your own" it is still incredibly vague, particularly given my note above about romantic and sexual behaviours as spectrums. The 2021 short film made it fairly explicitly sexual, but the lyrics themselves are not - a spoken pledge can mean just as much or more, depending on the person and the context.

Comphet, or compulsory heterosexuality, also cannot be overlooked - especially in 2008 in the conservative south. It's very easy to not even notice homoromantic or homoerotic behaviour when heterosexuality is the assumed and same-gender relationships are automatically considered platonic. It is possible that Emily did not even know that Taylor harboured any feelings - although perhaps unlikely, given moments like Taylor's 2006 comment of "Emily has a boyfriend, but she has agreed that what happens in LA stays there" when performing live at Whiskey a Go Go. It seems pretty likely that Taylor was trying to act older and more confident both for the crowd as an audience, but also perhaps for Emily as an older figure on whom she had a crush.

However, even if Emily knew, that doesn't mean it was reciprocated. The writer will give an example from their own experience - from ages 27 to 29, I worked for a university as a general assistant, doing stockroom management, fire safety checks, etc. Not exactly enthralling work, or very sexy. However, during this time I had multiple incidents where 18 or 19 year old students flirted with me, probably not realising my age (I have a baby face) or just not caring that I was older. I ignored it, pretending that I did not notice, then when I went to chuckle about it with colleagues later one of my middle-aged colleagues was shocked and called it "highly inappropriate". This is a very awkward situation to be in, because as the older figure I was the focus of the 'inappropriate' label even though it had been the younger person doing the flirting. I was 28 - Emily was only 21. So it is entirely possible that Emily was aware of Taylor's feelings, or suspected them, found it awkward or uncomfortable, but was not quite sure how to put a firm stop to Taylor's interest without getting herself into a very complicated situation.

Comments such as the "relieving Tay's stress in an inappropriately oral manner" are generally taken with a very generous pinch of salt by the Gaylor community - why would someone from her high school, where she rarely even was, know this kind of thing? Even the poster suspected it was "jealous high school manufactured gossip". Gaylor interest in it usually simply points to it as proof that rumours about Taylor being queer go back to her earliest public days and are not some weird or deviant newfangled supposition as it sometimes gets accused of being.

Chapter 12: Loving Her Was Red: Liz Huett

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

A Chapter Less-Studied

This chapter was added later than the ones on Emily and Dianna, and as such the narrative of Taylor's activities during this time are better covered there. This chapter covers from early 2009 (just after Emily left the band, and as Taylor was heading towards the Fearless tour) through to the release of Red. It was the era in which Taylor went from aspiring country star to worldwide phenomenon.

Emily Poe, Dianna Agron, and Karlie Kloss are the three names most associated with Gaylor theories, but Liz Huett is starting to receive more attention both as the community grows and as the focus moves away from Karlie. (Note this chapter is written in early 2022; although discussion of Karlie is still significant, from 2014 to about 2019 it really dominated Gaylor spaces.) Since strong timelines have been put together, including some very notable details, and since Liz might fill in some of the Speak Now and Red gaps, it feels appropriate to put together a chapter on her. Take this chapter with a pinch of salt, but perhaps also consider it a reminder that sometimes the lines between friendship and romance are blurry from the inside, never mind from the outside.

 

Liz Huett

Liz Huett is a singer and songwriter who was taking her first steps into the music industry at around the same time as Taylor was. Before that, though, she was a child actor - even winning the 2001 Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a Feature Film: Leading Young Actress against Mara Wilson, Kirsten Dunst and Natalie Portman! In her mid teens, she dropped out of acting to pursue music in LA. Liz and Taylor's paths crossed several times - 10 December 2006, when Liz was in a meet and greet line after one of Taylor's live shows in San Bernadino, California (discussed in this interview with Liz); 31 July 2007, when Liz again attended one of Taylor's performances in Costa Mesa California (Liz later posted a picture of them with a third person); and in February 2008, when Taylor appeared on the TV show Dance Wars and posted on her Myspace about how she recognised one of the contestants from the show as Liz. On turning 21 in spring 2008, Liz moved to Nashville as Taylor had once advised her, and a few months later received a call to audition as a back up dancer - for Taylor Swift herself.

Liz did a few 'trial shows' before being officially hired by The Agency. She certainly performed on 10 February 2009 in San Antonio, appearing as the 'girlfriend' referenced in You Belong With Me (amateur footage here; Liz can be heard but not clearly seen in her interlude at about 1:20) but was not with Taylor during the London trip later that month. Liz was present at Austin Swift's 17th birthday party in March 2009, and was not just at the table but sitting next to Taylor during the same month auditioning of dancers for the Fearless Tour. She can be seen in footage from Journey to Fearless, sitting on Taylor's right. Liz officially joined The Agency on 12 April 2009, but clearly already had some sway.

The Fearless Tour began in late April 2009, and Liz continued to appear in vlogs and in MySpace posts as well as on stage. One of the posts that catches the eyes of some, however, is one from 7 May 2009 in which Taylor posted:

The most obnoxious sound...

… Is the hotel phone RINGINGGGGGG RINGGGINGGG RINGGGGINGGGGGGGGGGGGGFKWEJFKLCWEVNSTET at 5:30am, and it’s all the way across the bedside table, so you can’t reach it with your sleepy, fumbling attempts at picking it up and slamming it back down. Your roommate/back-up singer is leaving London this morning, and so her wake up call is at 5:30am. You don’t have to be up until 9:30, but Liz is in the shower and there’s no one here to make the screeching of the phone stop. And you’re half asleep, so it sounds even louder than it is. Slow motion, high-pitched, echoing, blasting, ringing. Never ending. The phone wake up people want to make COMPLETELY sure you’re awake. So it rings 400 million times, which is very thorough of them.. But it is the last thing you want to experience when you’re half asleep, groggy, cranky, and trying to keep your eyes closed so you don’t wake up completely and feel inclined to then blog about your trying, unfortunate situation. I think you can guess how it, inevitably, all worked out in the end. Good morning. I’m awake. Completely awake. And very inclined to blog about my trying situation. 

Now, Liz wasn't co-headlining with Taylor, and this wasn't a situation where a band, each considered equally famous, might share the better room while the backup and crew sleep separately. It is highly unusual for solo acts to share with anyone, unless they are still small scale - something which Taylor was during Debut, but certainly was not during Fearless. It would have been expected that Taylor would have a room, if not a suite, to herself (as confirmed by someone from the industry, speaking to Tumblr user and podcast creator @swiftgron-get-married).

Liz also appears in the May 2009 Vlog "Whisper hello, I miss you quite terribly." at around 3:30. The content itself is not particularly relevant, but what might be is Taylor's outfit - a white tee with a large black circle on it, and a key necklace. This same outfit would later appear in a music video (but we'll get to that).

Left, a still from the 2009 vlog; right, a still from a later music video.

 

Liz also continued to appear in MySpace and social media mentions throughout this time, including a mention of them going to dinner together on 29 May 2009 (also mentioning Taylor's father, but no other band members), and the entire band going on a boat trip 31 May 2009. In June 2009, Taylor did a joint interview with Kellie Pickler about Kellie's eponymous second album, which included Taylor saying that Kellie was

the person who will very bluntly say to me, “Get over it!” [...] instead of my friends who are like, “Maybe he misses you or maybe he didn’t mean it that way, or blah, blah, blah.” Kellie will just look at me and say, “He’s bad news, get over it.”

Kellie and Taylor met during 2007, after Taylor's debut album, and Kellie was a significant presence on the Fearless tour starting from April 2009. This would have been after the boys of Taylor's high school who may have appeared on her debut album, and doesn't seem to match with what happened with Joe Jonas where the split was abrupt and complete. It also seems unlikely to match Emily, considering the narrative there seems to point to strong romantic feelings from Taylor that lingered even after Emily left the band and moved on. However, it is also far too early to be Dianna, so may indicate a romantic relationship or interest in this in-between time.

In July 2009, Taylor also posted on MySpace about recording a number of new songs - presumably largely towards Speak Now - and was papped filming with Taylor Lautner for the film Valentine's Day. Rumours quickly followed that they were dating. In late August, Taylor was pictured shopping with Caitlin and Liz, then a couple of days later after a band-wide dinner, Liz and Taylor left arm-in-arm.

In October 2009, Taylor attended Katy Perry's birthday party with actress/singer/dancer Julianne Hough (who in 2019 came out to her husband and then to the world as "not straight"), and got the initials JH daubed across her stomach. On 27 October, Taylor and Liz performed Jump Then Fall together on Dancing With the Stars.

On 29 October, Taylor recorded the Roomies sketch for SNL. It is worth noting that SNL sketches frequently, though not always, are done with deliberate nods to or jokes about the famous figure in mind. It is also worth comparing some of the hugs between Taylor's character and her roommate to gifs of Taylor and Liz hugging as taken from vlog and other footage. The sketch aired on 7 November 2009, with Taylor hosting that night - leading to the AfterEllen post as discussed in chapter four, and some of the first notable interest in whether Taylor is queer.

Also in November, the Fearless tour resumed, and the paparazzi in London were rather fond of Taylor during this time period so there are plenty of pictures of her from this time - including some with Liz. For example, on 18 November 2009, Taylor and Liz were papped coming back to the hotel together late at night. The tour took a break during December - during which Taylor met Emma Stone, an interaction we'll come to in a later chapter - and on 13 December 2009, at Taylor's twentieth birthday party, her backing dancer Brandon Stansell came out as gay by bringing along his boyfriend. In an interview with People for Pride 2020, he talks about coming out, including saying that being on tour with Taylor had enabled him to find a queer community and that coming out to her was nerve-wracking because of his financial dependence but a relief when she was clearly supportive. While I have seen people say that the "queer friends" he talks about in the context of touring with Taylor may have included Taylor herself, the way that Brandon talks about coming out to her specifically would not suggest to me that Taylor was openly identifying as queer in front of him. (An important lesson in checking sources.)

Liz was also with Taylor on the Australian leg of the Fearless tour in January and February 2010, and on 10 February 2010 they went to see Valentine's Day together in theatres. That they were both there is confirmed by them talking about it in another vlog, although it is not clear where there were others with them as well. In Taylor's Lover deluxe edition journals, she has an entry from 13 February 2010 about looking to meet someone (but those diaries should be taken with a grain of salt, as they were released as publicity and in contrast to "there will be no explanation, there will just be reputation"), but on 14 February 2010 Liz thanked "Tay and the rest of the band for being [her] Valentine". In this same vlog, Liz can also be seen wearing a crescent moon necklace which Taylor had been wearing not long before, and which may well have been a present from Stevie Nicks herself (Stevie Nicks often wears plain gold crescents herself, and has been giving them as presents since 1977; this article confirms that she gave one to Taylor, probably in January 2010 when they performed Rhiannon together at the Grammys). While I can't confirm whether this necklace was a gift to Liz or simply loaned, but as well as appearing in this vlog it was worn for a series of headshot photos which would later inspire the booklets for Red.

 

 

 

Between March and October 2010, Taylor and Liz continued to spend time together and be photographed together - either the two of them, or with others - even as Liz moved on to dating Jason Stoltzfus (then trying to make it as a singer, now an established music photographer). Taylor and Liz tweeted at each other regularly, appeared in vlogs together, and in an interview with Glamour about moving into her new apartment Taylor spoke about how she had guest rooms specifically reserved for Liz and Caitlin. In October 2010, Taylor is also supposed to have started dating Jake Gyllenhaal.

Speak Now released on 25 October 2010. Liz and Caitlin brought a pizza with birthday candles to Taylor on her 21st birthday (the one that Gyllenhaal is supposed to have flaked on). In January 2011, Taylor and Liz perform Better Than Revenge together on the Allure of Seas cruise ship, with little to no outright choreography. By March 2011, they were starting to dramatise their singing parts, for example as seen here from the 25 March performance in Belfast. By May 2011, this has escalated to pushing each other on stage, at an angle that could easily include a grab to the chest area, first recorded here from the 21 May performance in Nashville.

On 11 June 2011, Taylor did an interview with the New Yorker which described her as "melancholy"; on 17 June her Lover deluxe edition journal entry talks about something unexpected making her happy again. Some people point at the fact that Liz's last tweet to Jason was on 22 June and they likely broke up (or finished breaking up) while he was in London, which seems something of a stretch but is plausible if Liz and Jason had already been coming apart beforehand and Liz had made a decision already.

During August 2011, Taylor's song covers for her Speak Now performances included some with pronouns unchanged, including Sugar We're Going Down by Fall Out Boy (with "Isn't it messed up how I'm just dying to be him?") and Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes (sung entirely about a female muse; this performance is available on Spotify!). Taylor (possibly for the first time) met Dianna Agron on 5 September 2011 (but more on that next chapter), and her Lover diaries indicate that only a few days later she wrote and recorded the song Red. This does line up with a Vogue interview from 13 September 2011 in which Taylor said

“There’s just been this earth-shattering, not recent, but absolute crash-and-burn heartbreak [...] and that will turn out to be what the next album is about. The only way that I can feel better about myself—pull myself out of that awful pain of losing someone—is writing songs about it to get some sort of clarity.”

Between Dianna appearing - more songs for Red would follow in mentions on Taylor's social media - and this discussion of heartbreak, it seems that if there had been anything between Taylor and Liz it was fading or over by this point. In January 2012, Taylor hit the cover of Vogue, and both Dianna Agron and Karlie Kloss were among the many people who tweeted to compliment her. For the full story of Taylor's path from here, it's best to go ahead to Dianna's chapter.

For Liz's part, as she is also a songwriter we also have some musical clues as to what was going on with her during 2012. Later on in the year, she would release songs including One Hand on the Wheel, Wreck of Who I Am, and Blessed are the Brokenhearted. Liz's songs from this era are not available on Spotify, but luckily there are lyric videos on Youtube, and they point to both a rough break up and some possible mental health struggles for Liz. Jason Stoltzfus doesn't really seem to be a famous enough figure to establish whether he started dating someone else this time, as some of Liz's songs indicate her previous love interest has a new partner.

On 13 September, tweets from various members of The Agency confirmed that Liz was leaving the band and would be missed. However, fans had already noticed that Liz was not in the music video for We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Moreover, much like with Emily, after Liz left stories started to appear - this time, people indicating that Liz seemed to believe she would be on the Red tour, and some years later a reddit post from someone who had met Liz saying that asking about Taylor was a taboo subject and that Liz had been "getting out of control". On 20 September, Liz tweeted one more time about spending time with Taylor Swift and Claire Calloway, although she confused some by adding, "not mad at this day".

 

 

Life After Taylor

Liz released a number of songs in 2012-3, and in a tweet described moving on from The Agency as "bittersweet". She and Taylor would tweet each other occasionally over the following years, Liz would write more songs both for other musicians and to release on her own from 2017 onwards, and in 2021 Liz made a surprise reappearance on Fearless (Taylor's Version), indicating the two remain on good terms.

A slightly confusing additional note, from February 2022, is an Instagram exchange between Liz and someone whom she seems to be friends with, with the other person saying "You're not bisexual" and Liz replying "It hurts to be misunderstood". Liz has never given a statement on her sexuality, so it isn't clear whether this is humour about her being a straight woman mistaken for bisexual, or a bisexual woman mistaken for straight. It is honestly unclear at this point, but perhaps relevant given the context of this meta. Especially on top of this 2018 interview in which Liz frequently used gender-neutral pronouns ("I was with somebody", for example) rather than he/him ones, and the 2017 music video for H8 U which ends with Liz kissing the bride on the lips after singing a breakup song to the groom.

In 2022-3, Liz featured on Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Speak Now (Taylor's Version), and on 8 Aug 2023 attended the Eras Tour in Los Angeles at the SoFi Stadium.

By 2023, Liz was part of a new band called "Pretty Bird", and in August 2023 they released a song called "Katelyn From Last Night". Liz sings "Katelyn from last night, could we be a vibe?", explicitly singing to a female muse. She also posted about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo over the summer of 2023, and was liking and commenting on tiktok and twitter posts tagged with Gaylor.

 

 

 

Taylor's Public Boyfriends

Taylor Lautner, October 2009 to December 2009 - see Emily chapter

John Mayer, December 2009 to February 2010 - see Emily chapter

Jake Gyllenhaal, October 2010 to January 2011 - see Dianna chapter

 

 

 

Songs (Maybe) About Liz

 

Since Liz is a relative newcomer to the world of Gaylor discussion, there is considerably less consensus about what songs might be about her, but she does seem to fit a gap around Speak Now and some of Red in terms of Taylor's discography. Note that some of the songs which are assigned to Liz are also sometimes assigned to Swiftgron 1.0 (see Dianna chapter for full details), an early failed attempted at a relationship between Taylor and Dianna. That said, once again there will be an attempt to put these songs into a narrative order, which may not match the order in which they were written or released.

  • I Can See You (Speak Now (Taylor's Version), 2023)

    Released with the 2023 Taylor's Version, I Can See You (along with Electric Touch) are now some of the earliest songs with sexual overtones from Taylor's discography. I Can See You mentions having "kept everything professional", which may point at a coworker as the muse, while the overall themes of secrecy and transgression are common to Taylor's lyrics. While some note that "your suit and your necktie" would make them expect a male subject of the song, women are also more than capable of wearing and looking good in suits (and it may even be more noticeable on a woman) and Liz has been photographed in them various times over the years, including in some of her music videos (such as H8 U) and in the clips promoting 2023 song Katelyn From Last Night. 

  • Mine (Speak Now, 2010)

    Too late to be about Emily, but much too early to be about any other major female player in Gaylor timelines, some have suggested this was about Liz. Taylor has spoken about this song being about her tendency to run away from love (a theme she will return to in later years). It seems to have been written in 2009, and may line up with her July 2009 diary entry (Lover deluxe edition) about finding a new reason to be happy during this time. While the song is obviously largely fictional - or at least, much of the relationship is a fantasy ("I can see it now") - it is perhaps worth noting that Liz spent some time waitressing in her teens. 

  • Red (Red, 2012)

    The titular track of the album also looked back on an ended relationship with a growing sense of longing and nostalgia. It talks about an impulsive and perhaps ill-thought-out attempt at a relationship, and though the exact time of writing is not clear it is possible that it was simply too early to be about Dianna. There's also some lyrical parallels with Liz's own songs, but we'll get to those in a moment.

  • I Knew You Were Trouble (Red, 2012)

    IKYWT, as is it is often shortened to, appears to have been written in 2012 - the chorus in January, and the rest during the summer when it was recorded. Taylor has stated that it was about a relationship where she knew there were red flags, but she continued anyway, which may link to Kellie Pickler's apparent 2009 comment about someone being "bad news." The hidden message is "When you saw me dancing", which may refer to Liz attending Taylor's shows or Taylor attending Liz's Dance Wars season.

    Although generally associated with Harry Styles, it was apparently written before they had even met, let alone dated (whoops). Even Taylor's Lover deluxe edition diaries have it being recorded in June 2012. IKYWT is one of the songs in which Taylor most often seems to change pronouns (to "she never loved me" - see chapter three, where even AfterEllen has acknowledged an instance of this). In the music video, Taylor wears a white tee with a black circle and a key necklace, the same combination which can be seen in her 2009 vlog (see above).

  • We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Red, 2012)

    For reasons this song gets linked to Dianna, see the following chapter, but in a presentation that accompanied an acoustic performance in December 2012, Taylor described a relationship that had already been on-and-off; even if Swiftgron 1.0 was over, this song seems to have been written in June 2012 when Swiftgron 2.0 were not publicly around each other much but did not seem to be completely out of each other's lives. 

  • Holy Ground (Red, 2012)

    Holy Ground is honestly a perplexing song, because the "note on the door" points so strongly to Dianna (see next chapter) but Taylor has said in interviews that it was "a song I wrote about the feeling I got after years had gone by, and I finally appreciated a past relationship for what it was". The early use of "reminiscing" certainly supports this, and the motif of dancing reappears which may link to IKYWT. Since Taylor noted in her MySpace blogs at least once about leaving a note, card and candy for a sick and quarantining Liz, it may in fact by that what felt like a smoking gun of the note on the door is being misidentified.

 

 

Songs (Maybe) About Taylor

This is an unusual section, but as Liz is also a songwriter and singer, in this case it's possible that there are some songs of hers which refer back, and which for once give the other side of the story. Liz has written quite a few more songs than she has sung herself, and there's evidence indicating that some of these songs were written years before they were performed - by her or others.

  • One Hand on the Wheel (One Hand on the Wheel, 2012)

    With the line "Being wrong shouldn't feel so right", this song is about the same sort of transgressive love that marks Taylor's lyrics. The timing puts the writing of this song not long after Liz's breakup with Jason Stoltzfus but also during the time that her relationship with The Agency was deteriorating and shortly before she would be let go.

  • STFU & Hold Me | Also on Youtube (STFU & Hold Me, 2017)

    Indicating a relationship in which the other partner seems afraid of commitment or prone to overthinking, it has been suggested that this song is the other side of Mine in which Taylor considers her tendency to run from love and relationships. The lyrics "Started with a bang, went all in" have been compared to "Took off faster than a green light go". The flashbacks and flashforwards of the video are also loosely reminiscent of IKYWT, while the love interest in STFU & Hold Me wears a key around his neck.

    An unusual detail: while discussing this song, Liz stated that "whiskey and Sour Patch Watermelon" were her favourites; in a 2008 interview with Seventeen, Taylor had also mentioned a love of "Watermelon Sour Patch Kids" candy. The quotes, side by side. It may be a reference or an odd coincidence, but is certainly worth noting.

  • Not Going Anywhere (Fault Lines, Andy Gullahorn, 2015 - written by Liz Huett)

    A song written to someone whose fame is skyrocketing, while the writer or singer watches from a less successful place. When Liz has a history of working alongside the once-in-a-generation success that is Taylor Swift, it's easy to see why people might feel that lines like "Do you look down from your meteoric rise" refer to her. There's no sense of romantic relationship about this song necessarily, as the writer calls themselves one of the "old friends", but it might reflect the sensation of watching Taylor's continuing rise through the Red and 1989 eras.

  • That's What You Get (Youtube) (That's What You Get, 2019)

    Although written with some distance to the lyrics, again talking about a reckless relationship which should have had a "warning sign" - perhaps a parallel to the way that Taylor has described State of Grace as "kind of like a warning, you know, for the rest of the record". There seem to be a number of references that could be found as motifs in Taylor's songs during this period - armour, a loaded gun, splitting friends in the wake of a relationship, the imagery of burning, and running from love. Moreover, the song shares its name with Paramore's That's What You Get, which Liz and Taylor had seen Paramore perform in 2009 and which they had performed with Hayley Williams in 2011 during the Speak Now tour.

  • Don't LV U Anymore (Don't LV U Anymore, 2018)

    A song which sings about sharing chapstick perked some ears as being a little sapphic, while the "washer and dryer full of guitar picks" sounds like it might nod to Taylor. "I don't run to your friends" might parallel IKYWT's "you go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me". Furthermore, while the line "flirt with my roommate" does not sound particularly notable, for a considerable stretch of time Liz was roommates with Grant Mickelson, who often 'played' Taylor's love interest on stage and with whom Taylor therefore flirted on a regular basis as part of the performance.

  • Dammit | Youtube link (Dammit, Jana Kramer, 2018)

    On the release of this song, Liz tweeted about how she was really happy to see a song she "wrote years ago" finally released, which matches with a tweet from Ali Puliti in 2012 which states that they had heard a song "damn it" which they had enjoyed. This is also a song about which Liz has used neutral pronouns and words, saying "I was with somebody". The song itself references "playing your guitar" and seems to reflect the music video for Mine - where Mine is about the hypothetical future a relationship could have, Dammit is about mourning the loss of that same future.

Notes:

  • TSwiftMySpace, an archive/back up of Taylor's old MySpace posts, vlogs and social media from this era, was crucial in putting this together.
  • Liz's Spotify listings and Genius listings are also deeply helpful.
  • TayLiz Master Post on tumblr has the most detailed timeline and list of interactions. However, they do sometimes have a tendency to overanalyse situations where one slightly more or less negative tweet, or an apparently week or two apart, get treated as signs of a rocky relationship, so their conclusions should be viewed critically. However, their timeline and listing of facts, dates, pictures and vlogs is immaculate and formed the base for much of this chapter.
  • This reddit post by mercuryonparklane also gives a shorter, clearer summary of TayLiz and their opinion/their take on Taylor's possible wlw relationships in general.
  • This reddit post has a very good breakdown of the possible lyrical references back and forth.

Chapter 13: Never Go Out of Style: Dianna Agron

Notes:

Happy New Year, folks.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

America's Good Girl

 

In 2010, Taylor released her third album, Speak Now, which shot to number one and sold over a million items in its first week, putting Taylor into the Guinness World Records. As her singles continued to enter the charts in the top ten, she earned more records, and as well as continued wins for country music awards she started to be nominated for, and win, more mainstream music awards. She won her first four Grammys in 2010, as well as People's Choice Awards and World Music Awards. Her worldwide presence continued to grow, with the Fearless Tour in early 2010 mostly in the US but also featuring appearances in the UK, Canada, Japan, Australia and the Bahamas. In return, she was nominated for awards in Australia (APRA Awards, CMC Music Awards), the UK (Brit Awards), Ireland (Meteor Music Awards), Canada (Canadian Country Music Association, Juno Awards, Much Music Video Awards), the Philippines (Myx Music Awards) and for the MTV Europe Music Awards. She was also nominated for the World Music Awards, and entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame which even as of 2018 has only 383 individuals (not groups) inducted.

In short? Taylor was going places.

She smashed through awards in 2010 and 2011, and from February 2011 to March 2012 launched into another tour. The Speak Now World Tour spanned nineteen countries and included a number of guess performances and acoustic covers of songs, enhancing the tour experience for her fans.

Within five months of the end of the Speak Now World Tour, Taylor was releasing lead the lead single from Red. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together reached number one on the Billboard charts within fifty minutes of its release. In October, she released fourth album Red, expanding into new genres and reaching new heights of success. Critics loved her, fans adored her, and with good reason. Taylor seemed like an unstoppable musical force, creating music for movies (Hunger Games, One Chance) and earning a Golden Globe nomination for it, performing with stars like the Rolling Stones (Chicago, 2013), and continuing to appear in films (notably The Lorax).

Her charity work also continued to expand. She donated to US high schools including her own former one, was involved in the Hope For Haiti Now charity telethon in 2010, and later that same year donated to help rebuilding after floods in Tennessee. In 2011, she donated to St Jude's Children's Hospital, also in Tennessee, and performed her song Ronan in the Stand Up to Cancer TV Special.

Somewhere during that time, she also managed to buy several houses - but even then, her interview with Glamour in 2010 noted how absurdly busy she was. For the next few years, Taylor remained based in Tennessee but travelled extensively (even when she was in the country!) until 2014, when after reportedly agonising between London and New York she chose New York.

Taylor had moved from country star to global star. She was honoured in the Times 100 for 2010 for her global influence, and was by now a household name across the world. Her image was established, her brand global.

However, eyes were starting to turn on her. In 2003, Taylor had modelled for Abercrombie & Fitch; in 2013, they released a shirt referring to her romantic history in a way that reduced her to nothing more than a serial dater. The same had been levelled at Taylor during the Golden Globe awards earlier that year, and in late 2012 Carrie Underwood - whom Taylor had cited as one of her musical influences - made jokes about Taylor's break-up with boyfriend Conor Kennedy and the rumours about Taylor and Patrick Schwartzenegger. By 2013, when she failed to hide her disappointment at losing to Adele for the Golden Globe for Best Original Song, the press gleefully jumped on board, an experience that can only have been worsened by Tina Fey also making jokes about her dating history.

People were starting to accuse her of being fake, and it can only have stung; it is doubtful that any celebrity is truly the persona that they portray, and when the image has been created for the public it is all but hypocritical for the public to turn around and begin to tear it down. But Taylor did not publicly respond to such comments - yet, at least. She kept her head high and maintained her cool, even as the gloss of her image perhaps begin to chip

 

 

Dianna Agron

 

Dianna Agron is an actress, dancer and singer who made her television debut in CSI: New York in 2006, and who is likely best known for her role as Quinn on Glee from 2009 to 2015. She was critically lauded for her work as Quinn from the first season, and received nominations for her work. Although she never went A-list, her acting was always considered solid, and as well as Glee there was a steady trickle of television and movie roles.

Dianna dated Alex Pettyer from summer 2010 to February 2011 (though astute minds noticed even then that they were co-stars on tween/teen movie I Am Number Four, a prime situation for promance, and that Pettyfer lashed out after they abruptly broke up post-movie), and was linked on and off to Sebastian Stan between August 2010 and December 2012. (An anonymous gossip blogger who claims to have freelanced with Dianna's publicity company also stated online that it was PR - but as always with anonymous sources, it's worth taking it with a pinch of salt and looking at the evidence around the time.)

However, as early as 2009, there were rumours about Dianna and her Glee costar Lea Michele (ship name "Achele"). They made no secret that they were roommates (until 2010, when Dianna moved out saying that she was allergic to Lea's cat), and frequently talked about each other with great intensity. Achele is neither my focus not my speciality; I will simply link to Achele References, a tumblr dedicated to documenting their history, and note that rumours of this sort had clearly been around Dianna for a while. Enough so that she felt it necessarily to give interviews intended to debunk them. (How much that debunking worked... well, that's more debatable.) In 2012, an anonymous source on online gossip side L Chat claimed that Dianna was known around the West Hollywood queer scene, and even that she had earned the nickname "pussy bandit" for her success with women.

Even before that, though, in June 2011, the infamous "Likes Girls" shirt made its appearance.

 


https://www.autostraddle.com/dianna-agron-loves-women-isnt-gay-93377/
11th June 2011, Toronto, Canada

 

In 2010 and 2011, the Glee cast took part in the Glee Live! In Concert!  tour across the US and Canada, then the UK and Republic of Ireland. On 11th and 12th of June, they performed in the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Canada. During Born This Way, as in the TV episode, the characters wore shirts with things that they disliked about themselves (for example, Kurt wears a shirt saying "Likes Boys" due to his discomfort with his sexuality, while Mike wears a shirt saying "Can't Sing" referencing his insecurity about his singing voice). Dianna, as Quinn, usually wore a shirt saying "Lucy Caboosey" in reference to past bullying Quinn had experienced about her weight and appearance.

However, on 11th June 2011, Dianna took to the stage wearing a shirt that said "Likes Girls". It's unclear where this shirt came from - none of the other actors were supposed to be wearing it. For more context of this night, see this post by Swiftgron Masterpost - Dianna's behaviour was exaggerated, clearly making some sort of point with the shirt she was wearing.

And nobody had an immediate explanation. Articles popped up on line, twitter and tumblr speculated. The main theories were that she was suggesting Quinn was not straight (in season four, in 2012, Santana and Quinn would sleep together, but Quinn called it experimentation) - or that Dianna herself was coming out.

Dianna was not at the 12th June performance. It was said by management that she was unwell... but she was spotted out and about in Toronto by fans. A few days later, Dianna also posted to her tumblr a very long post which essentially boiled down to saying that she platonicly likes girls ("loves girls", as she put it), and was "not a lesbian", but wanted to be able to show woman-to-woman support to those around her. While the original post has been deleted, copies were reblogged and an archived copy remains.

Some fans remained dubious. Had Dianna tried to come out, only to be closeted again by her management?

 

 

 

Early Swiftgron Theory

As Taylor and Dianna were both at the Vanity Fairs Oscar Party in March 2011, some believe that they may have been within each other's orbits during this summer. However, both of them were still on tour, and exceptionally busy. It was during this time period that the "Likes Girls" shirt (above) appeared, apparently in a response to Lea Achele stopping holding Dianna's hand on stage. A few days after Shirtgate, they started holding hands again and went back to the closeness they had shown beforehand. In other words, evidence suggests that Dianna was still with Lea during this period, rather than involved with Taylor.

 

Swiftgron Spring: 2012

Dianna and Taylor were introduced (or possibly re-introduced) by mutual friend Ashley Avinogne in September 2011. On January 17th 2012, Taylor was on the cover of Vogue for the first time for their February edition. Many people tweeted to congratulate her - but over the years, eyes have also spotted these tweets among them:

 

On February 24th 2012, American football player Tim Tebow was reported as talking both to Dianna and to Taylor at a pre-Oscars party. Watch his name - he recurs later.

The Speak Now tour ended on March 18th 2012, after which Taylor was free to do something other than work! On March 25th 2012, she and Dianna attended The Hunger Games (for which Taylor had written songs) together, as shown by fan pictures with and of the two of them. No press covered the event and they did not even mention each other in their tweets about the night - though they did start following each other on Twitter on this day. Throughout March and April they seemed to spent just about every weekend together, be it at house parties or dinners. On March 30th, Dianna got to meet Taylor's mother Andrea, and in the first days of April while Dianna was in New York for press reasons, Taylor seemed to accompany her without a work reason at all until she had to return to Nashville to work on recording Red. 

At the time, there were rumours of a love triangle between Dianna, American football player Tim Tebow, and Taylor. On April 12th, Dianna denied this on Jimmy Kimmel, but put air quotes around "friends" when talking about herself and Taylor, added "Wouldn't that be juicy?" and blew Taylor a kiss. From New York, Dianna travelled on to spend some time in London (she tweeted on April 23rd about returning from England).

On April 25th, Dianna and Taylor had a 'dress up night' with Ashley Avignone and Claire Winter, longstanding friends of Taylor's. It was held at the Beverley Hills Hotel Polo Lounge, apparently in honour of the 78th birthday of actress Shirley MacLaine with whom Taylor had acted in Valentine's Day. Pictures were released showing the four girls in floating fabrics, pastel colours, and with flowers woven through their hair - the flowers in particular being worth noting, as they'll appear later on.

http://rareswifts.tumblr.com/post/147202613509
24th April 2012, Beverley Hills Polo Lounge

 

At 2am on the morning of the 26th April, Dianna posted a tweet which said "Playing dress-up, baking cookies, posting pictures on twitter, dancing in the kitchen, kissing this cat. #DATEME"; the tweet was later deleted and reposted, with #DATEME changed to @DATEME. The cat being kissed was Taylor's cat Meredith, who seemed quite happy to receive the attention.

 

Dianna's Twitter 26th April 2012, Taylor Swift's house

 

On 29th April 2012 (a Sunday, for anyone playing along at home), Taylor attended Dianna's circus-themed twenty-sixth birthday party. She dressed up as a tiger (unsurprisingly; she does love her cats) on a leash. Tweets from other Glee cast members and friends of Dianna's talked about her singing for a small group of them. It also seems to have been this same night that many of the partygoers wrote notes on Dianna's bathroom door, including Taylor; Dianna later shared the image on her tumblr. Gaylor fans spotted the red writing on the left hand side (circled) and managed to decipher what the message said.

 

http://helplessgay.tumblr.com/post/143658814152/swiftgron-masterpost
29th April 2012, Dianna Agron's house

 

The message reads:

I'm a little 🐱 and I need to nurse because I'm a runt and likely to fall victim to predators.

Not only did this match Taylor's cat-related costume for the night, but fans compared it to the writing from Taylor's letter to Emily and other examples of her handwriting, and confirmed that it matched in various ways. The shape of the capitals, the form of certain letters - it seemed pretty likely that Taylor left this particular note.

On 30th April, both "Swiftgron" and "We Love Swiftgron" trended on Twitter for a while - a sign of support from many fans, but also the first indication of rumours about Taylor's sexuality going mainstream.

There were intermittent paparazzi and fan images of Taylor and Dianna, often of them getting dinner together, throughout May and June. On 15th May, Taylor tweeted about songwriting with Ed Sheeran, which is almost certainly Everything Has Changed .

Since Taylor and Ed were together at a recording studio on May 28th, it seems likely that this is when the song was recorded. Gary Lightbody (known from Snow Patrol) indicated that Ed introduced him to Taylor, so The Last Time was also written at about this time.

On 3rd June, Dianna hosted the GLAAD Awards in San Francisco, commenting onstage that she had kissed girls before, "it's fun". In later June, tweets from Taylor, Dianna, Ashley Avignone and Claire Winter indicate that they were all spending a lot of time together. On July 2nd, they were having lunch together at the Pancake Pantry in Nashville and took a number of photos, separately or together, with fans; that evening they attended the James Taylor show at Tanglewood where Taylor (Swift) made a guest appearance, singing Ours and pointing out into the crowd as she sang "my choice is you". Dianna continued on with Taylor to spend the Fourth of July weekend in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Taylor struck up a friendship with Robert Kennedy's widow, and was linked with Patrick Schwarzenegger before being said to be dating eighteen year old Conor Kennedy. However, she also spent much of her time with her female friends, notably Dianna but also including Ashley, Claire, and Roxy Olin. 

 

5th July 2012, Hyannis Port, Massachusetts

 

Dianna tweeted a picture of her and Ashley on a boat on July 9th, along with a caption that included the line, "exciting news is lingering in the air, might land soon".

On 28th April 2012, Taylor started wearing, and tweeted about, a scissor necklace made by Dakotah Rae (a friend of Paramore's Hayley Williams who runs an Etsy shop that even still does gold scissor necklaces). By July, Dianna was spotted wearing a scissor bracelet which some felt rather seemed to match. On 22nd July, while in Giffoni, Italy, Dianna also talked in an interview about her hopes to continue acting - but added that if it didn't work out, she could "Go on the road with Taylor Swift and carry her bags."

However, after this time, things seemed to go cool between Taylor and Dianna for a number of months. Taylor moved between Nashville, Cape Cod and New York, while Dianna travelled across North America and Europe. Taylor publicly dated Conor Kennedy and spent significant time with the Kennedy family, even buying a house in the Kennedy compound.

A handful of tweets passed between them, including after the release of We Are Never Getting Back Together (on 13th August 2012) when Dianna tweeted:

@taylorswift13 like...never, ever? Proud of you!! Amazing first day!

But given the general quiet... some wonder whether this tweet might have been a little more than it appeared.

 

 

 

Swiftgron Returns

In late September 2012, Dianna Agron and Naya Rivera visited Paris; in the first few days of October, Taylor was also in Paris, filming the music video for Being Again. On 3rd October, they had dinner together and started to be both spotted by fans (tweets of sightings followed Taylor around at the time) and seen together by paparazzi. Around October 15th, pictures are taken of Dianna in Los Angeles again, and according to her Lover diaries Taylor wrote This Love in LA on October 17th.

 Red was released in late October, and Taylor began to take a firmer stance about anonymity for the subjects, including an interview with Time:

Do you deliberately try to keep song subjects mysterious?

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

It was also around this time that she gave an interview with VH1 about the processes of creating the songs Ours and Love Story. What some people found notable, however, was a slip of the tongue that seemed to creep in:

 

0

 

 

I don't care if you have a dic- a gap between your teeth.

It's certainly not what people were expecting to hear, and it's never actually been explained what she meant to say. The best theory that I've seen online was that she was considering saying "addiction issues" or something similar, before considering that might be too edgy for her image or too personal for whoever she was talking about.

It was also in October 2012 that Taylor started being seen with Harry Styles, although rumours would later spread that he had pursued her for some months. They were seen frequently throughout December - including a highly-papped outing in Central Park on 2nd December, Taylor attending a One Direction afterparty on 3rd December, and a skiing party later in the month. However, by early January, it was publicly over, and some wondered how real the relationship had actually been - or whether Taylor and Harry, both high-flying superstars in their own countries, were just as interested in each others' fanbases.

However, on 4th December, Taylor received an award from the RFK Foundation for her humanitarian work before heading to the One Direction party - Dianna Agron was there, and made sure to tweet about Taylor's performance. Dianna also gave an interview about Taylor's success, saying "we've just been so lucky to kind of be embraced by the family" [note the first person pronoun there]. On 5th December, Dianna went to ELLE magazine to visit Taylor, and on 6th December, she also apparently accompanied Harry and Taylor to dinner at the Crosby Hotel.

Blind Gossip sites were pretty quick to call the Harry/Taylor interactions PR, in blind items ("blinds") predicting break-ups in early 2013 - predictions which turned out to be right.

 

 

On 9th January 2013, Taylor attended the People's Choice Awards in a stunning white dress which turned heads for its grown-up sexiness. But a few sharp-eyed folks spotted what appeared to be a bruise under Taylor's left breast - distinct from the shadow from her dress, there seemed to be a visible, pale brown, mark. (Full-size image.) Taylor was, supposedly, single at this time. On 22nd January, she also appeared on Spanish TV show El Hormiguero - the audio is a little hard to hear because of the way that the Spanish dubbing cuts over Taylor's voice, but at around 7:00 the host asks her about what type of boys she likes and Taylor's reply includes "I think, in our twenties, it's just kind of like - oh, I guess I'll try hanging out with him, or hanging out with her". 

 

 

 

In October 2012, Glee had featured Taylor's song Mine being sung by Santana to her girlfriend Brittany. It was the second and last time one of Taylor's songs, after Mean in May 2012. However, shortly before the Valentine's Day (14th February) 2013 episode of Glee, Taylor tweeted:

It was no secret that Dianna and Taylor were close friends, and it was generally assumed that Dianna was her source. However, in the episode, I Do, none of Taylor's songs featured - but Quinn, played by Dianna Agron, had sex with Santana. Santana is played by Naya Rivera; it had been rumoured at times that there had been some sort of relationship between Dianna and Naya. Taylor's tweet was very quickly deleted, and replaced with a tweet about her dancers:

It has been suggested that this was either part of a rough patch in Dianna and Taylor's relationship - there were frequent rumours about Dianna with other women, while Taylor was starting to have the press and public turn against her - but equally that it may have been intended as an inside joke that Dianna did not intend to be commented on publicly. It has also been suggested that Dianna was attempting another sort of coming out.

If that was her intention, then it may have worked.

On 16th April, a fake news article "confirming" that Taylor and Dianna were in a relationship went viral; searching for "Taylor Swift" on Twitter gave top suggestions of "Taylor Swift lesbian?" and "Taylor Swift Dianna Agron". On 23rd April, Skins actress Dakota Blue Richards tweeted:

The tweet was only intermittently viewable - because of how many people were trying to see it. It remains there to this day.

However, at or around this time, everything went quiet again between Dianna and Taylor. Neither of them acknowledged the rumours. Taylor had recently started her Red tour, which ran from 13th March to 12th June 2013, but during the week gap she took from 27th April to 4th May she did not seem to even acknowledge Dianna. Several Taylor fan or 'company' twitter accounts wished Dianna a happy birthday, but Taylor did not - a wild contrast with just the previous year. Dianna deleted her tumblr just twelve hours after Richards posted. In mid May, Dianna took her first (known) trip to Morocco, a place where she would return repeatedly over the following years and where she would eventually meet her future husband, Winston Marshall.

Rumours have arisen that Dianna actually proposed at around this time, either as an attempt to save a faltering relationship or as a push to make their relationship public. However, I have not been able to find firm sources for this beyond tumblr rumours, and it is another story which I, personally, would take with a pinch of salt.

 

 

 

A Final Meeting

On 4th September 2013, Taylor and Dianna both attended a Fun. concert; this was also the second anniversary of their meeting in 2011 (the prelude to the Swiftgron Spring as listed above; note that not all Gaylor Swift theorists support the Early Swiftgron timeline). Over the course of September, Taylor played Sad, Beautiful, Tragic live, the only two occasions that she has ever done so.

In November 2013, Taylor met Karlie Kloss at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show - but that's a matter for next chapter. Taylor had been considering buying property in the UK, but before too long was looking to move to New York instead. It is fairly well accepted that Taylor's choice of New York definitively marked the end of any relationship hopes she may have still had for Dianna.

In December 2014, Carina MacKenzie, writer for TV show The Originals, tweeted to say that she believed that 1989  would be at least partially about Dianna Agron.

 

 

 

Life After Taylor

Dianna continued to act, but moved into movie roles and music videos, and has even dabbled in directing. She began dating Mumford & Son's singer Winston Marshall in mid-2015; they became engaged around January 2016 and married in October 2016. In August 2020, she and Winston made their divorce public, and in the following weeks she acknowledged that she was leaning heavily into the cottagecore aesthetic. She maintains an active Instagram and Twitter, and makes occasional public appearances. 

When discussing her role as a queer woman in the 2015 movie Bare, Dianna said that her "experiences in life that have made me understand sexuality in many different ways"; in March 2021, with the release of Shiva Baby (a film whose main character is a young bisexual Jewish woman), in an interview Dianna spoke about "discovering who I was as a person, my sexuality" - an unusual comment from a cisgender heterosexual person, who would rarely have to 'discover' anything about their sexuality. On 28th May 2021, Dianna posted a picture on Instagram of her kissing voice actor Megalyn Echikunwoke (fairly chastely) on the lips, with the caption "I love her, I lover her, I love her". The Instagram itself has now been deleted, but was commonly noticed. Autostraddle posted an article asking if it was a low-key coming out, remembering the Likes Girls tee of a decade before. In the 2022 Pride Edition of Bella Magazine, the letter from the editor includes

We also “Get to Know” a fabulous queer personality, Dianna Agron, on pages 46-51.

In other words, it looks like Dianna Agron may have softly come out - at least to other queer people who know what nods to look for.

On October 5th 2019, Taylor performed False God and Lover on SNL - and Dianna Agron was among those in the audience. Dianna also reportedly had an all access pass (generally given to individuals by one of the performers on the show) and attended Taylor's afterparty.

 

 

Taylor's Public Boyfriends

 

Despite the reputation which Taylor began to acquire towards the end of this era, after John Meyer Taylor's love life was for some time more a matter of speculation and rumour than known relationships.

 

Jake Gyllenhaal

The two were supposedly dating, and occasionally pictured together, between October 2010 and January 2011. Even US Weekly described this as a "sudden romance", with a single series of pictures all taken on the same street and stories about a series of dates (apple-picking and the like) of which photos were never seen although they were supposed to have posed for pictures with fans. Even at the time, Hollywood Life was describing it as fake. The song most often linked with Gyllenhaal is All Too Well, but as mentioned last chapter Maggie Gyllenhaal does not know what the scarf reference is about.

Years later, Gyllenhaal is still unwilling to talk about Taylor, but speculations on the reason(s) for the break-up include the age difference between them, his unwillingness to commit, and general flakiness on Gyllenhaal's part.

 

Conor Kennedy

Taylor met Conor in July 2012, and was linked with him until around September or October 2012. There are a number of pictures of them spending time together (which certainly seem less staged than with some other men!) but even at the time, and Taylor certainly seems to have enjoyed her time at the Kennedy compound. She even accompanied Conor on a visit to his mother's grave, in what seemed like a supportive gesture.

Even at the time, there were questions about them - the age difference (Kennedy was still in high school, having repeated a year) and the fact that Taylor seemed enamoured with the Kennedy family generally being top of the list. There were even suggestions that she was part of a property deal for the Kennedy's! However, there certainly seems to have been at least a fondness between them, and real relationship or not they seemed to enjoy each other's company. The relationship seems to have fizzled out, with no hard feelings in either side.

 

Harry Styles

It has been said that Harry had been pursuing Taylor since April 2012, but it was only between October 2012 and early January 2013 that the pair were seen together. "Haylor" is still a huge ship, and for much longer some fans believed that they continued to be in a secret relationship. Most of 1989 is assigned as being inspired by Harry, as well as a number of songs from Red. They appeared in public a handful of times, only to abruptly break up, but are still asked about each other years after the fact.

Both were highly desirable to the tween-early teen music market, and probably had a considerable overlap in fanbases. (Unfortunately, the break-up only managed to separate those fanbases more than merge them.) Their dates always seemed to have been papped, and even at the time there were many dubious looks thrown their way. Much like Joe Jonas, there may well have been intentions of making them a celebrity 'power couple', but for one reason or another they did not click and did not go ahead.

 

 

 

Songs About Dianna

These songs will be listed in the rough order that they seem to apply in the relationship, rather than necessarily the order in which they were written or released. Links will be to Spotify unless otherwise noted. There are a number of songs which are more speculatively about Dianna, but these are ones which people are relatively certain about. Until reputation (2017), all of Taylor's songs had "secret messages"; in the lyrics published with the CDs, individual letters were capitalised to spell out messages. These messages are therefore easy to decode and have been used regularly over the years; the messages start to become increasingly relevant, but potentially more opaque, with time.

Probably the first song which is associated with Dianna. The song has the air of falling for someone that you shouldn't, of entering a potentially risky relationship - after Emily, there must have been a fear that Taylor would be risking her career by entering into another relationship with a woman. One notable lyric says, "I can't decide if it's a choice", while "I'll do anything you say, if you say it with your hands" was one of Taylor's earliest lyrics which seemed to acknowledge sex. Motifs: risk, driving, daydream

Probably written with Ed Sheeran in May 2012, judging by this tweet from Taylor, and recorded on 28th May. Therefore its usual association, with Conor Kennedy, cannot be considered possible. Dianna has green eyes and freckles, and was with Taylor at Hyannis Port - the secret message says "Hyiannis Port", with a noticeable misspelling which people have theorised could be to reference Dianna. Has one of only two lyrical references to butterflies. Motifs: green eyes, blue as sadness, "come back"

Likely written in May 2012, not long after Everything Has Changed, and along with Treacherous, this was just at the time that Dianna had gone from New York to Europe, specifically London. Motifs: late nights, "come back"

Another song about falling in love, with a nervousness and uncertainty about it all. Dianna has freckles, and once again the song references the subject being in London (as Dianna was in early/mid April 2012). Motifs

  • Run (Red (Taylor's Version), 2021)

This song seems to be set early in a relationship, but one in which the connection is certain rather than still tentative. There is still secrecy and escape, driving away (Taylor driving in something that matches this period of her life, into adulthood but before New York). 

A response to the first major fight of a relationship, perhaps? Taylor has said in interview that this is about the early stages of a relationship and getting to know someone. There are certainly photos out there of Dianna carrying groceries for Taylor. Sadly it has been cofirmed that this image is photoshopped. Motifs: "stay", madness, daydream [secret message]

  • 22 (Red, 2012)

The secret message of 22 reads "Ashley Dianna Claire Selena", making this undoubtedly one of the songs dedicated to Dianna. While the song is generally treated as a friendship anthem, there are some lines which stand out, including "you don't know about me, but I bet you want to", "We won't be sleeping", and "You look like bad news, I gotta have you". The original/draft lyrics also seem more inclined to a relationship than to friendships. In the music video, Taylor spends a lot of time flashing two fingers at the audience - a symbol for two, a rude gesture in the UK(!), and quite often a way of referencing vagina for lewd gestures. Although there are men who join the party in the last third of the video, it is not them that Taylor dances with - while wearing cat ears that may be a reference to Dianna's birthday party once again. Motifs: dancing, late nights, risk ["everything will be all right if"]

 

  • Babe (Sugarland ft. Taylor Swift, Bigger, 2018)

Released by country band Sugarland in 2018, it was revealed that Babe was actually written during the Red era by Taylor Swift and Patrick Monahan. Babe is a song about a woman whose partner cheats on her, promising "this is the last time I'll ever call you, babe". Taylor also put forward the idea for the music video. But what shocked many people was how much the video looked like Sam Smith's Not the Only One (2014) - the 1960s aesthetic, certain shots, the pattern of scenes, and even the appearance of the wife. Dianna Agron played the jilted wife in Not the Only One, and no few Gaylor Swift theorists noticed the correlation. Motifs: infidelity, blue as sadness [music video]

 A firmly post-relationship song, AYHTDWS is sometimes considered to be paired with How You Get The Girl, as Taylor has described AYHTDWS as being inspired by a dream about an ex returning to her. However, it can also be contrasted with Stay Stay Stay, and linked to songs like I Knew You Were Trouble and Babe in its references to "the love you gave away", which seems to be an indication of infidelity. Motifs: infidelity, "stay"

Moving into the second major iteration of Swiftgron, or Swiftgron 3.0 in the extended timeline, How You Get The Girl is a song written in January 2013 after what appeared to be a complicated few months for her. The "long six months" may not be quite literal, but a reference to a period of time between two attempts to make their relationship work. HYGTG has no he/him pronouns and an ambiguity of subject created by the use of I, You and She in the same song. (For a more detailed analysis of possible timelines for HYGTG, please see all-my-possessions) Motifs: madness, kiss on cheek

Taylor has stated that This Love started as a poem and later evolved into this song, and also that it was the first song written for 1989; however, it is not clear whether it is the poem, or the song, which was completed. Phrases like "wildest dreams" (which references the song Wildest Dreams) or "sinking ships" (referencing I Know Places) suggest that either this song fed phrases into many others on the album, or that it was adjusted at the end to make sure that it brought the themes of the album together. The symbol of love leaving and returning most likely returns to the on-and-off, complicated nature of Dianna and Taylor's relationship, but may also refer to Taylor's return to dating a woman in the years after losing Emily. Motifs: kiss on cheek

Out of the Woods is a song about a complicated relationship, not just difficult in an interpersonal sense but with a strong sense of societal pressure as well. Theories tend to state  that this is a combination of thoughts about her complicated relationship with Dianna and her PR-based 'relationship' with Harry Styles. It holds a lot of analogies about construction/arrangement of relationships, and many references to fear, as well as a contrast between the "black and white" world (of strict rules and expectations) and the "screaming colour" of Taylor and the person to whom she is singing. Motifs: risk

It is not clear whether this song is set in a time when two people are temporarily separated, or one when they have been more permanently parted. "Different roads, but they all lead back to you" is reminiscent of both the idea of Style and of the "crooked love in a straight line town" of IWYW, and "built to fall apart" later reappears in Out of the Woods. "The night in the hotel" is thought to link to the Beverley Hills Hotel where the group celebrated MacLaine's birthday, while the LA setting is where Taylor spent most of her time with Dianna. However, the biggest thing about this song - which was noted even beyond strict Gaylor circles - was the oddity of the rhyme scheme. "Picture"/"miss you", "whispered"/"miss you" and "whisper"/"miss you" all seem to miss; the first suggestion was that the rhyme had originally been ya, with Taylor's older accent, but when Taylor also used her accent and got back to her country roots in I Bet You Think About Me this doesn't hold up so well. What would have rhymed even better was "They don't know how much I miss her" - and this is the version that can often be heard shout-sung by groups of fans. 

Moving into songs which are post-Swiftgron 4.0, and after what was most likely the final breakup. I Wish You Would is a song about thinking about a former relationship and wishing, at least, partially, that the ex would return to you. Co-writer Jack Antonoff revealed that I Wish You Would was written over Memorial Weekend (25th-27th May) 2013, and Taylor has spoken to Rolling Stone about it being about an ex who bought a house close to hers. Dianna bought a house in LA, near to Taylor, in November 2012. It is also notable for the line "we're a crooked love in a straight line town", a clear expression of transgression in relationships which has moved from being teenage rebellion to being something more societal. Motifs: late nights, driving, "come back", madness

Moved to the Deluxe promotional edition of 1989, and not available as part of the main album, Wonderland was the first song other than 22 which was associated directly with Dianna. Dianna loves Alice in Wonderland; her tumblr was called "felldowntherabbithole", and she has a large tattoo on her side reading "Mary has a little lamb. Here I am. What will we become? We become ourselves. We're all mad here. All the world is green." [Emphasis mine.] Phrases in the song such as "haven't you heard what becomes of curious minds?" and "too in love to think straight" invite a queer reading, while there is another explicit reference to fear. This is also the song which introduces the "strangers talking, and whispers turns to talking, and talking turned to screams" - a more extensive reference to the socially transgressive nature of the relationship, and outside societal pressure upon it. It has the feeling of being an end of a relationship, a retrospective, with a melancholy element. Motifs: Alice in Wonderland, green eyes, madness 

Despite the name, which made many assume that this song is about Harry Styles, in October 2013 Dianna took part in a James Dean-inspired photoshoot for UK magazine InStyle which would be published in February 2014 (and when posting the same image on Instagram, she titled it "Rebel Without a Clue"). This image may well have inspired the lyrics of a "James Dean daydream look" and "long hair, slicked back, tight tee shirt" which so many have linked to Harry instead. Taylor wrote the song Style on 19th February 2014, and has stated in interviews that it is about how some people never really leave your life, and never go out of style. It would be unusual, in an era in which Taylor was becoming more opaque about the inspiration about her songs, for her to explicitly name one, and indeed in later interviews she later stated that it was short for 'never go out of style'. Style is also noted for the lyrics "You've been out and about with some other girls [...] and I've been there too few a two times", which is ambiguous as to whether Taylor has merely been seen "out and about" or has specifically been seen "out and about with some other girls". Interestingly, in an interview with Ryan Seacrest for Heart Radio, Taylor starts off using neutral pronouns ("other people") but then proceeds to imply that she was also out with other girls. It was one of the last two songs written about Dianna. Motifs: late night, driving, infidelity, daydream 

Clean was written on 8th February 2014, and recorded the very next day. It talks about being "ten months sober" - ten months out of a relationship, and finally reaching a point where she no longer wanted to return to the relationship. She had also said that she had realised she had been in the same city as an ex and had not even been thinking about them. It was generally assumed that this was about being in London, the same city as Harry Styles, but it is noteworthy at this point that Dianna was spending much of her time in London around the time that Taylor was visiting and recorded Clean. However, Taylor has also said that Clean is about feeling like her reputation had been dragged through the mud and now, perhaps, could be clean again. (Given what would happen in the following years, and the form her new album would take, there is perhaps a bittersweet edge to this interpretation.) Clean has also been paired with Wonderland on the 1989 set list, and as noted in chapter four talks about a hidden heartbreak which was quite at odds with the highly public nature of her relationships around this time. This song has the second of two references to butterflies - and not just any, but "the butterflies", strongly implying a link back to Everything Has Changed. And perhaps most striking is the imagery used for Clean during the tour - strikingly reminiscent of the dress-up night from 25th April 2012. Motifs: drowning

 

It has been suggested that Exile is about Dianna and Taylor seeing each other again at the American Music Awards on November 23rd 2014. This event appears in the following chapter on Karlie Kloss, as Karlie was Taylor's plus one for the event and they were very publicly affectionate. However, Dianna was seated literally on the other side of Karlie, meaning that she was witness to it all. Dianna had flown straight from Europe for this event and spoke openly about being tired. As people were being seated, Dianna greeted Taylor warmly, as was pictured (below), but after that both Karlie and Taylor kept their backs to Dianna, and there is footage of her looking over to them and them completely ignoring her.

Karlie spent much of the night with her "arms around" Taylor, and the fast development of the Kaylor relationship could easily be called "five whole minutes to pack us up" - especially when Dianna had spoken of being willing to carry Taylor's bags on tour. "I think I've seen this film before" and "second, third and hundredth chances" indicates a cyclical relationship - and it has been contrasted to Style in terms of the enduring nature. Considering Dianna was at this time largely based in Europe, and Karlie took credit for keeping Taylor in the USA (see Karlie chapter), it is not hard to see where "not my homeland" might come from. 

exile is a more mature and nuanced look at the end of a relationship, the overlapping singing of "never gave a warning sign"/"gave you so many signs" reflecting both past communication issues and continuing ones - the singers still fail to communicate properly to each other even as they duet. 

the 1 is definitely a song that looks back on a relationship after some time - to Swiftgron what All Too Well is to Taymily, perhaps. Strong "film" and "matinee" imagery evokes Dianna as an actor (the Hunger Games film they attended was literally a "Sunday matinee"), while the "roaring twenties" could reference both the song 22 that was publicly dedicated to Dianna and Dianna's love of vintage clothing and artefacts. 

 

Former Stories, Former Songs

 

During the time when many of the original Gaylor masterposts were put together, in 2014-7 with the rise of a different Taylor relationship and then reputation which shocked many, there was only a cursory glance into her history. During this time, Swiftgron was recalled and Dianna bought up as an ex of Taylor's, but in order to make her the muse for the entire Red album and cover a swathe of Taylor's career, the relationship was often portrayed as tempestuous, toxic, or even bordering on abusive. The "Early Swiftgron Theory" existed primarily to give a first time together, and a first breakup, to which the breakup songs on Red could be attributed.

This may well have come partially from the way in which the album was marketed. In 2020, Taylor called Red her "only real breakup album", and the marketing for it even in 2012 was about loss and loneliness. Doubtless some of this comes from the stand-out song All Too Well. However, the fact that it was described as a break-up album led people to assume that all of the songs were for the same muse and charting the same relationship, rather than potentially referring to the end of one relationship and the beginning of another. This discordance in marketing and content only becomes stronger once the (Taylor's Version) vault songs are taken into account, as most of them are about the beginning of a new, tentative relationship!

With that, then, I will not the following songs, which have historically been linked to Dianna but which cannot be about her for reasons relating to the timeline listed above:

IKYWT, as is it is often shortened to, was probably written in response to the breakup of Swiftgron 2.0, or the first major iteration of the relationship, potentially because of Dianna's struggles to remain monogamous (consider the "pussy bandit" nickname from around this time) or underlying instability to the relationship. Taylor has stated that it was about a relationship where she knew that there were red flags, but she continued anyway - consider Treacherous. Although generally associated with Harry Styles, it was apparently written before they had even met, let alone dated (whoops). IKYWT is one of the songs in which Taylor most often seems to change pronouns (to "she never loved me" - see chapter four, where even AfterEllen has acknowledged an instance of this). In the music video, Taylor also sports pink hair, which some have thought might be a reference to Dianna sporting pink hair as Quinn for season three of Glee. Motifs: risk, drowning, infidelity, losing oneself [music video prologue]

IKYWT is recorded as having been written around the time of the Swiftgron Spring, and is therefore simply too early to be about a Swiftgron relationship that had experienced any sort of breakup. Taylor has stated that it was about a relationship where she knew that there were red flags, but she continued anyway - consider Treacherous. Although generally associated with Harry Styles, it was written before they had even met, let alone dated (whoops). IKYWT is one of the songs in which Taylor most often seems to change pronouns (to "she never loved me" - see chapter four, where even AfterEllen has acknowledged an instance of this).

Dianna's August 2012 tweet of "like...never, ever?" to Taylor about the release of this single, amid a period of quietness between the two of them, has led people to wonder whether this song was about Dianna, and Dianna was aware of it. Certainly, Taylor's performance of the song at the 2013 Grammys had elements of both Alice in Wonderland (Dianna's favourite book) and the circus (Dianna's 26th birthday party) to it. However, the original song itself is too early to be about Swiftgron, and it may be simply that it ended up feeling far too appropriate to what proceeded to happen between them. Motifs: dancing [secret message], Alice in Wonderland [live performance], circus [live performance]

Post-breakup, looking back more with more nostalgia and/or longing, it seems that this song follows the first angry period after a breakup and starts to become more regretful.

"I left a note on the door with a joke we'd made" was assumed for many years to be a reference to the "I'm a little 🐱" which Taylor wrote on Dianna's bathroom door the night of her twenty-sixth birthday party. However, Taylor has consistently said that this was about a relationship which had been over for a while by the time the song was written, and there simply is not enough time for this to mean Dianna even under the Early Swiftgron Theory. Strangely enough, one of the things which first persuaded people that Taylor might be queer... looks to be a major coincidence after all.

  • Red (Red, 2012)

The titular track of the album also looked back on an ended relationship with a growing sense of longing and nostalgia. Motifs: driving, blue as sadness Red was written even as the Swiftgron Spring was just starting, but contrasts sharply to the songs written about Dianna in that era. Its association to Dianna is more likely due to the assumption that all of Red is about one muse.

Notes:

For more information:

• Autostraddle's piece on Dianna Agron's "Likes Girls" tee and follow-up
• BlindGossip.Com talking about Dianna Agron and Alex Pettyfer being a fake relationship - they were at least confident enough about it to post it online without fear of being sued.
• Swiftgron Relationship timeline by all-my-possessions
• Swiftgron masterpost by helplessgay
• A reddit post detailing the timeline of Taylor and Harry Styles being seen together
• Fuller breakdown of exile as representing the 2014 AMAs on tumblr

• rareswifts "Dianna Agron" tag

Chapter 14: Call It What You Want: Karlie Kloss | Peak Kaylor

Notes:

Finished after I posted it - whoops - but I'm still fairly pleased with the results. Sorry for the long delay!

(Also, every time I post a chapter, something Big usually happens in the Gaylor world. Goodness knows what it's going to be this time.)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

On Top of the World

 

In March 2014, Taylor moved permanently to New York, and began work on her album 1989. She worked with a greater range of cowriters, including Jack Antonoff who would go on to become a longstanding friend, and made the decision to turn her music in a more pop, and less country, direction. On August 4th, she began seeding clues, and announced details the album in a highly publicised Yahoo! livestream outside the Empire State Building on August 18th - the name, cover artwork, release date, and the lead single Shake it Off. 

These clues were the beginning of an era of intense promotion, high paparazzia presence, and cementing Taylor's position as one of the biggest pop stars of the decade. She introduced the "Secret Sessions", giving a handful of NDA-signing fans an early show of her album, and released footage from them a few days before the album's release on October 27th. It made her the first act to have three albums sell a million copies in their first week, and when Blank Space succeeded Shake It Off  at number one she became the first woman in history to succeed herself for the top spot.

Her music videos became increasingly stylised and cinematic, breaking records for views and winning awards at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. She also broke records for the number of Grammys and Brits which she continued to receive, and the 1989 tour, from May to December 2015, became one of the highest-grossing tours of the decade. In February 2015, she performed with Paul McCartney for the SNL 40th Anniversary Special, and in March performed with Kenny Chesney on the opening nights of his Big Revival Tour. She also topped People's 2014 Best Dressed list, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Times Person of the year; in 2015 she made her second appearance on Times Most Influential People and was the youngest ever woman on the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women list. 

She was a household name, an international figure. But with everyone's eyes on her came ever-increasing criticism.

In 2012, Taylor had exchanged complimentary tweets with Lena Dunham, who also dated Jack Antonoff from 2012 to 2017. She says that Lena Dunham made her realise that she was already a feminist, and this feminism would weave through the 1989 era. However, her approach was often criticised. Sometimes this was justifiable - the all-white ballerina group of Shake It Off in contrast to the way that all the other dance groups had a greater range of individuals - and sometimes less so, as people simply took the opportunity to fire on a successful young woman. Lena Dunham is a controversial figure to say the least, as while her work has been praised for its discussion of body image and weight, it has often been tone-deaf at best about race, and patchy in terms of her discussion of sexual assault. Taylor and Lena may have drifted apart in 2018, but during her 1989 era were firm friends.

In 2015, Taylor also got caught up in the criticism of the MTV VMA nominations sparked by Nicki Minaj about the fact that videos featuring slim white women were overrepresented. Possibly as a result of her 2009 run-in with Kanye, Taylor overreacted and took Minaj's tweets as aimed at her, and while the two quickly made up it was blown out of proportion by the press that Taylor had been courting for the past year. It certainly didn't help when the obnoxious Piers Morgan waded in, ostensibly on Taylor's side but in truth just wanting to air his "politically incorrect" (read: racist) views. Taylor's public and clear apology came within forty-eight hours, and Nicki Minaj encouraged everyone to move on, but damage was done.

Taylor's "squad" was also widely publicised, and widely criticised. Cosmopolitan provides a timeline; during the 1989 era, instead of focusing on her romantic life, Taylor turned the focus towards her friendships, particularly with other women. These included singers, models, actresses, and Lena Dunham as mentioned above. Most of these would appear on the 1989 tour with her as special guests. Every time Taylor was seen or photographed with a female friend, the media announced her induction into the "squad", while #SquadGoals was regularly used to refer to them. However, it was regularly accused not just of being fake, but of prioritising thin, white women, and being put together solely to further Taylor's brand. While it is certainly true that Taylor used her friendships and single status as part of her image for the 1989 era, the criticism at the time often accused Taylor of being friendless, and Camille Paglia even called her an "obnoxious Nazi Barbie".

In a similarly nasty tone, it was during this era of Taylor's extreme fame that 4chan's /pol/ forum (short for "politically incorrect") started to take quotes from Hitler and put them on images of Taylor, as well as spreading the myth that she was a /b/ regular. It started on 4chan as a joke to trolls newbies with - strangely enough, I recently found myself playing Dungeons and Dragons with someone who was on /b/ during the era, who assured me that none of them took it seriously - but incoming newbies and individuals from outside the forums took it in entirely the wrong light. 4chan may well also have been behind the "nudes" rumours that circulated from 2014 to 2016.

Taylor's weight also visibly plummeted, with her new look of tighter, sleeker clothes exaggerating the effect. Rumours circulated that she might have an eating disorder. Rumours also circulated that she might have had a breast enlargement, with gossip forums often getting sidetracked extensively discussing whether surgery, or different clothing and makeup, was behind her different appearance in different photos. In 2015, Maxim pronounced Taylor the Sexiest Woman in the World - a compliment, perhaps, but also a sign of how the more powerful and famous a woman becomes, and the more that she moves into the public eye, the more that her appearance is judged. Taylor was no longer being judged on just her voice and music - her appearance, her politics, and her choice of friends were all coming under fire.

Taylor was one of the biggest names in the world - but that meant that hating on her was easy clickbait. Justified and nuanced critique was lost among accusations of Nazism and racism. She had never been more famous, but would describe in 2016 how she had become a "national lightning rod for slut shaming", while her young and naive approach to feminism opened her up to widespread criticism.

 

 

 

Karlie Kloss

Karlie Kloss is a model (recently turned television host) who started modelling in 2006 at the age of 14, and who by 2010 had walked in shows in Europe and America, as well as appearing in any number of advertisement campaigns for such huge names as Alexander McQueen, Louis Vuitton, and Versace. She has appeared in magazines in at least a dozen countries, and had Vogue covers in Italy, Turkey, China, UK, Korea, and US Teen Vogue. From 2013 to 2015, she was also a Victoria's Secret Angel - and one of the forefront members of Taylor Swift's friendship circle.

Karlie began dating Josh Kushner in 2012, when she was 19. In interviews, however, she often seemed to forget that she had a boyfriend at all.

Rumours linked Karlie to fellow models Toni Garrn and Jourdan Dunn, and in late 2014 The Improper claimed that sources called her a "switch hitter". Karlie called Jourdan Dunn her "soulmate" in 2011, in an article which also noted that when they were together, other people called them "Jourlie". 

However, it is with Toni that the rumours have been the most extensive and long-lasting. They started modelling together when they were in their teens, and quickly became inseparable. Model Suvi Koponen posted the following tweet in March 2012, only to quickly 'clarify':

And to the present day, Toni remains close to Karlie, frequently commenting on her social media and calling her "wifey". There are many images of them holding hands, kissing on the cheek, and embracing. 

 

 

 

"Peak Kaylor"

 

In January 2012, Taylor said in a Vogue interview, "I love Karlie Kloss. I want to bake cookies with her!" to which Karlie replied, in a tweet, "Your kitchen or mine?". However, they would not meet until November 2013, when Taylor performed at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. The full show can be viewed on Youtube on multiple channels, for example here. Taylor was in her element in performing, holding her own on a stage surrounded by supermodels in high-fashion costumes. She also seemed to be having a lot of fun interacting with the models around her, whether they be Lily Aldridge:

Or Cara Delevigne:

 

But it was Karlie Kloss with whom Taylor seemed the most captivated on that night - a feeling that was apparently mutual. An interview with Karlie about the show had Karlie confirm that Taylor was her favourite part of it, and the interviewer even called it "such a little girl crush moment for us" and "our dream date". Karlie and Taylor spent much of their time on the runway together staring into each other's eyes, reaching out to each other, and Taylor embellished her movements with gestures in Karlie's direction. Further backstage footage, some from 2013 and some released in 2016, showed them talking and Taylor looking on while Karlie danced with Jourdan.

    

At the end of the show, Taylor also all but ran to Karlie to hug her tightly. Remember - this was the first night that they'd met.

The next day, Karlie posted a clip of the show on Instagram, to which Taylor replied (in all caps) "YOU'RE PERFECT!!!"

The interview with Karlie, on 10th December, confirmed that they had were already hanging out and had strong ties within about four weeks. This was also the time when Taylor gave up on moving to London - where Dianna was spending a lot of her time - and chose to move to New York instead. Karlie Kloss took credit for the decision. Some 1989 Secret Session fans reported seeing a picture of Karlie, Taylor and Andrea with a cake and wearing winter wear, probably from Andrea's birthday in early January. Then in February 2014, during a Cosmo Live online session chatting with Cosmopolitan magazine, the conversation turned into Karlie talking about Taylor for about two minutes. Smiling and flustered, Karlie confirms that they text (and that Taylor does not use txt spk) and takes a long time to come up with "...boys?" as a topic of conversation.

 

Big Sur

Shortly after - the first week or so of March 2014 - Karlie and Taylor took a roadtrip to Big Sur (full name Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park), a pretty, rugged area of California coastline. This road trip would be covered in the February 2015 edition of Vogue, but even before this Swifties were entranced, especially those who wondered whether there was something going on between the women. (Other outlets, such as Popsugar and Marie Claire, also noticed and covered it more quickly.) Over the days, Taylor posted a number of Instagram pictures (now deleted to the 2016 purge of her social media, but preserved elsewhere on the internet). 

Photos from this trip which particularly stuck with people included:

      

 

The first was noted for its intimacy, the second for the romantic overtones of the heart (and the daisy in Karlie's hair, which would become somewhat symbolic of the entire Big Sur trip), the third for both the daisy and the intimacy, but the fourth picture was most noted for its caption. Taylor posted it to Instagram with the caption "On the way home" - a generic phrase? Or a link to then-unreleased song You Are In Love, with its lyrics "You can feel it on the way home"? (Naturally, this possible link would not be considered until the release of the album in October.)

Intrepid Swifties did not take too long to figure out where in Big Sur one of the photos was taken - an area only accessible to guests at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn, a historic hotel with a number of cabins and rooms, mostly queens and doubles. Specifically, this photo appears to have been taken behind Creek House, a standalone cabin with an upstairs room and a downstairs suite.  

A few days later, Taylor's long-term publicist, Paula Erickson, left Taylor's employ. She would shortly be replaced by Tree Paine. Meanwhile, in an interview with a 42 year old Australian DJ, then 17 year old Lorde sharply and skilfully shot down rumours about her and Taylor being a lesbian couple, while also calling out the DJ on his lesbophobic double standards. Once again, rumours about Taylor being queer were fluttering in more popular media.

A fan from the Secret Sessions also said there was a picture of Karlie in Taylor's bathroom, probably from this same trip.

In a Vogue 73 questions in 2016, someone sent in the question: "My wife and I's first anniversary is coming up, where should I take her?" and Taylor firmly replied "Big Sur".

 

 

 

In later March, they visited SNL together when Lena Dunham appeared, and throughout April were photographed having lunch together, going from the gym to dinner together, and walking through Tribeca. This included leaving Taylor's apartment together in the mornings. During 2014, Taylor would be photographed almost daily, and one or more of her friends appeared on a regular basis - but Karlie seemed far more present than any others. By May, Taylor was attending dinner parties hosted by Karlie's longtime friend Toni Garrn. On May 4th, Karlie and Taylor attended a pre-Met Gala party together, and on May 5th they got ready for the Met together before heading in. Derek Blasberg, journalist, joked about making Karlie jealous by taking photos with Taylor that night. (And a revealed blind item, meaning the gossip column was comfortable stating something without fear of being accused of libel, mentioned that Taylor had been sending an assistant to pick up a lot of expensive lingerie for her.)

The Asia leg of Taylor's Red tour started on May 30th 2014 and ran until June 12th 2014. By June 13th, she was visiting Karlie to garden together, and pictures were frequently taken of them throughout June. Karlie dyed her hair blonder, bringing it closer in shade to Taylor's. In an interview with US Weekly which was widely requoted, Karlie also said:

 

"I've been traveling. She's been traveling. No time for boys!"

...Josh Kushner who?

(This was also the month when Taylor got her second cat, Olivia.)

At the end of the month/start of July, Taylor visited Rhode Island, along with her brother Austin, Karlie, Josh Kushner, and Cara Delevigne (Remember Josh Kushner? The boyfriend that Karlie frequently forgot about?) leading into a grand Fourth of July party weekend. Taylor and Karlie continued to have their photos taken together throughout July, including a somewhat famous gym visit on July 21st where both Karlie and Taylor's bodyguard were holding the door open - but Taylor took hold of it as well anyway, wrapping her hand over Karlie's in doing so.

 

When Karlie and Taylor stepped out together early on July 14th, fans were quick to notice - and worry about - a long scratch on the back of Taylor's leg. It is unlikely that anyone expected her to reply with:

At this time, online slang dictionary Urban Dictionary had for some years been defining "funjuries" as sex-related injuries. Whether Taylor knew of this particular use when she posted the comment is unclear - although someone did point it out to her in following tweets, Taylor or her team probably couldn't have kept track of every reply they received. And it is far from impossible that Taylor, as a songwriter, would portmanteau two words together into what she thought was a neologism. (After all, even in 2019 she refers to "The Instagram", always with a definite article.)

Later that day, one online news site ran the headline "Taylor Swift Grabs Lunch With Scissor Buddy Karlie Kloss; Definitely One Of Her Sexiest Outings!"... but for the life of me, I cannot find out which news site it was!

Only a few days later, on July 17th, Jack Antonoff (songwriter with whom Taylor has often collaborated) appeared on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron to talk about songwriting, working with various people, and his contemporary projects. At one point he talked about Taylor in close proximity to talking about gay women - leading the host of the podcast to ask whether Jack knew something they didn't. In other words, it seemed like Jack nearly outed Taylor in the middle of the podcast.

For those who are not subscribers (like myself), the relevant section can be heard here.

 

Jack: There's a better chance, if I'm in a room working with a woman, that we're gonna get along, and she's not gonna say "this dude fucking gave it to me last night" or, like, "I just piled through these four guys over the weekend". 

Marc: You're not gonna have that conversation with Taylor Swift?

Jack: No *both laugh* I like women, and particularly gay women. Like... yeah.

Marc: Is she gay?

Jack Antonoff quickly says that what he meant is that he enjoys working with gay women like Tegan and Sara, for example, but the slip was enough to confuse Marc Maron for one.

On July 31st, they went together to the concert of US singer Ingrid Michaelson. In an interview, Ingrid spoke about them, indicating that Taylor had been surprised that Ingrid didn't know who Karlie was, and that they had spoken about leaving early together because Karlie had a photo shoot early the next day. Videos followed; in the beginning of one, Karlie has her arms wrapped around Taylor, and Taylor returned to Karlie during the encore. 

The idea of Karlie and Taylor potentially being a couple was starting to spread among Swifties - not just those who already considered it possible that Taylor was not heterosexual, but among other parts as well. Anon Swifties shared comments about the idea, both positive... and homophobicly negative. Some, at least, managed to be politely neutral. The term "Kaylor" became generally acknowledged in the fandom in around July 2014.

Karlie's 22nd birthday was on August 3rd 2014; Taylor posted a picture from the Big Sur trip with the caption describing Karlie as "100% sunshine". Karlie responded with "thank you my love!!!!" - this tweet has long since been deleted. Secret Sessions would later add that there was a picture of them together, with a birthday cake, hanging up in Taylor's apartment. Rumours started that Karlie was breaking up with Josh Kushner - KPopStarz suggested she was celebrating her "birthday and singledom" with Taylor. Karlie was also photographed several times leaving Taylor's apartment in the morning.

Gossip sites had already been speculating - Crave Online referred to a Karlie/Taylor "Scissorfest" on July 7th - but the rumours went mainstream on August 13th with Gawker article "Is Taylor Swift Living, and Maybe in Love, with a Woman?" Unlike the deliberate fake news from the Dianna days, this seemed to be someone asking a serious question. The Daily Mail (not a highly regarded newspaper in the UK, but always ready to serve gossip) had printed an article on August 9th indicating as such, and been ordered (it is not clear by which publicity team) to remove it.

Karlie's team later contacted Gawker to say:

 

Karlie and Taylor do not live together and have no plans to live together. The Daily Mail did not verify the facts of the story prior to publishing it.

(The Daily Mail certainly got one thing wrong - they mentioned Beverly Hills, not NYC, as the location of the apartment.)

Now, in the 2010 Glamour interview which I linked early in chapter seven, Taylor had talked about considering certain rooms in her properties as belonging to her friends, or at least being 'their' guest room. In September 2014, in a cover article with Rolling Stone, Taylor explained that Karlie had her own guest room in a rather similar way. Rolling Stone noted "a basket of Kloss’s favorite Whole Foods treats next to the bed, and multiple photos of her on the walls". (It does, however, take a rather painfully heterocentric line, stating apparently without irony "Since she’s been single, Swift has been acquiring girlfriends with the fervor she once devoted to landing guys" and not seeing the potential ambiguity of the word girlfriends.) Most people were simply confused why this line of explanation was not given immediately.

Although it seems in hindsight like a flash in the pan, at the time there were a flurry of articles:

  • The Stir a lifestyle and gossip website) called them "roommates" (link intact)
  • Hollywood Gossip called them "roommates" (link intact)
  • Grazia Daily [link now only available on Wayback Machine] used it as a springboard to imagine other celebrity housemate situations
  • EntertainmentWise [Wayback Machine only] called them "housemates"
  • Harpers Bazaar also posted - and tweeted about it - but it was removed so quickly that not even the Wayback Machine can help; only the URL remains. They then posted an updated version, which at least corrected the location to New York, but this too was very quickly taken down.
  • DListed, another gossip website, made rather cruder suggestions that the relationship might be sexual rather than platonic
  • GCN (an LGBT+ news outlet) gently poked fun at the whole incident

By August 15th, Gossip Cop (a sort of Snopes for Gossip which prides itself on being more accurate than other sites, and is in contact with various PR teams including, reportedly, Taylor Swift's) posted a firm rebuttal: Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss: NOT Living Together, NOT Dating. [Wayback Machine link - this article, too, is long gone.]

For a few weeks they were not much seen together (though they did occasionally like each other's tweets, and the first week of September was New York Fashion Week during which Karlie was very busy), during which Taylor time released Shake It Off on August 18th. People were surprised by the non-romantic lead single and the blunt pop nature. It was not missed by everyone, however, that Taylor said of the 80s pop which inspired her:

 

I found that … it was apparently a time of just limitless potential and the idea that you can do what you want, be what you want, wear what you want, love who you want.

August 23rd, in an article in The Guardian, she was also quoted as saying:

 

Has female friendship become more important to her than romance? “Without a doubt. Because the other alternative” – as in having a boyfriend – “isn’t really possible right now. It just doesn’t seem like a possibility in the near future. It doesn’t ever work. What works is having incredible girlfriends who I can trust and tell anything.”

She also told People Magazine:

 

"They can say whatever they want about my personal life because I know what my personal life is, and it involves a lot of TV and cats and girlfriends." 

In September 2014, Taylor did her I Heart Radio performance of I Knew You Were Trouble which seemed to involve a very clear - and somewhat publicised - "she never loved me", as mentioned in chapter four, and excitement for the upcoming 1989 continued to ramp up. Her Rolling Stone article, as above, was released, and things seemed to smooth out again.

Taylor and Karlie went back to being photographed together through on the same day as the I Heart Radio perfoamnce and continued through September and October - at The Honor Bar in Beverly Hills, . However, during this time Karlie was also photographed - in France, then in the US - with Josh Kushner. The Daily Mail then picked them up, a commercial relationship which would last a while. Taylor also nodded to the power of publicity over her relationships when she said, in an interview with Bustle:

 

There's a song on the new album called "Wildest Dreams", in which Swift takes a fatalist view of romance. "I think the way I used to approach relationships was very idealistic," she says. "I used to go into them thinking, 'Maybe this is the one - we'll get married and have a family, this could be forever.' Whereas now I go in thinking, 'How long do we have on the clock - before something comes along and puts a wrench in it, or your publicist calls and says this isn't a good idea."

(Emphasis mine.) Taylor was openly indicating that her romantic history was influenced, perhaps even guided, by the PR machine she had helped to build.

In the last days before 1989 released, Taylor hosted her "Secret Sessions", inviting close to a hundred fans at a time to a NDA-protected preview of her music. One such fan said that they saw Karlie Kloss in Taylor's apartment when a Secret Session was taking place.

1989 was released on midnight of October 27th 2014, and would go on to propel Taylor to fantastical stardom. But perhaps one of the stranger moments of that day was a 'latergram', or delayed Instagram post, from Karlie Kloss [Wayback Machine link of tumblr discussion]. In short, Josh and Karlie had visited Myanmar earlier in the year; Josh posted an image on October 25th, and Karlie also posted it on October 26th, both of them tagging themselves as being in Myanmar. Only... eagle-eyed followers noticed that Karlie's post was geotagged as coming from New York, and that same day a fan (tumblr user petervidani) had posted a selfie of themselves with Taylor and Karlie visible at a table behind them. There was confusion as to why they would bother attmpting to claim they were in a different country, and some did wonder whether it was to shield Karlie from potential rumours that the more romantic songs on 1989 were about her.

 

 

 

On 30th October 2014, Taylor and Karlie attended a basketball game together - Chicago Bulls vs New York Knicks, generally just referred to as the "Knicks Game". There was, naturally, heavy video coverage. Taylor and Karlie sat together, often with arms touching or reaching out to each other, speaking privately. In a detail that would later be remembered, they also drank beer from the plastic cups which are mandatory at such sports events. 

That did not stop one exchange from being understood - short enough for people to be able to lip read from the video. Karlie says to Taylor, "Relax", and Taylor replies, "I'll try".

  

And when they left, for at least the first part of the walk, they provided the first photographed evidence of hand-holding to this date:

 

 

 

VSFS2014 and the 2014 American Music Awards

In mid-November 2014, they were pictured shopping together at Sephora in matching dark check, before Karlie flew to Paris. By November 19th, Karlie was back, as they did the extensive photoshoot for what would become the cover of the February 2015 edition of Vogue. Taylor did her famous cover of Riptide at the BBC Live Lounge, not changing the pronouns and therefore singing about a female love interest. The Victoria Secret Fashion Show was also recorded in November 2014, although it would not air until the following month. Taylor appeared to sing again, this time with a number of her new 1989 songs. Although Taylor got plenty of stage time with various of the models, it was once again with Karlie that she shared the most time - and the most intense looks.

 

Ed Sheeran was also present, and Taylor was spotted excitedly pointing Karlie out to him. At the end of the show, Taylor once again ran into Karlie's arms, this time with her hands seeming to be a little lower from Karlie's waist than 2013. They left the stage hand in hand, and entered the afterparty the same way. Both in video and in still photos, they seemed to be regarding each other rather... adoringly.

 

On November 23rd, they attended the American Music Awards together, where Taylor performed Blank Space for the first time and made her stance against streaming service Spotify firm and public. She also received the Dick Clark Award for Excellence - an award which was neither awarded before, nor has been awarded since. As of the time of writing, Taylor Swift is the only holder of this award.

Sitting together, Karlie and Taylor spent much of their time with their arms around each other - sometimes refusing to let go even to applaud (which they instead did against their hips or thighs with one hand). They walked hand-in-hand to and from their seats, and at one point Karlie rubbed Taylor's hip in either reassurance or congratulations. And after the show and behind the scenes, Taylor sat on Karlie's lap while answering questions. The emerald green two-piece outfit which Taylor wears is highly distinctive and easily noticed in gifs and images which are brought up.

It certainly wasn't unusual for Taylor to bring a woman as her plus one - in fact, she has never attended music awards with a boyfriend, either attending alone or bringing friends (or her new publicist, Tree Paine). But the intimacy of touch and expression between the two of them, the way in which they looked at each other, and the physical and apparent emotional closeness between them were unusual. 

 

 

 

And then December 4th 2014 brought "Kissgate" to the world of Taylor Swift, and in some ways her fandom would never be the same.

 

 

 

Taylor's Public Boyfriends

Although a couple of rumours surfaced - one that Orlando Bloom wanted to date Taylor, another that she and John Meyer had been seen leaving the same hotel on the same night (they had, but at different times, and Taylor's PR team quickly said they had not been together at any point), Taylor remained publicly single from January 2013 onwards. Instead, as noted above, she made many comments in interviews about how she was neither wanted nor needed a boyfriend, and was far happier surrounding herself with women!

 

 

 

[Early] Songs About Karlie

Again, these songs will be arranged in what I hope is a roughly chronological order for the relationship, not in the order in which they were released. Due to the three-year gap between 1989 and reputation, and the rumours that Taylor may have scrapped a number of pre-reputation songs to appear on Lover, it gets harder to put together a clear order at this time.

  • Gorgeous (reputation, 2017)
    The perhaps inevitable feeling of seeing a beautiful woman and struggling to be able to make conversation with her. This song is almost playful in its over-the-top language.  As I mentioned in chapter four, the word "gorgeous" has increasingly female and feminine connotations, and the lyric video used hot pink as the highlight colour against black-and-white. (Hot pink is also the colour most associated with Victoria's Secret, and can be seen in all of their backstage footage.) Karlie has a noticeable way of enunciating her words Whether this song is only about Karlie is debated - "I've got a boyfriend, he's older than us" would indicate a later point, in 2015 or 2016, but it seems likely that the experience of meeting Karlie at least partially influenced this song. Motifs: blue eyes, elevator pings.
  • Welcome to New York (1989, 2014)
    "And you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls". Karlie took credit for persuading Taylor to move to New York instead of to London, and Taylor would remain largely New York-based until at least 2016. Taylor clearly associated New York with freedom of sexuality from the beginning (New York legalised gay marriage in July 2011, while Tennessee was forced to by Supreme Court ruling in June 2016 and some continue to contest it even in 2019). Karlie lived in the West Village ("the village is aglow"), while "the lights are so bright but they never blind me" suggests a callback to New Romantics and "the lights and boys are blinding" - the boys weren't blinding Taylor either. While this song was largely around the city of New York, the sense of new beginnings embedded in it likely gave it some links to Karlie as well. Motifs: [West] Village.
  • Delicate (reputation, 2017)
    A song without gendered pronouns, and a music video without a specified love interest. Karlie was modelling for Nike in 2014. The song explores an uncertainty about declaring one's feelings, and notably last the lines "don't wanna share" and "pretend you're mine all the damn time" which may be a reference to the complicated situation with Josh Kushner which was lingering in the background of this time. When reputation toured, Taylor would perform this song in sparkling dresses, usually rainbow-coloured but sometimes in other patterns (we'll get to that in a couple of chapters). Her hairstyle in the music video was the one she sported in the Red era, not a more recent look, and she travelled through a gym which was often associated with Karlie. The LGBT community took to this song and its nervousness in the way they had once taken to Invisible; Hayley Kiyoko added it to her 2017 Pride playlist, and Taylor gave more than one Pride speech right before this song. Motifs: reputation, blue eyes, flashing lights/lightning [music video], gold cage [live performance], hands in hair, "handsome" romantic rivals, sleep.
  • I Know Places (1989, 2014)
    While this song doubtless had some inspiration from previous secretive conversations, it is essentially an offer to have a relationship while hiding "in plain sight".  It expounds on her themes of secrecy, but this time instead of being hidden from the public it suggests standing in front of them without allowing the relationship to be seen - rather unlike anything which had happened with any of Taylor's purported love interests. "Your hand on my waistline" sounds very much like how Karlie and Taylor would often stand together when in public. Motifs: Fire/burning, flashing lights/lightning, vultures.
  • Wildest Dreams (1989, 2014)
    Taylor called this her "fatalistic" song, anticipating that it will end. "Let's get out of this town" sounds eerily like the Big Sur roadtrip, and a reference to height is understandable when Karlie is 6'2. Karlie would later put a picture of herself on Instagram with the caption "red lips and rosy cheeks". In the music video, some people noticed giraffes; at the time, Karlie described herself on social media as "Six foot two giraffe from the Lou". It also featured vultures, linking back to I Know Places and the paparazzi. Taylor again references infidelity - but this time it is Taylor who is the outsider, the 'other woman'. Motifs: Fire/burning, flashing lights/lightning, hands in hair, "handsome", romantic rivals, vultures.
  • Don't Blame Me (reputation, 2017)
    One of several of Taylor's songs which features religious guilt or condemnation, which is a common experience for queer individuals. However, the "halo, hiding my obsession", drawn with a halo and wings in the music video, may be a reference to the fact that Karlie was a Victoria's Secret Angel. "Trip of my life" could refer to the Big Sur roadtrip. However, perhaps the most striking line is "I once was poison ivy, but now I'm your daisy", which in the lyric videos has a drawing of a curved, drooping daisy. This looked very much like the daisy which Karlie had tagged as "Taylor Swift" in a post about the Big Sur road trip. Karlie had worn this same daisy in her hair for a number of photos, including while writing "Karlie❤️ Taylr" [sic] in the sand. While this song does not share many other motifs with other songs, it is perhaps the which has the single most striking tie to Karlie from this era.

 

  • End Game (reputation, 2017)
    In contrast to Wildest Dreams, this song does not just consider a possibility that a relationship could be for good - it asserts an intention to follow through. Again, "my red lips" suggests a link back to the Red era when Karlie and Taylor met, and while Taylor's "big enemies" were only beginning to emerge in 2014, her reputation was heading for the stratosphere. There was enough public attention on their friendship, never mind what nearly happened when the Daily Mail posted its article and for a week or so articles popped up and were removed suggesting that they were an item. Motifs: gold, reputation, romantic rivals
  • You Are In Love (1989, 2014)
    Taylor Swift initially said that this song was inspired by the relationship between Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff - but Jack Antonoff later seemed somewhat baffled by this assertion [I need to find a link for this, sorry!]. Karlie Kloss spoke to Elle in 2017 about how her shoulders had made her feel self-conscious in the past, curiously not long before Taylor published the poem Why She Disappeared which says "Standing broad-shouldered next to her was a love that was really something". "Shoulders brush" may be a reference to this, making up the only times that this body part is mentioned in Taylor's discography, and people have noted that Lena is more than a foot shorter than Jack which would make it difficult for their shoulders to brush! "On the way home" was the caption of one of the images Taylor posted from Big Sur. Their 2013 performance in silver featured their dancing in flurries of artificial snow - "dancing in a snow globe round and round", perhaps? - and most strikingly, the phrase "you're my best friend", in a time that Taylor and Karlie were calling each other best friends all over the press. But there is also, perhaps, a melancholy note to this song, either explaining to or persuading someone that what they feel is, indeed, love. This is one of the songs which frequently seems to have a lyric slip from "you" to "she". Motifs: Best friend, snow.
  • This Is What You Came For (Calvin Harris ft. Rihanna, 2016)
    Originally credited as Nils Sjöberg, Taylor was co-writer of this song, which is therefore one of her only ones which is directly and openly to or about a woman. Fans of Taylor noted that some of the background lyrics sounded like her, did some digging, and not long afterwards Harris blithely said he would be unlikely to work with Taylor. During 2016-7 Taylor became increasingly unwilling to allow others to take credit for her work, and eventually said publicly that she had written the lyrics and contributed some background vocals. "Lightning strikes every time she moves" reminded a number of fans of the flashing of cameras that accompanies both Taylor and some of those around her, including Karlie. Motifs: Flashing lights/lighting
  • Call It What You Want (reputation, 2017)
    "My castle crumbled overnight" places this after New Romantics not just in time but in concept, with "they took the crown" possibly referring to Taylor either feeling dethroned or losing her position as 'America's princess'; while this may link to the summer of 2016, it could also be earlier as Taylor could not have known whether things would get worse for her again. The background singers say, at about 2:35, "I'm the one she's walking to" (instead of "he" in earlier lines) and the entire song has been noted as sounding eerily similar to Karlie Would You Want To. "Fit like a daydream" would work for a fitness model like Karlie ("fit" here in the American sense of athletic, not the UK sense of attractive/sexy) and due to her height Karlie does often walk with her head down. "I recall late November" may refer back to the 2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show where they met, while "you don't need to save me, but would you run away with me" might be a new twist on Karlie's professed favourite Love Story with "Romeo, save me, I've been feeling so alone".

Notes:

I have drawn massively from the detailed work of Kaylor Evidence, in this chapter largely the 2013-2014 Masterpost: https://kaylorevidence.tumblr.com/post/119314973684/kaylor-masterpost-2013-2014-timeline

Images and gifs of Taylor and Karlie from the 2014 AMAs can be seen at: https://helplessgay.tumblr.com/tagged/amas/

Chapter 15: Dancing With Our Hands Tied: Kissgate, 4 December 2014

Summary:

This chapter isn't laid out like the others, as it covers an event rather than a posited relationship.

Shout out to the person who shared this on r/GaylorSwift - thank you so much for doing so! That mention honestly inspired me to get this chapter done once and for all.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

4 December 2014

 

The 1975 is an English pop band whose members came together in about 2002 but who experienced their breakout success in 2012. They began their first ever tour in 2013, going through the UK, the USA, and Europe before returning to select US cities. On 4 and 5 December 2014, they performed at Terminal 5, a Manhattan music venue run by music and entertainment company The Bowery Presents. 

Taylor was established as a fan of The 1975, having been seen with Selena Gomez and Ellie Goulding at a show on 19 November 2014; Matt Healy of The 1975 was pictured wearing a 1989 tee and then, shortly after, Taylor stepped out in a 1975 one. Immediately, the internet began speculating if they were dating, including a statement from Healy that he and Taylor had exchanged numbers. On 4 December, HollywoodLife.com claimed that they had already been secretly dating for two months. Considering Taylor had been publicly single for nearly two years now, excitement flared every time she so much looked at a potential male love interest, and this was not the first round of such rumours.

(In 2016, Healy would later say that dating her would have been "emasculating" because of her level of fame, a statement that he would later walk back but which has not been forgotten.)

On 4 December 2014, Taylor attended the Terminal 5 concert, this time with several friends: Karlie Kloss, Lily Aldridge and Martha Hunt (as well as the required security). In their later Vogue interview, Karlie would actually obliquely mention the night when discussing how they dress:

“The other night I came over,” says Kloss, “and we were both going someplace from here, and we were both wearing black crop tops and high-waisted skirts. It’s kind of getting weird.”

“Black tights, hair done the same way,” says Swift. 

It was not uncommon at the time for fans of celebrities, including Taylor, to keep track of what the celebrity liked on tumblr and be excited if they got a like. Tumblr has its own page showing what posts someone has liked (and Taylor's likes are still publicly visible), but in Taylor's case a blog called TaylorSwiftNoticed also kept track of things that Taylor had liked. While this blog has now been taken down, a wayback machine version of it remains, including showing Taylor's extensive Tumblr activity on the night of 4 December. Before and during the concert, she went on a spree of liking posts, but in the wake of what happened later people went back and looked more closely at some of the posts among them.

 

 

Tumblr Likes 

This masterpost and this masterpost (Wayback Machine) covers more fully the context of these likes. Taylor had liked posts about Karlie before this time, as might be expected regarding their friendship. But on the night of 4 December her posts took a decided turn, including:

  • dirtytaylorswift: "Look under Ed’s arm, you can see Taylor’s fingers. She’s all over Karlie’s ass"; post was tagged "kaylor"
  • sleightaysleight (now wereabetterman): "KAYLOR FEELS THROUGH THE ROOF."; post was tagged "kaylor"
  • wish-you-knew-that (now deactivated): "KARLIE AND TAYLOR ARE THE CUTEST."; tags unknown
  • kaylor-love: "Oh stop it you big flirts"; tagged "kaylor"
  • all-around-taylor: "Me right now" on an edit of the tumblr logo reading kaylr; post was tagged "kaylor"
  • hereforswift1989: "RIP ME."; post was tagged "kaylor"
  • hellasweeren: "bae checking out bae"; tags unknown
  • criesovertaylorswift/stay-stay-stay: "my best friend's best friend is so hot like"; tags unknown

She also liked a number of other posts, both from regulars who posted a lot of Taylor-centric content and folks who were openly shippy - note the username "kaylor-love" in there; the post that Taylor liked was between shippy gifs and a post of Karlie/Taylor fanfiction. Some of the posts had Karlie's name tagged, but others literally seemed only to be tagged as "kaylor", rather implying that Taylor was browsing that tumblr tag.

 

 

Tweets, Pictures and Videos

Of course, Taylor appearing anywhere would lead to tweets and comments. One place following her was the Taylor Swift Thread of L Anon (now L Chat), a wlw/queer female gossip website. But so was the rest of the world - for example Taylor Swift Updates (@brighteyedswift) posting excitedly that Taylor had "bought Karlie" to the concert.

The first tweet of what would later become #Kissgate seems to have come a few songs into the concert, when someone in the crowd posted "exclusive taylor and karlie making out #confirmed". Another posted that Taylor was "kissing karlie kloss' head" (tweet since deleted, but screenshot remains), someone added that Taylor was "hugging iKarlie omg QUEEN OF THE LESBIANS" and "acting like a lesbian" (again, deleted by screencapped), while another concertgoer said Taylor and Karlie were "having a love affair" in front of them (again, deleted but screencapped).

This video is the longest and clearest footage of Taylor and Karlie that night, at just under a minute long, and though they have their arms around each other there is nothing particularly notable about the footage. However, other gifs and pictures also arose.

 
  

 

In this image, Taylor can be seen putting her hand on Karlie's chest. Taylor Swift Daily shared a number of videos and clips. This video seems to collate all of the footage available, including another couple of images and clips that came to light in 2018. Many of the original tweets and videos about this seem to have been deleted - perhaps because of what was to come in the following days.

Pictures of Taylor leaving the party show her dishevelled, smiling, but seeming to be pretty drunk. This in itself was a new side of Taylor for the general public - her image prior to this had been incredibly sanitised, and though in Mean she had talked about her critic "drunk and grumbling on" in a bar it would not be until 1989 that she mentioned a "wine-stained dress" (Clean) and getting "drunk on jealousy" (Blank Space). So even those two songs did not actually mention drinking or inebriation, and seeing Taylor drunk was a shock by itself to the public.

A picture also surfaced of Karlie leaving the concert, which may show smudges of lipstick on her cheek, but this is also unclear.

In all honesty, none of the footage shows a clear and unambiguous kiss. There are certainly moments when their faces are close together, but the darkness and graininess simply make it impossible to see details. Some people on twitter stated that they were kissing. Others stated they certainly were not.

It is also worth noting that Josh Kushner was reportedly also at the event, although trying to find clear footage or photos of him is beyond me; some people claim to have seen Karlie and Josh kissing, while others claimed to have seen them fighting. This is the only video I can find which claims to feature him - Taylor is at the front, dancing with Martha and Lily, while it appears that Karlie and a man who might be Josh are interacting behind them.

But in some ways, it actually didn't matter whether there was a kiss or not. What mattered was the media storm that was about to kick off.

 

 

The Media Circus

Taylor was already trending on Twitter for having been spotted at a concert - but now Taylor and Karlie's names started trending together, and speculation that they had been kissing, making out, or out on a date started to spread beyond people who already thought Taylor might be queer and even beyond Swifties at all. Homophobic tweets were fired back from certain sections of Taylor's fanbase, while others took a more neutral ground and pointed out how blurry the footage was and how it was difficult to see anything. Some did, sweetly, post that they would support Taylor no matter what, Comments about the night filled the social media of Taylor, Karlie and others - including Josh Kushner, who deleted one of his posts and a lot of comments from Instagram.

#kaylor and #confirmed trended. Gossip blog Oh No They Didn't talked about the photos, although this was still a matter of LiveJournal blogs.

Like the Gawker article in August, though, this one did not stay in the realm of tweets and speculation - it was about to hit mainstream media.

 

 

On 5 December, despite being visibly hungover in the morning (and not looking at the paparazzi taking her picture), Taylor flew to Los Angeles to perform at the KIIS FM Jingle Bell Ball (no good quality footage of this show exists, though a fancam does). Grammy nominations were announced, with Taylor netting multiple, and she had articles appear in Time (about Welcome to New York) and Billboard (about being Woman of the Year); the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show teaser trailer also dropped.. She was also spotted on tumblr, liking a number of posts, notably quotes from her Billboard article. She also posted about the article on Instagram (Wayback Machine).

But the following also occurred:

  • Gossip Cop was the first denial; they stated that the idea was "hilarious" when denying the claims, calling them the "sensational version"
  • New York Daily News (Wayback for EU residents), echoed that they were not kissing and also used the word "hilarious"
  • Celebrity gossip site Just Jared also took this line
  • Brazilian entertainment website Caras posted a piece (sadly now deleted, but the URL remains) acknowledging the rumours of kissing but stating that they were just talking.
  • Bustle posted "7 Rumours About Taylor Swift Which Make Total Sense" which pushed in the very URL that Karlie and Taylor are not dating
  • Trashy British tabloid the Daily Mail posted that Taylor Swift "denies secret lesbian romance"
  • Another British tabloid, Daily Star, posted a denial that called the idea of a relationship "fantasy" and "steamy"
  • Gossip magazine OK posted "Taylor Swift slams Karlie Kloss 'lesbian love story' claims"
  • The Huffington Post (now Huffpost) posted a denial, calling them "longtime friends" in a move some would find curious when they had known each other 13 months
  • The Hollywood Gossip also posted a denial, and does mention other things that were happening in Taylor's (gossip) life at the time - including a claim of an eating disorder
  • MTV also posted a denial
  • Cosmopolitan posted a denial
  • Buzzfeed posted a rather twee article about Karlie's "super cute boyfriend"
  • Lainey Gossip did not mention Karlie, saying that Taylor was at the concert for Matt Healy; Vanity Fair and Billboard also took this angle
  • Pop Sugar posted a denial, and made sure to mention Josh and speculate about Taylor and Matt Healy (Wayback Machine link)
  • The Irish Mirror posted a denial heavily implying that the rumours were to distract from or capitalise on Taylor's Grammy nominations, supposedly quoting a rep as saying "I have to shake off this crap."
  • US Magazine also used the word "crap" to describe the rumours
  • Even Fox News ran a denial
  • Yahoo Entertainment posted a strange article that seemed to play both sides, saying "no" but also saying Karlie and Taylor had hit "relationship milestones"
  • Somebody edited Karlie's Wikipedia page (the "Personal Life" section) to say "Kloss is in a relationship with American singer Taylor Swift", leading to an extensive edit war over the next few days that is recorded in the wiki page history.
  • Queer-centric blog platform VillageQ had a post called "Is Taylor Swift Gay?"
  • Gawker posted about the supposed kiss, with just enough plausible deniability to say it was satire of dating rumours 
  • AfterEllen (Wayback Machine link only) shared the pictures in their daily roundup, asking readers to decide for themselves whether it was a kiss
  • TMZ posted an article titled "Taylor Swift Totally Kissing Karlie Kloss... Maybe"
  • Male 'lifestyle' website CraveOnline posted two articles, one saying they were "Making Out" and adding crude sexual comments, another reporting the denial but still stating there was a kiss (Wayback Machine links)
  • Entertainment website Uproxx described pictures of them as "possibly kissing"
  • Gossip website Crushable.com (now Clevver News) said they were "possibly making out" (Wayback Machine link)
  • Lesbian lifestyle website Autostraddle asked "What If" 
  • Gossip and fashion website Celeb Crunch said it was "rumoured" that they were in a "lesbian relationship"
  • Gossip website DListed sardonically covered the denial, making it pretty clear that they thought the image was of a kiss
  • Boston-based gossip and entertainment website The Improper stated that they did kiss, but questioned whether that indicated a relationship or a single drunk moment, and called Karlie a "switch-kitter"

Some of the photos and videos also started to disappear, even this early on. And, in timing that some found suspicious, a promo spot for New Years Eve events aired with Taylor Swift and Ryan Seacrest 'kissing' via pictures on their phones.

It's worth noting the tone of these articles - people were acting shocked, scandalised, and titillated by the idea of two attractive young women being a couple. The word "hilarious" was bandied about - dripping with homophobia by making the idea of a wlw relationship into a subject of laughter. Gossip Cop even called it the "sensational version", as if a wlw romance would be a sensation instead of just another relationship. While the disgusted and horrified responses were fewer and further between, the undercurrent of homophobia was still very much present, as was the air of objectifying fantasy about it all. Not to paint Taylor as being completely the victim of this, when it was her "rep" (presumably Tree Paine?) who apparently used the word "hilarious", but sadly it very much tracks with the political and social climate of 2014 that this was how queer relationships were treated - sensationalist, comedic, click-bait.

Not documented, but grimly remembered by many people who lived through it, was some of the polarisation of Taylor's fanbase on social media, especially Twitter and Tumblr. The fact that it seemed Taylor might have come out through these actions led some Gaylor theorists to speak up, pointing to some of the previous events and links, and be excited and happy both that Taylor's queerness was confirmed and that it seemed Taylor was comfortable enough with it to come out. However, this was met with backlash, both of the directly homophobic variety who insisted Taylor would never be so terrible as to be queer, and of the variety which insisted that Taylor's public narrative was 100% true and factual and that Taylor would never 'lie to' her fans by not coming out. This quickly descended into threats of violence, including death threats and telling people to kill themselves, as far as I could see exclusively targeted at those who believed Taylor might be queer - not just people who had been discussing the theories for a while, but people who newly spoke up and people who even seemed to publicly consider for the first time that she might be. The person who posted the original video received particularly vicious bullying, and their twitter is now understandably friendslocked.

 

 

On 6 December, English-language news stories were dominated with denials across various smaller outlets, while articles asking the initial question and not yet having reached denial started to appear in other languages including French (another), Spanish (another, and another, and another), Portuguese (another), Indonesian (and another) and Korean (and probably other languages and sites that I can't find or which have since been deleted). The story went global.

Taylor was spotted liking more posts on twitter - some of the usual fan posts, some quotes from her Billboard and Time articles, and a number of posts about not focusing on her romantic life and instead appreciating her music. Some of these article quotes even used the word girlfriends to mean female friends, in continuing heterocentric irony.

On 7 December, she performed at Capital's Jingle Bell Ball in London - here, good footage is available. Note that in this performance, as with the 5 December one, the "you never loved me" has an ambiguous sounding you/she as in many performances.

At the same time, some select Taylor Swift fans began to receive the presents sent to them as part of Swiftmas. Swiftmas was a promotional event in which Taylor personally wrapped gifts and sent them to a number of fans picked from social media, with a video of the wrapping process later released. For the most part, it was a cute promotional idea. However, as people began to receive tins of Karlie's Kookies (and another!), or even a polaroid of Karlie and Taylor saying they had wrapped the presents together, it only fed into the ongoing media storm.

 

 

The Backlash

On 8 December, Taylor herself made what seemed like her first acknowledgement of the matter. She tweeted:

As my 25th birthday present from the media, I'd like for you to stop accusing all my friends of dating me. #thirsty

While it did not mention Karlie by name, it was pretty clearly aimed in that direction - the occasional comment about Taylor and Ed Sheeran was brought up, but she wasn't friends with many straight men for them to be accused of dating. It was also primarily aimed at the media, which was pretty understandable given the storm of the last few days. However, as documented here, she also proceeded to like some tumblr posts which took things in a rather darker direction, including one which quoted the above and added

FINALLY SHE SAID IT. NOW YOU FREAKS ON TUMBLR CAN FINALLY STOP MAKING POSTS ABOUT “Karlie and Taylor dating” nonsense.

Not wanting people to focus on or speculate about her love life was one thing - she had been saying that throughout the 1989 period. But a post which used the word "freaks" to describe people who might think there was something there, which was overtly homophobic? That was something else altogether.

Attempts were made over the following days, by some parts of the fandom, to claim that the original post or Taylor's apparent endorsement of it were not homophobic. They tried to say there was a different between speculating and assuming, or a difference between gen-rated and explicit comments, or other justifications. But the fact is that this was the beginning of a wedge being driven between those who believed Taylor might be in some way queer, and those who vehemently defended her assumed heterosexuality.

It was no longer a case of homophobia to be against the idea - now it was going against Taylor's wishes, even though Taylor's tweet originally spoke about the media and not her fanbase. Somehow, this argument never got used against rumours about Matt Healy, Harry Styles, or any other male figure.

 

 

Earlier the same day, there had been one more public mention, from media personality and known former shock jock Wendy Williams. (Note that Williams has made victim blaming, homophobic and transphobic statements over the years, including homophobic comments specifically in February 2020.) Williams aired a segment on Taylor not only stating that there was a kiss, but that this was part of a deliberate tactic to "get rid of her good-girl image". This video is uncomfortable to watch as a queer person, but it's worse to imagine what it would have been like as the focus of that discussion.

 

 

It may be noticed that Taylor's non-denial denial also came the day before the airing of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2014. Since it was filmed earlier, more information on this can be found in the first chapter on Karlie, but Karlie and Taylor opened the show together, walking hand-in-hand, and were generally the stars of the event. They were also sitting next to each other in pictures taken at the viewing party.

On 11 December, Karlie was seen leaving Taylor's apartment, and to judge from the contents of the Vogue editorial (quoted at the top of the chapter) this was from that interview. She was also seen the following day, 12 December, after filming the Best Best Friends video. I'll discuss both of these next chapter, in line with their release to the public. That evening, Karlie and her sister Kimby attended another of Taylor's Jingle Ball performances, this time the iHeartRadio one in New York, where good footage is available and has one of the clearest "you never loved me" renditions to be caught on film. Karlie was also pictured at Taylor's birthday celebration on 13 December.

 

 

Things looked like they were going to be quiet for Christmas - until OK Magazine, despite the denial piece they had posted on 5 December, turned around on 29 December and put out this print edition:

A four-page article inside reiterated that the denial had been made, but said that an unidentified "source" had said that "while Taylor had never been attracted to women before, she quickly developed feelings for Karlie". It positions them as a power couple in the making and suggests that Karlie is the one trying to make the relationship official while Taylor was struggling with settling down and with 'giving up' on men. Some online followers whether this was a step towards coming out, while others felt it was nothing more than clickbait and published fanfiction.

But unlike the fake magazine cover with Dianna in April 2013, or the quickly-denied and pull "housemate" articles from August 2014, kissgate had a massive impact. It was reported on in mainstream media, including on television and in print magazines, and across multiple languages. Taylor herself seemed to engage with it - or at least the media portion - and some fans took her tumblr likes as justification to start dividing the fandom in two between those who thought Taylor might be anything other than heterosexual and those who avowed her straightness.

 

 

 

 

 

2023

 

In late October 2023, I find myself adding more to this chapter, eighteen months down the line.

In October 2022, the album Midnights including the song Question...? which appeared to many to reference the night of Kissgate. Although some people suggested that it might be related to a New Year's Eve appearance with Harry Styles, and then to a later occasion when they crossed paths while Taylor was publicly linked to Calvin Harris, this split timeline simply does not match the events of Question...?. Karlie is the representative of Caroline Herrera perfume Good Girl, while the "big city" is most likely New York. "One drink after another" may reference the fact that this was the first time that Taylor was so publicly drunk, while "Painted all my nights a color I've searched for since" seems to refer to illicit affairs. More bluntly, though, the description "Did you ever have someone kiss you in a crowded room, And every single one of your friends was making fun of you?" is a very apt description of what happened with Kissgate and the resultant media and fanbase storm. Picking out "gender roles" also feels highly relevant to the way that a possible relationship between two women was treated, compared to how one between a man and a woman would have been.

Even on the main r/TaylorSwift subreddit - which bans any "speculation" of sexuality, meaning any discussion of queer themes or potential alternate readings - people linked Question...? to Kissgate. Users who were unaware of the ban on sexuality discussion expressed bafflement when others very carefully described the situation of the night using no pronouns and carefully not mentioning Karlie's name, knowing that they could name any man they wished, but a single "she" pronoun would get them banned. 

 

 

Then, in early 2023, Taylor and Joe Alwyn publicly acknowledged an end to their relationship, and she apparently began dating Matty Healy of the 1975. It provoked entirely deserved backlash: one of the least questionable acts brought up was when Healy did a Nazi salute onstage to mock Kanye West's very public plunge into Nazim. Healy has also made a lot of racist comments, including against Ice Spice (who shortly afterwards featured in the Karma remix; either the collab had already happened and Healy was being even more objectionable, or it was an attempt to apologise and make up for his behaviour), says "edgy" things to rile people up, and appeared on a podcast laughing about getting off to "degrading" and "violating" porn featuring the real-life coercion and manipulation of poor black women. Some of his friends made a podcast in which they mocked Taylor's eating disorder and insulted her mother; days later, with the release of Speak Now (Taylor's Version), he was dumped. One of his exes has also spoken about how he abused and bullied her into developing an eating disorder.

From any angle, it's baffling - was this Taylor demonstrating poor taste in men (as may have been seen before with alleged abuser John Meyer and lesser-known confirmed substance addict Martin Johnson), or was it a very poor choice of PR? Either way, it certainly had the result of burying searches about what happened in December 2014 at a 1975 concert.

 

 

Then, in October 2023, 1989 (Taylor's Version) was released; this time instead of the short, happy prologue of the original, it included a very long and perhaps not particularly proof-read version. A part on which people immediately focused read:

It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian Era.

Being a consummate optimist, I assumed I could fix this if I simply changed my behavior. I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships. If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that — right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some parts of Taylor's fandom - and certain bigotry-heavy publications like the infamous Daily Mail - decided to take this as being aimed against those who considered Gaylor theories. Looking at the list of articles I drew together, above, it should be much easier to see that the actual queer publications were hopeful, welcoming and more delicate in their coverage, while the mainstream (heteronormative) media was the group to use the word "sensational", and "lads' mags" and sites aimed purely at heterosexual men were the most crass and crude of all. Also ignored was the very important context from within the same prologue:

You, who knew that maybe a girl who surrounds herself with female friends in adulthood is making up for a lack of them in childhood (not starting a tyrannical hot girl cult).

This is what Taylor states as her gripe - being accused of starting an "tyrannical hot girl cult". Now, there are certainly points to be made regarding the quite literal fetishwear that featured in the Bad Blood music video (sources even identified by Taylor Swift Styled, see my clothing chapter); the reappearance of the same in the Look What You Made Me Do music video may have been more more satirical, but Bad Blood was not. The accusations most often laid against Taylor during this era were of cliqueishness, of white feminism, and of ridiculous body standards. Given that Taylor has spoken out in years since about her experience of eating disorders and the fact that she needed to develop better awareness of her white privilege (both from the Lover era) it seems clear that she acknowledges there was some valid critique to be made - but also asks that it be acknowledged that she was young, insecure, and still bearing the negative effects of childhood.

It isn't sexualising to ask whether someone is romantically attracted to the same gender. It isn't necessary sexualising to ask if someone is sexually attracted to the same gender; it is a statement of neutral value, a matter of facts. The automatic sexualisation of queer identities is an expression of homophobia and heteronormativity - heterosexual attraction is treated as normal and part of everyday life, while same-gender attraction is treated as sexual. Does anyone else remember the days of fic archives where a work's rating was automatically made higher just for the including of a male-male or female-female pairing? Or see parallels in how a children's book of two male penguins raising a chick together gets called inappropriate or sexual? 

The length of the 1989 (Taylor's Version) is still not enough to unpack in detail what Taylor is discussing here, and so we are left with an ambiguity. Is Taylor truly echoing mainstream homophobia by saying that the suggestion she is not heterosexual is sexualising? Or is she saying that the media found ways to sexualise her whatever she did, and spun wild stories just because she wanted to publicly surround herself with friends?

In the prologue, she also thanks "You, who saw the seeds of allyship and advocating for equality in Welcome to New York". This is undeniably the closest that Taylor has come to calling herself an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community. However, she does not mention that community by name -it is left to inference and to remind people of "you can want who you want" - and it is still not using the ally label for herself. Additionally, it is far from uncommon for people to identify as allies before they come to identify as a moment of the LGBTQIA+ community, and it is always important for members of that community to be allies to other sections: cisgender non-heterosexual people should still consider themselves allies of trans and/or nonbinary people; allosexual/alloromantic queer people should consider themselves allies of aspec people. Queer community is united in its difference from the socially expected norm, but there is still great variation, and it is important that this is acknowledged and supported.

Notes:

It's strangely hard these days to find cohesive writeups of Kissgate and the aftermath, so this is pieced together from everything that I can find and a lot of going through L Anon to check dates and sources. The biggest contributor to this chapter was also honestly the Wayback Machine, which made it possible for me to recover the majority, if not all, of the original sources.

Chapter 16: Right Where You Left Me: Karlie Kloss, again | Post-Kissgate Kaylor

Notes:

While the Gaylor Swift narrative is never very clear or very certain, the period of time between 2015 and 2020 is still very much under investigation and the story being pieced together. So there's going to be more uncertainty from here on out, sometimes even about when people are.

The timeline/discussion here includes references to what was going on with Calvin Harris and Tom Hiddleston, to hopefully help make sense of things and to give the full picture of what was happening.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

High Flying, Adored

What happens now? Where do you go from here?
For someone on top of the world, the view's not exactly clear.
 A shame you did it all at twenty-six.

-from High Flying Adored, from Evita, Rice & Webber

 

In 2015, preparing for the upcoming 1989 World Tour and with awards and performances rolling in, Taylor Swift was one of the best-known people in the world - and as a result, one of the most observed. In October 2014, in an interview with NPR, Taylor had described how she felt that she was "looked at as sort of public property", but seemed to consider this the price for fame, especially at the astounding heights which she had now reached. She developed new ways of using social media to keep her fans feel engaged and relevant even as her fanbase swelled into the tens of millions worldwide, including joining new social media sites, but continued to manage her own social media. In 2015, she even spoke publicly about her mother's breast cancer diagnosis.

However, living in the panopticon of the public eye brought mixed effects. For every article from the business sector praising her savvy, or every musical critique lauding her, there was a criticism of her person, her behaviour, her politics.

For more details on her marketing and fan interaction during this era, see the 1989 section of chapter Self-Made Galatea: The Construction of Taylor Swift.

2015 was dominated by the 1989 World Tour, which ran from May until December. In the early months of 2016, news regarding her ran rather quieter, until the dual summer sagas of Snakegate and of Hiddleswift.

 

Snakegate

Snakegate was Taylor's latest stage of her entangled history with Ye (formerly legally called Kanye West). A full and clear timeline can be found with Cosmopolitan of all places. In 2015, Taylor had presented Ye with an award at the VMAs, there was talk of a collaboration between the two, and (jokingly or not) she had volunteered to be his Vice President nominee when he had spoken about running for President. In later years, she would admit how much she had been working to make herself be liked, especially by an artist whom she had looked up to for years before becoming famous, and how much she wanted in general to be on friendly terms with people.

However, in April 2016, Ye released a track called Famous, which is ostensibly about the nature of fame but seems to focus on his own sexual and financial success and includes the lyrics "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous." When fans were outraged, he claimed to have consent for the lyric, which Taylor denied. It was noted that two months earlier, at the Grammys where Taylor had become the first woman ever to win Album of the Year twice as the main artist, she had included in her speech, "I want to say to all the young women out there—there are going to be people along the way who are going to try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame" which people began to suspect might have been to do with Ye. (Though there were other factors that could have been at play at this time.)

In June 2016, Kim Kardashian (Ye's wife at the time) took part in a GQ interview saying that not only were the lyrics approved, but that the approval was filmed. It has since been confirmed that this filming was illegal under Californian law, as Taylor has stated that she was not aware of it. A little over a week later, Ye released the Famous music video, which at one point features a naked wax doll replica of Taylor (amid other wax dolls of celebrities, including Donald Trump, domestic violence perpetrator Chris Brown, and serial rapist Bill Cosby) next to Ye in bed, her crotch barely covered by fabric. The tableau is clearly based on the work Sleep by US artist Vincent Desiderio, who has discussed the work in terms of communality, vulnerability, and the sleep of reason. Replacing the anonymous, unglamorous figures of Desiderio's work with celebrities could be seen as a way of discussing how celebrities are still affected by cultural movements and have their own very vulnerable, human sides. However, nobody has ever spoken out about giving Ye consent for their inclusion in this way, and Taylor has described it as "revenge porn", which at minimum means there are consent issues regarding Ye's use of celebrity images whatever his intent may have been.

On July 18th, Kim Kardashian posted about how it was National Snake Day. She then released pieces of the filmed conversation between Ye and Taylor onto her snapchat. Taylor can be heard tentatively agreeing to the idea that from Ye's point of view, the incident seemed to make Taylor suddenly seen everywhere, but she also talks about her fear of overexposure. The tone of her voice and her manner of agreement is probably familiar to many women faced with powerful men - she is concerned about how he may respond to a refusal. Moreover, the word "bitch" is never brought up, nor is the matter of the music video or naked waxwork images. However, the words themselves summed up to an agreement, and a large swathe of fans of Ye, fans of Kim Kardashian, people who already hated Taylor, and people caught up in the wave would turn against her. The hashtags #TaylorSwiftIsASnake and #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty began trending, and Taylor's social media platforms were bombarded with snake emojis, insults, and mockery. Taylor would later discuss with Rolling Stone how this felt like a message that hundreds of thousands, of people wanted her to stop existing.

In October 2016, a draft or early version of the song leaked [lyrics] which featured the alternate lyric "I feel like Taylor might still owe me sex" and which laid insults against Amber Rose, an ex-girlfriend of Ye who had also been featured in the Sleep tableau. 

 

Hiddleswift

After having apparently met in February 2015 and started dating on March 6 2015, Taylor and Calvin Harris ended their relationship on June 1 2016. They had been the most highly-paid celebrity couple in the world during their time together. The two went on to remove all pictures of and references to each other from their respective social medias, and a "source" told People magazine that Harris had been "intimidated" by Taylor's success. On June 15, Calvin tweeted (then deleted) "Oh boy, it's about to go down 💀💀💀"; on June 16, Taylor and Tom Hiddleston were pictured in the Sun (trashy UK tabloid) kissing on the rocks in Rhode Island. 

Almost immediately, the press became suspicious. The Cut led with the headline Here's Why Taylor Swift Let the Paparazzi Catch Her Kissing Tom Hiddleston, pointing out that the paparazzi by the mid-2010s did not arrive anywhere unless they were called, and suggesting that whether the relationship was real or fake, its publicisation was a distraction from the GQ interview with Kim Kardashian that had dropped on the same day. Given that Taylor's team had given a response to Kim's statements regarding consent, it was clear that she knew in advance that this was coming.

Before the end of the month, Taylor and Tom attended a Selena Gomez concert with Taylor's best friend Abigail and brother Austin, and went to Nashville to meet Taylor's parents. They then met with Tom's parents in England, before flying on to Italy to visit (and be pictured making out at) the Coliseum and even visit the Vatican. All of the photos of them were from the same photo agency (FlameFlyNet) and were unusual after Taylor's relationship with Calvin had been considerably more private. Media outlets began to speculate that they were in fact filming a music video for one of Taylor's predicted upcoming singles - it was still expected at this time that she would release a new album in September or October of that year.

Taylor hosted her usual large Fourth of July party, or "Taymerica", at her Rhode Island property. As well as a large number of public displays of affection between Taylor and Tom, this weekend became famous as Tom borrowed an I ❤️TS tee that a fan had sent Taylor. It immediately made him, Taylor, and their relationship a focus for international mockery.

Meanwhile, on June 24 Calvin Harris had replied to comments on Instagram saying that Taylor had controlled the narrative of the breakup, and that he was "not jealous, sir, FREE." On July 8, he released the song Olé, which is theorised to be written from Tom Hiddleston's point of view about Taylor, and to indicate that there was infidelity on Taylor's part, presumably after she and Tom met at the May 2016 Met Gala. However, sources indicated that the song had been written and recorded months ago. People became increasingly confused - was Olé a fictional narrative that had happened to turn out true? Was Taylor's split with Calvin and relationship with Tom planned, or was Hiddleswift even fake while she was still with Calvin? The narrative seemed unclear, and this only drew more attention to an already high-profile relationship.

Taylor followed Tom to Australia while he was filming for Thor. On July 13, it was revealed that Taylor had written and provided background vocals for This Is What You Came For, initially under pseudonym Nils Sjoberg, but no longer wanted to hide work which she had done. Calvin commented on this on Twitter, claiming that the reveal was painting him as the bad guy in an attempt to mistreat or misrepresent him.

On July 14, Tom Hiddleston finally talked about dating Taylor in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Rumours about 'Hiddleswift' being fake were so widespread by this time that the Hollywood Reporter even asked Tom about them; he replied "The truth is that Taylor Swift and I are together, and we're very happy. Thanks for asking. That's the truth. It's not a publicity stunt." On July 25, in an interview with People, he added that "as long as you know that, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says about it because the nature of being a public figure is that everyone will have an opinion about anything you do".

In August, filming schedules and other issues seemed to separate them for a while, and Taylor returned to spending time in New York. On September 6, it was announced that Taylor and Tom had broken up. The official story was that Tom wanted to be more public than Taylor was comfortable with - at least, until the following year, when Joe Alwyn would bring this explanation into question.

Hiddleswift was not a scandal, but it was a debacle. Whether it was being called a publicity stunt or the makings of a music video, people just didn't seem to quite believe that it was real. While Tom had done his best to reassure interviewers that they were in a true relationship, it was strange and notable that he was having to do this amount of denials at all - most relationships don't get this level of questioning from the mainstream media, even if more cynical fans might have their suspicions. Moreover, the fact that it had lasted for less than three months reignited Taylor's "man-eater" reputation from her Red days.

 

 

 

 

 

Karlie Kloss, Kontinued

 

In January 2015, following Kissgate (see previous chapter), Taylor was not as much in the media eye at all. But Karlie was pictured among other female friends at Taylor's New York on January 1 and January 19. From January 30 to February 1, Taylor and Karlie both returned to Nashville, and after a fan photo was released of them together they posted on Instagram about it. 

On February 13 2015, the March 2015 Vogue cover was released, featuring Karlie and Taylor sharing the cover. Rumours had sparked in January about the possibility, with Cosmopolitan even calling them Taylie, but it is relatively rare that Vogue has more than one person on the cover - their archives show that from 2010 to 2019, for example, only ten covers have featured two or more people, with those covers being Olympian specials (2), couples (3), supermodel groups (3), a mother and child (1), or movie co-stars (1)... and Taylor and Karlie's joint appearance. In other words, looking back to at least 1990, there are no other Vogue covers which focus on a friendship in this way.

The article itself, titled "One for the Money, Two for the Show", was filled with pictures of Taylor and Karlie apparently recreating moments from their Big Sur roadtrip - posing in a gold Chevy car together, lounging on a bed in a caravan, exchanging clothes, holding each other close. It also specifically mentioned that Taylor had "been to Big Sur once before, and I was like, 'We should just do it'" but did not explain that this previous trip was with Jake Gyllenhaal during the time that they were rumoured to be dating. The article also mentions Karlie wearing Taylor's "Genius" sweater in photos, confirming that they were also sharing clothes during the Big Sur trip.

The same day, the Best Best Friend Video also released. It featured

  • Them deciding on each other's emojis - Taylor called Karlie the sun, and Karlie called Taylor the princess;
  • A contest to see who can speak about the other for the longest - during this, Karlie confirmed that she had influenced Taylor to move to New York, instead of London, while Taylor commented that Karlie had "shiny abs" and said that Karlie was the first person to have heard the whole of 1989;
  • A staring contest which turned into them looking warmly into each other's eyes;
  • An arm-wrestling contest.

On February 14, Karlie posted a Valentine message to Josh Kushner - the first time that she had done so - and also one for Taylor.

On February 17, Karlie walked the runway at Oscar de la Renta. Though it was not highly publicised, Taylor was sitting in the front row, and said to Women's Wear Daily that "My publicist would get mad at me" if she gave a reason that she was at the event. Karlie and Taylor were pictured going into Taylor's apartment together - and when Karlie left a short time later, it seemed that her lips were darker in colour than before.

  
[Images of Karlie and Taylor entering Taylor's apartment, and Karlie leaving shortly afterwards.]

 

On February 24, Taylor attended the first Fabulous Fun Fair, co-run by Karlie, and various pictures were taken of them together. One image clearly shows Karlie resting her hand on Taylor's ass - over at least two layers of clothing - during a photoshoot. The following day, Karlie went to the 2015 Brit Awards with Taylor, seemingly as her plus-one. Taylor left her position in the crowd to join Karlie, dancing together until Kim Kardashian joined them for photos. Karlie filmed at least parts  They also attended the same afterparty.

Notably, this awards is where Taylor was first pictured meeting Calvin Harris. However, just on Calvin's right - and just behind Mick Jagger - it is possible to see Karlie with her distinctive height and dress; the man behind her is Derek Blasberg, a gay man with whom she is close friends. Tree Paine, Taylor's publicist, also stands alongside Taylor during her photographed conversations with Calvin. March 6 is ostensibly the day that they begin dating - they post anniversary posts on this day the following year - but on March 11, in interview with Capital Radio [Wayback Machine link to video] Calvin said Taylor was "the opposite" of his type, and that he would "swipe left" on Tinder (ie chose to not match with her). From March through May, they were seen multiple times together in public, appearing to be on dates.

The Bad Blood music video was filmed in April and shot in May. Featuring an all-female cast, homoerotic slow-motion shots and vaguely BDSM-esque clothing, it definitely caught the attention of queer female watchers in a different way than it might have done the general audience. And while there were many cameos, it was with Karlie's character Knockout that Taylor appeared to spar and train, with lingering close-up shots.


[Image: Gif from Karlie's cameo in Bad Blood. Taylor and Knockout, sweaty
and dishevelled, struggle in the ring while others watch on.]

From May 5 2015, Taylor was on the first leg of the 1989 World Tour, and became increasingly busy. Some fans did notice, though, that her sparkling bodysuit for Out of the Woods looked very reminiscent of one of the costumes Karlie had worn for the VSFS 2013:

On May 28, Karlie was photographed by paparazzi attending a dinner party at Taylor's - Taylor was performing in Baton Rouge on May 22 and in Detroit on May 30, but is confirmed as being at home in New York on May 28 via paparazzi photos. This was the same day as Taylor and Calvin had taken lunch together and left holding hands.

On June 9, for National Best Friends Day, Taylor posted a photo of three people in her kitchen, all of them blurry from laughing. These people were Karlie Kloss, Calvin Harris, and Gigi Hadid. E Online, among others, reported on the photograph as it was Taylor's first of Calvin, but while many places will name Gigi as being present, Karlie is usually not named.

Taylor continued on tour. On June 26 in Hyde Park, London, Taylor's 'special guest' for the night was a group of models (Karlie Kloss, Kendall Jenner, Cara Delevingne, Gigi Hadid, and Martha Hunt) and Serena Williams. The surprise song was Love Story, which Karlie has stated is her favourite song; during the performance Karlie, Martha, and Taylor's mother Andrea all waved back. When Taylor called her guests up onto stage, she kept Karlie's name for last, and turned to watch her approach; each of the guests greeted Taylor, including Cara kissing her on the cheek and Karlie leaning in to kiss the air by the corner of her mouth. Taylor had Serena Williams holding one of her hands while Karlie held the other, the pair appearing to link fingers over the microphone that Taylor was still holding. 

Two days later, Taylor went on a boat ride along the Thames towards a Killers concert with Karlie, Calvin, and dating couple Gigi and Joe Jonas. This was perhaps an awkward combination - two couples and one unattached individual - but all stayed smiling for the cameras.

Karlie does not appear to have been at Taylor's 2015 Fourth of July party, but this was because she was working in Europe at this time. However, Taylor had two performances at the Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, on July 10 and 11. Karlie returned to the US on July 10, briefly returned to her home to meet up with her sister Kimby (and possibly borrow Kimby's dress) before heading straight to MetLife, presumably still jetlagged, accompanied by someone that longtime Taylor fans recognised as one of Taylor's security. A video soon surfaced from backstage - in it, Karlie hugs Tree Paine and says "I came straight from Rome". The bodyguard who had accompanied Karlie and Kimby then says, "Tree, Taylor's going to yell at me if I don't take her right now" and then chastises another security guard who hugs Karlie and delays her by another few seconds. 

This "I came straight from Rome" video is quite famous among fans of Kaylor, who point out that Tree clearly knows not only who Karlie is, but also who Kimby is, and that the security guard is clearly stressed and rushing to get Karlie to Taylor under Taylor's orders. Karlie was also present on the second night, and there would have been time for them to see each other after the show - but it seems that Taylor was desperate to see Karlie before the show.

On July 10, Taylor included a speech to the audience which included,

 

"Mostly the change cannot be attributed to geography. It can only be attributed to people who came into my life after I moved to New York. So if that’s you, pat yourself on the back. I love you so much."

On July 11, Taylor's special guests were models Gigi Hadid, Martha Hunt, Lily Aldridge, Candice Swanepool, Behati Prinsloo and Karlie Kloss, and actress Uzo Aduba (at the time best known for Orange is the New Black). Karlie, at least, seemed to keep her eyes on Taylor throughout rather than waving to the audience as the others did.

A few days later, on July 17, Calvin Harris said in a radio interview that things were "going absolutely fantastic" for him and Taylor. They would next be seen having lunch together on August 11 in Los Angeles, then during her show finale on August 24, still in Los Angeles, Taylor mouthed "I love you" in what seemed to be Harris's direction. It was filmed by a known superfan who runs a not-quite-official fansite and who got very clear footage, but a fan nonetheless.

On August 3, Taylor posted on Instagram for Karlie's birthday [archive repost] with the sweet captain "Some of my best memories have been with this girl, laughing in the kitchen. Happy Birthday to the ray of light that is @karliekloss." - but the image that she used had Calvin Harris more central than Karlie was.

On August 30, for the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs), Taylor attended with a group of the women who had been in Bad Blood. Taylor had nominations in ten categories and would go on to win Video of the Year and Best Collaboration (for Bad Blood), and Best Female Video and Best Pop Video (for Blank Space). Having exchanged words and then apologies regarding the fact that Nicki Minaj's Anaconda did not receive a VMA nomination, Minaj and Taylor gave a surprise joint performance with Minaj having clearly invited Taylor to join her. This was also the ceremony where Taylor presented Ye with an award and the two seemed to have most firmly moved on.

Taylor's group sat over two rows of seats during the show, with Karlie sitting one row behind Taylor, as caught on an audience reaction camera. They frequently talked and interacted throughout the night during other performances, and even when they were not talking it seemed that Karlie spent a lot of the time looking at Taylor. After one award win, Taylor accepted a hug from various of her friends at once, but Karlie's hand seemed to stray a little lower than the others before patting or slapping Taylor's ass. 

At the end of the night, Taylor went on to an afterparty with various of her friends, while Karlie left in casual clothing and is presumed to have gone to the airport as she was seen back in New York the next day for college. However, as they were leaving, video was taken of people pointing Taylor in Karlie's direction so that Taylor could run after Karlie to hug her.

In September, Karlie began studying at New York University. On October 4 or 5, Selena Gomez held a party for the release of her new album Revival; Taylor is known to have been there. Karlie can be seen in the background of at least one image, but her presence was not mentioned or publicised, and her Instagram was about picking apples with her family. (This pictures also showed Kimby, who had posted about this some days earlier.) It is known that they were both at the birthday party of Lily Aldridge on November 18.

Taylor did not have a large birthday party this year, but it is known that Calvin Harris was present.

On December 20, the 1989 World Tour Live film released. [Youtube link.] It included a section called the "Karlie Kam"; Karlie can be seen in the video between 01:16:40, with the Karlie Kam, until about 01:20:00. This is not a long segment, but it is an unusual call-out by name and is some of the only non-professional footage in the film.

 

 

 

Into 2016, interaction between Karlie and Taylor continued to occur and was sometimes even caught on camera, but seemed to decline. Karlie was photographed in Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) leaving the city on January 10 (which would have been right after Andrea Swift's birthday). In March 2016, paparazzi images finally arose again - of Karlie and Taylor at the gym together, getting lunch afterwards, and Karlie blowing Taylor a kiss farewell. On March 18, Karlie's younger sisters, twins Kimby and Kariann, had a joint birthday party at Omnia in Las Vegas. Calvin Harris performed; Taylor was also there, arriving late and leaving early without being seen interacting with Calvin. In video footage, it appears at one point that Kimby taps Taylor on the shoulder and Taylor immediately draws out of a hug with Karlie.

On March 6, Calvin and Taylor had also announced it was their one year anniversary, with a hand-iced cake and a locket with the date 3-6-2015. The same day, Karlie posted from the Love Lock Bridge in Paris, with the caption "love locked down" (her anniversary with Josh Kushner is Jun 8). On March 6 2014, Taylor was in Big Sur with Karlie Kloss.

From April 15 to 17, Karlie was with Taylor at Coachella. (This event is sometimes referred to as "Bleachella" for Taylor, who appeared with a messy bleached blonde bob and very dark lipstick, leading to speculation that she was about to launch a new musical era.) Karlie can be seen and heard in various videos, but was generally never tagged by Taylor or her friends in them. Josh Kushner was also present at Coachella - he and Karlie seemed to go together most years. It was also on April 16 that Vogue released their 73 Questions With Taylor Swift video, in which she stated that Big Sur was the ultimate romantic destination for her.

Taylor did not attend the Time 100 Gala on April 26, although she was almost certainly invited; Karlie and Josh did. On May 2, Taylor was one of the co-hosts for the Met Gala, and was photographed dancing with Tom Hiddleston but also with Karlie Kloss. (More pictures, via Pinterest.) New broke the next day that Karlie had designer Brandon Maxwell cut her dress short for the afterparty, but it was a few days later that news got out that it was because of a red wine spill.

Some time this summer, Cara Delevigne moved in with Taylor "on a whim", likely during the time from June 2016 to "early 2017" (the most exact time I am able to find). 

At the beginning of June, Taylor broke up with Calvin Harris and very publicly became involved with Tom Hiddleston. At the same time, Kim Kardashian released her GQ interview, and Ye released the Famous music video. Taylor held her 2016 "Taymerica" (Fourth of July) party as usual, and while the scene was stolen by Tom's I ❤️TS tee, there are plenty of photos of Karlie also at the party. Without photos, but known to be present, was Josh Kushner. Later that month, Kim released clips of the recorded phone call with Taylor - Snakegate had officially begun.

On August 3, Taylor again posted for Karlie's birthday [archive repost], this time using an image from 2014 - specifically, from the behind the scenes of their Vogue shoot together - with the message "I LOVE YOU KARLIE! You're such an exquisite person, always trying to make things better for others. Every day I'm inspired by how giving, loving, and thoughtful you are. Happy 24th Birthday!!! @ karliekloss”. The same day, Karlie posted on Instagram that she and Taylor had spoken on Facetime - Taylor was in Los Angeles, Tom Hiddleston having headed back to Australia, while Karlie was in Italy.


From https://twitter.com/karliekloss/status/760949725025611777

 

Footage from Making of a Song (King of My Heart) shows Taylor wearing the same combination of a white tee and denim straps while recording (around 7:20 in the video), suggesting that the song may have been recorded on this day. E! News (at the time E Online) posted about the call, using odd scare quotes around "Best Friend" and implying that Taylor may have sent the flowers in the picture, while Buzzfeed titled the url kaylor-forever and called it a "Skype date". 

By August 7, Karlie was back in the USA, and Taylor was at her joint birthday party with Mikey Hess (close friend of Josh Kushner); Taylor and Nelly were filmed performing together. Karlie can also be seen filming in this video - she was wearing a large goldtone bracelet on her right arm that night, which can be seen in the bottom left. In mid-August, Karlie was asked about the Kim Kardashian situation, gave a diplomatic answer, then when it was framed by tabloids as her denying friendship with Taylor tweeted more firmly in support of Taylor.

In early September, Taylor broke up with Tom Hiddleston.

On September 14, Karlie was photographed out for a run on Cornelia Street, accompanied by a man who people were fairly sure was one of Taylor's bodyguards. Later that day she was photographed again, looking somewhat more dishevelled.

On October 13, Taylor attended an Eliot Sumner concert at the Bowery Ballroom (that name will come back in later chapters) with a group of friends. Notable names include Karlie Kloss, Lily Donaldson, and Zoë Kravitz. It is also said that Joe Alwyn was at the Bowery that night, but this is harder to cite as he was not very famous at this time.

On October 23, both Karlie and Taylor were at Drake's 30th birthday party in West Hollywood, California. Both were sporting golden temporary tattoos - Taylor had wings on her back, a band around her left bicep, and stars above her right breast and inside her left wrist. Karlie had a similar gold star inside her right wrist. For Taylor's 27th birthday, on December 13, Karlie posted to Instagram with a polaroid from Drake's party featuring Taylor embracing Karlie and kissing her on the cheek. The caption said, "Happiest of Birthdays to my ride or die @taylorswift ❤️🎂👯❤️ I feel blessed to count you as my friend, sister and partner in crime. Can't wait to celebrate together very soon ❤️🍪🍾"  

 

This polaroid image seemed to match with an image that Karlie had previously tweeted for Drake's birthday (above, right) - the background of the kiss photo appears to match what can be seen of the left-hand partial image in her post for Drake. However, the right-hand partial image has never been fully revealed, and is generally known among Kaylor fans as the "third polaroid". See red oval on the right image, above; this was not part of Karlie's tweet but added by fans discussing the image. The position of the hands suggests at the least that someone's arms are around someone else's neck/shoulders, and the fact that it is with two other polaroids of Taylor and Karlie indicates it is likely to be of them.

Karlie did not attend Taylor's Halloween party at the end of October, and since the next month was November 2016 it saw Karlie's in-laws become linked to the White House. Without getting deep into the politics, this is clearly significant. Karlie continued - indeed, continues - to reference Taylor in her social media, but after this stage Taylor very rarely liked any of Karlie's social media posts, and then generally only when it related to events or award ceremonies.

On November 18, Karlie posted a picture of herself to Instagram with the caption "red lips and rosy cheeks".

Karlie was also not present at Taylor's 2016 Thanksgiving/"Friendsgiving", and while she wished Taylor a happy birthday from Australia in December with the image above, Taylor did not acknowledge the post. Somewhere around this time, Taylor began spending most of her time in London, including New Year's Eve/Day, though she may well have been in Nashville from February to May recording reputation. In 2017, Taylor made only a handful of public performances, most of them at the very end of the year - but that's a story for the reputation chapter.

 

 

 

 

 

Life After Taylor

Karlie Kloss studied for some years before fully converting to Judaism in 2018. (Note that such conversions are not taken lightly, and cannot and will not be faked; discussion online regarding this conversion being fake is antisemitic and should not be engaged in.) After a bachelorette party on August 26 2018 during which she and her sisters attended one of the Nashville stops of Taylor's reputation tour, Karlie married Josh Kushner on October 18 2018, in a relatively small ceremony, and had a second wedding celebration on June 23 2019. In October 2020, she confirmed through People that they were expecting their first child, who was born on March 11 2021. The birth was announced on March 15, and the child's name confirmed a month later after the yeshiva which Josh Kushner had attended used the name in a congratulations message without realising that it had not been made public at that time.

It has not been established whether Karlie graduated from or completed her course at New York University. Karlie founded Kode With Klossy, a free annual coding camp for girls and nonbinary people aged 13-18, which has run from 2015 to the present. She was one of the judges and the host on Project Runway for the 2019 and 2020 seasons, and a guest judge in 2021; she continues to model, notably with Adidas and Estee Lauder with whom she has an extensive lines. However, her website and youtube account have seen much less activity since the birth of her son as she has, presumably, focused on her family. Her Twitter remains active.

Karlie has always maintained that she and Taylor have remained friends, but that they grew busy and that their lives have taken different directions. Some consider her to reference Taylor in her tweets from time to time even now, but it is unclear whether this is seeing patterns that are not there, or whether Karlie is simply aware of how much fan overlap she likely still has with Taylor.

It is worth noting that Karlie signed in 2015 to SB Projects, run by Scooter Braun, and is at the very least still listed on their LinkedIn profile. Her husband Josh Kushner is president of Kushner Companies, a real estate developer in New York City who consider among their business partners the investment group Carlyle Group. This was noted when she did not speak out, in 2019, when Taylor spoke about Scooter Braun having become the owner of her masters.

 

 

 

 

Taylor's Public Boyfriends

Calvin Harris

Taylor is said to have dated Calvin Harris from March 6 2014 to June 2015, making it her longest relationship to this date. However, as can be seen above, their timeline was messy and confusing - he said she was not "not his type" a week after they supposedly started dating, and while Taylor attended some of Calvin's events she seemed to distinctly avoid other ones. Calvin broke up with long-term girlfriend Aarika Wolfe only a couple of weeks before starting to date Taylor, and would return to dating her after he and Taylor had broken up. Photos of them largely came from AKM-GSI (who had also taken pictures of Taylor with Jake Gyllenhaal) or FlameFlyNet (who had taken pictures of Taylor with Harry Styles, and would go on to take ones of her with Tom). Tree Paine was photographed leaving the Tribeca apartment the day after Calvin had spent the night.

On August 19 2015, The Daily Beast posted an article called Taylor Swift's Boyfriend, Calvin Harris, is a Douchebag; in early September, strangely high-resolution pictures of him emerged leaving a Thai massage parlour. Rumours immediately circulated that something sexual had occurred, and that Taylor and Calvin were breaking up because of it. They both denied the allegations/defended Calvin, with Calvin even threatening to sue for defamation of character over the incident.

Calvin was not present at the Grammy's, or at Britney's [childhood friend of Taylor's] wedding. They did both attend the iHeart Radio Awards together, where they both won; she thanked him in her speech, by the name Adam, but he did not thank her in return. Entertainment Tonight commented on this.

In late January 2018, after being nominated for but not winning Producer of the Year (Non-Classical), Calvin Harris tweeted then deleted a series of tweets which took people off guard. Screenshots of them, naturally, remain (the first tweet is at the bottom). They read:

 

Last year I grew a big ol beard in order to be taken seriously by the Grammys as a producer.
It worked to an extent - my Producer of the Year nomination came through and I was happy the beard was performing as well as I had hoped...

But unfortunately this weekend I learned that even a new beard has its limitations.
On Sunday I lost out to the incredible Greg Kurstin.
A big ol beard can only take you so far.
An important lesson learned that i am happy to pass forward to all of you good people.

Now my beard is gone, the experiment completed and I can move forward with 2018! 
God bless and thank you for your support !!!

While it may simply be a commentary on having to change his appearance or mannerisms to be taken seriously as an artist, it is rarer for men to face this sort of pressure even in the music industry. Some people have considered this to be a shot at Taylor, essentially outing her as a fake relationship; this is an unusual accusation since there have never been rumours regarding Calvin's sexuality. 

 

Tom Hiddleston

As noted above, Hiddleswift was a debacle that led to widespread mainstream rumours that it was for PR or was for the filming of a music video. However, in March 2017 Tom gave a GQ interview which, despite explicitly mentioning the rumours that it was fake, seems to conclude that his emotions, at least, were genuinely real and hurt by everything that turned out.

 

Joe Alwyn

Although it was not until May 2017 that Taylor was revealed by The Sun (yet again) to be dating Joe Alwyn, it was stated that by this time they had been dating in secret since approximately September 2016, having met at the Met Gala in May 2016 and - the narrative is a little murky - are speculated to have played online Scrabble with each other over the summer. The official narrative is that there was a spark of attraction at the Met Gala which they did not act upon (?) until autumn 2016, before remaining secret until the following spring. The situation and timeline with Joe Alwyn is strange, but definitely does not align with what Taylor did with many of her other public boyfriends.

 

 

 

 

 

[Late] Songs About Karlie

 

 Once again, these songs are more speculative, and some here may also be suggested as linked to other potential muses in later chapters. However, these are the songs which people feel have the strongest links to Karlie.

 

  • Dancing With Our Hands Tied (reputation, 2017)
    This song generally gets linked to the events of Kissgate, among Gaylor theories. The imagery of instant attraction, a secret relationship, and outside pressure ("fears that the world would divide us") are not uncommon to many of Taylor's songs. However, the events happened very close to Taylor's twenty-fifth birthday ("twenty-five years old, how were you to know"), the "avalanche" may link back to "dancing in a snow globe", and "people started talking, putting us through our paces" is a pretty fair description of the media aftermath of the event. Motifs: gold, snow.

  • So It Goes... (reputation, 2017)
    The copyright for this song indicates that it was written in 2015, meaning that it cannot be about Joe Alwyn or Tom Hiddleston. The "gold cage" links it to the live performance of Delicate, while the notion of counting or keeping score which continue to appear later in Taylor's work. The line "Lipstick on your face" has an ambiguity of whose lipstick it is, while the line "wear you like a necklace" has been taken as a veiled sexual reference by many - either as the notion of having someone's legs over her shoulders while performing oral sex, or of the pearl necklace sex act. The reference to jealousy in this song speaks both to interest of others in the love interest, but also perhaps the inability to voice or express the relationship's existence. Motifs: gold cage, jealousy/possible infidelity, counting.

  • False God (Lover, 2019)
    The New York setting and references of this song are believed by some to tie to the fact that Karlie persuaded Taylor to come to New York in the first place; Karlie's West Village townhouse went up for sale in 2019. Religious guilt, even a tinge of blasphemy, returns in this song, as do references to oral sex ("religion in your lips"/"the altar is my hips") and to alcohol. The "ocean separating us" may be metaphorical more than physical, as Taylor was busy but still nominally based in the US for 2015 and 2016, but does return later. The line "I'm New York City" is interesting when referred back to Welcome to New York where "you can want who you want". Considering Taylor's affection for the work of King Princess (discussed in her 2017 Rolling Stone interview), some have also noted the religious/sexual themes could link to King Princess's song Pussy is God. However, the song still seems to be written from the perspective of someone in a crumbling or doomed relationship, with a hint of the darkness that Lover/folkmore turned into. Motifs: religious guilt, New York, alcohol, separating ocean, fighting

  • Dress (reputation, 2017)
    Dress is a song that brought many people to the concept that Taylor might not be heterosexual, simply because of the line "I don't want you like a best friend". While it is not impossible for male-female friendships to have this ambiguity, especially if they have been friends for a long time, it is something that is very familiar to queer individuals because there is not the built in societal expectation of dating that comes for any male-female pair of individuals. "Secret moments in a crowded room" indicates a situation in which Taylor was publicly seen with the person but not known to be dating them, while "Everyone thinks that they know us, but they know nothing about" not only suggests that there was an incorrect but existing media/public narrative, but the cut off sentence may not only lead into the pre-chorus but indicate an unspoken or unexpressed relationship. "My hands are shaking from holding back from you" suggests a level of secrecy that goes beyond friends/family not being aware but having to hide from the public gaze - Taylor was largely not spotted by paparazzi during the time in which she is linked to Joe Alwyn, while her relationships with Calvin and Tom were very publicised. The "golden tattoo" may link to the temporary golden tattoos from Drake's 2016 birthday party, the last time that they were publicised as being together. Some also think that "flashback when you met me" may be lines added to redirect the listener, or that they may in fact reference the Met Gala, which Karlie and Taylor frequently went to together or met at; some have even suggested that the "buzz cut" may be Karlie's 2016 cut dress and the fashion buzz which it created. Motifs: gold, best friend

    During the reputation tour, Dress was dedicated to Loie Fuller, an openly lesbian pioneer of modern dance and especially the use of Isis Wings. These Isis Wings (long swathes of fabric attached to sticks/poles held in the performer's hands, allowing them to mimic the shape of wings) were used in the performance, and reminded some of the wings work by Victoria's Secret Angels. Moreover, the performances were often lit in blue, purple and pink light - the colours of the bisexual flag.

  • King of My Heart (reputation, 2017)
    As noted above, there may be evidence that some parts of King of My Heart were recorded on August 3 2016, the day of Karlie's birthday (and certainly before Taylor is reputed to have started dating Joe Alwyn to whom it is usually assigned; she also stated in the Secret Sessions that it was about different stages in a relationship, developing over time). See also chapter Lyrics and Themes for use of masculine terms as lesbian signifiers. "I'm better off being alone" means that this song is contested as being about Karlie, as there does not appear to have been a great length of time between Dianna and Karlie, but Taylor's public appearance had been one of singleness. "Trying on clothes" is fittingly easy for a model, and original lyrics said "Salute to me, I'm the American Dream"; Karlie had previously called Taylor the American Dream in interview. "All the boys in their expensive cars" is an unusual line, when it could easily have been "Other boys in their expensive cars", but "their Range Rovers and their Jaguars" are almost certainly Calvin Harris (who owned a Range Rover) and Tom Hiddleston (who appeared in Jaguar commercials) respectively. The contrast between "expensive cars" and "taste of your lips" may link to Call It What You Want and "say you fancy me, not fancy stuff". "Drinking beer out of plastic cups" has been noticed to be similar to their October 2014 Knicks game in which they were seen doing just that, while "school girl crush" is again technically ambiguous as it is not said which, or both, have one.

  • Cruel Summer (Lover, 2019)
    Using an odd pattern of "you" and "he", and having been taken to describe a love triangle situation although the lyrics do not expressly mention one, Cruel Summer was expected to have a music video before the covid-19 pandemic likely made it seem inappropriate. The song describes a relationship that Taylor feels she should not want, and from which she expects rejection or betrayal, while "I'm not dying" may link to the reputation era and the death of "Old Taylor". "Bad, bad boy, shiny toy with a price" is a derisory way to talk about a male love interest which some think may relate to Calvin Harris and the PR situation which he implied that he had with Taylor for their mutual professional benefit. "Breakable heaven" is another borderline-sacrilegious reference in the way that it doubts religion, while "no rules" may again indicate a relationship with undefined or poorly-drawn boundaries, a darker side of Call It What You Want. Most telling for some, however, is "I snuck in through the garden gate" - Karlie's West Village apartment was accessed through a garden gate, where Taylor was photographed on several occasions. On one occasion, she had a small heart-shaped crossbody bag, of the same shape and approximate size that would later appear as Lover merchandise. 

  • Cornelia Street (Lover, 2019)
    Even mainstream media asked whether this song is about Karlie - although they generally called it a "friendship breakup" even when quoting Kaylor (Gaylor) tweets and theories. "This city screams your name" seems to line up more with Karlie, who persuaded Taylor to move to New York, lived there herself, and was on billboards all over it, than it did to any other possible muses. "Sat on the roof" may link to King of My Heart "up on the roof with a schoolgirl crush", while "barefoot in the kitchen" (criticised at the time by a few on feminist grounds) may refer to the fact that Taylor and Karlie are supposed to have had their first contact through offering to bake cookies together, and throughout their time in each other's orbits often spoke about baking together. As noted regarding September 2016, Karlie was pictured on Cornelia Street. And while it is not much spoken about outside of Gaylor circles, Taylor never has returned to Cornelia Street.

  • illicit affairs (folklore, 2020)
    A possible counterpoint to Cornelia Street, with the bitterness and ache of hindsight, is illicit affairs. As noted, Karlie was seen in September 2016 going for a run on Cornelia Street only to seem to spend an extended time at Taylor's property and leave dishevelled - even "flushed". The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show would certainly count as "beautiful rooms", and Karlie has been the face of a number of perfumes over the years. Calling the relationship a "drug" also seems to link back to Don't Blame Me, while "colours/ you know I can't see with anyone else" may link to "in screaming colour" that Taylor has elsewhere seemed to use as a reference to being queer. Taylor had used the word "baby" in Don't Blame Me, This Is What You Came For, Call It What You Want, Dancing With Our Hands Tied, So It Goes..., and Cornelia Street, and would go on to use it in later songs, many of them seeming to have links to Karlie. Because Karlie Kloss at this time was converting to Judaism and becoming increasingly serious in her relationship with Josh Kushner, marrying him in October 2018, anything as late as autumn 2016 may have been transgressive enough of her relationship with Josh to be an affair; before this, the book Kushner Inc has revealed that they took at least one serious break in their relationship, or earlier in the relationship it could have been more open. An excellent breakdown has been made suggesting the song may be about internalized homophobia on the part of the lover/person to whom Taylor is singing, as a sense of shame permeates the secrecy of this relationship.

  • Death By a Thousand Cuts (Lover, 2019)
    While Taylor has stated that this song was inspired by Netflix movie Someone Great, it has been suggested that it was at least partially inspired by real events for Taylor. In the movie itself, it is worth noting, is mostly set over the course of one day and is more about the grieving process of a relationship than it is about the relationship itself. "Windows boarded up" seems to link to Call It What You Want, while a "chandelier" was referenced back in This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things (also in close relation to a Gatsby reference). The specific reference to "my hips" may relate to when Taylor spoke during her reputation era about how her hips were her favourite part of her body as she recovered from her eating disorder, while "a bad drug" would link to both Don't Blame Me and illicit affairs. It is also possible that "lawless land" may refer to the "no rules, in breakable heaven" and generally to the undefined or ill-defined relationship that may be suggested by several of Taylor's songs from reputation through to evermore.

  • my tears ricochet (folklore, 2020)
    "Because I loved you, I swear I loved you" makes it difficult to consider this film as being wholly about the 2019 situation regarding Taylor's masters to which it is usually linked. This song begins with funerary imagery, which could hark back to the old Taylor "dying" during reputation era. In their Vogue video, Taylor called Karlie "sunshine", and the room she describes is "sunlit" - but "if I'm on fire" may refer to "if I get burned" from Dress. "we gather stones [...] some to throw, some to make a diamond ring" has been linked by some to engagement rings (Karlie revealed her diamond engagement ring in July 2018), while "the battleships will sink" is a reference to a motif Taylor had used before - "loose lips sink ships" in I Know Places, "sinking ships" in This Love - around the time that she met Karlie. The discussion of "my stolen lullabies" seems to link directly to Taylor's loss of her masters in 2019, which is why people have linked it to either Scott Borchetta (owner of Big Machine) or Scooter Braun, but in conjunction with Karlie's known links to Braun and to the Carlyle Group it may indicate that the two are indelibly linked in Taylor's mind.

  • hoax (folklore, 2020)
    Though Taylor said in the folklore Long Pond Sessions that this song was inspired by multiple events and something of a first for her in this respect, this seems strange when, for example, You Need to Calm Down has concepts of cyberbulling, queerphobia, and sexism all pulled together under mistreatment in the same way that hoax seems to bring together various themes of betrayal. In all honesty, the song makes for a better single clear narrative than some of Taylor's other songs (eg ...Ready For It? with its contrasting he/you and musical character). "My eclipsed sun" may link again to the sunshine that Taylor once proclaimed Karlie to be, with "frozen my ground" also linking to a coldness in the absence of the heat of the sun. "Faithless love" may be a reference to infidelity, jealousy, or poor definition of relationships. "Left a part of me back in New York" is striking when taken with the consideration that Taylor largely left New York in late 2016, and perhaps links quite directly to "you're the West Village" in False God. "I let you in the door" may be literal as well as metaphorical, as it has been stated that Karlie had keys/access to Taylor's properties as well as her own room there, while "keeping score" may be a final reference to the "one two three" counting of So It Goes.... It has also been noted that Taylor used her own heartbeat as part of the rhythm of Wildest Dreams, to which "my broken drum, you have beaten my heart" may refer on two levels.

  • coney island (evermore, 2020)
    The word "centrefold" refers to a model who gets the coveted position of the centre of the magazine - a reference which people might feel is appropriate for model Karlie, but also relate to Taylor's treatment of Karlie post-Kissgate where Karlie was sidelined even in her own birthday photo. The song describes the loss of a relationship as breaking "something delicate" (presumably referring to the song Delicate itself), while the "sun goes down" seem to be another reference to Karlie as sunshine. In 2019, Taylor became the first ever recipient of Billboard's Woman of the Decade, among the many other accolades she had received that could be the "lifetime of achievement", while the mention of "paradise" may be another of her religious references. "Gift wrapped suburban dreams" reminded some of the 2014 Swiftmas videos of Karlie and Taylor wrapping gifts together, while Taylor's line of "sorry for not winning you an arcade ring" could be considered dark humour at the heterocentric focus on marriage and its proprietal nature, as much as it could be a sadness for not agreeing to marry someone.

    While "Were you standing in the hallway [...] I forgot to say your name" has at times been attributed to an ensemble of Taylor's exes, this would give the song a sense of wishing she had prioritised romantic relationships in general over herself/her career, which does not seem to map to many of Taylor's other statements. There seems to be at least one person whom she misses, but she does not seem to wish she had prioritised others. The "big cake, happy birthday" could refer to the December 2014 incident where Karlie and Taylor separately brought identical cakes for Taylor's birthday. "The accident" is often attributed to Harry, but is vague at best, while "I think that I forgot to say your name" could apply generally to the fact that Taylor has almost never referred to or thanked any love interest in a speech (the 2015 Grammy's being the notable exception), but the outgoing "I think that I forgot your name/ Over and over" brings in a different aspect as it suggests the repeated neglect to speak of someone. In this song, Taylor is taking much more responsibility for the decline of a relationship, apologising for the number of times that she let someone down.

  • gold rush (evermore, 2020)
    Karlie titled a picture of her 2019 Met Gala look "Gold Rush". It has been noted that this song sounds like it is being sung about a siren, with water imagery and a feminine aspect to the subject. The choice of "gold rush" not only refers to the gold imagery that seems to align with Karlie, but also speaks to the historical nature of gold rushes - one person would find something real, and then everyone else would pile in as news spread and end up destroying lives. "Double vision" could easily describe how alike Karlie and Taylor came to look, and "in a rose blush" has been aligned with the pink they both wore for Victoria's Secret 2014 but also with the flush of embarrassment, shame, or secrecy. Karlie once had her image made up in dominos for the perfume Good Girl. The "coastal town we wandered round" to "coastal town we never found" shows the decay of the image of a relationship, but some consider it a reference to Big Sur, which is a coastal area often presumed to have a town but which does not actually have one. Of course, Karlie and Taylor took many dinner parties together. However, perhaps the most telling line is "my mind turns your life into folklore" - suggesting that the muse of this song was a major inspiration behind the folklore album but also underlining how Taylor cannot tell the truth of what happened. 

  • closure (evermore, 2020)
    It is thought that this song may refer to the way that Karlie has continued to portray that she is friends with Taylor, and that the situation between them has been entirely unproblematic, even during and after the 2019 situation with Taylor's masters. "Staying friends would iron it out so nice", indeed. This song also sees the return of "across the sea" that may refer to False God, but this time Taylor makes more clear who it may have been who put the separation between them in place.

  • happiness (evermore, 2020)
    "Seven years in heaven" would count back to late 2013, when Karlie and Taylor first met. Taylor has long talked of "hiding spots", from I Know Places onwards, while her use of dancing as a motif throughout her songs seems to link to being in a relationship - that is, Taylor was still engaged with this relationship when the "music" stopped. There was much less of a Taylor "era" for folklore and evermore, which some may consider her lack of "reinvention". "I hope she'll be a beautiful fool" has been noted as being a Gatsby reference, linking back to the reputation era, and it has been noted that Karlie was pregnant at the time this album released; "green light of forgiveness" is also from Gatsby. The "great divide" may be the same as the "ocean separating us" (False God) and "across the sea" (closure), while happiness and closure both make a reference to the other person's overtures of continued friendship being "fake". 

  • right where you left me (evermore, 2020)
    it's time to go was quickly linked to Karlie on release, but fellow bonus track right where you left me has also been discussed in this light. The overall concept is of someone stuck in time and in place - in this case, it is suggested, Taylor has been left closeted and unable to come out because her very public history with Karlie would likely be called into question were there not very careful handling of the narrative. "hear a hair pin drop" shocked some listeners, as "dropping hairpins" means giving hints that one is queer to ascertain whether it is safe to come out to someone; the Stonewall Riots were "the hairpin drop heard round the world". By the end of the song, the singer still has "pinned-up hair" - they have not given their hints. "Friends break up, friends get married" makes even more sense knowing that Josh Kushner said "I married my best friend", while "glass shattered on the white cloth" sounds at first like a glass dropped in shock - but breaking a glass wrapped in white cloth is a Jewish wedding tradition. "23 inside her fantasy" could refer to the fact that Taylor was 23 when she met Karlie, the fact that she spent time at 23 Cornelia Street, or both. "I can't bear witness" may refer to the common wedding opening "we are gathered here today to witness the union" [note that this is a line from mostly Christian weddings, but as Taylor is culturally Christian it makes sense for her to make this reference]. "Kids and Christmas" is more likely a reference to the Lover music video, as well as some deliberate misdirection regarding gender when referring to a wife.

Notes:

Note that the events with Drake here were before allegations would rise regarding his relationship with Millie Bobby Brown (they met in 2017).

There are "Late stage Kaylor" theories, that is that Karlie and Taylor remained or remain in a relationship longer, but I have chosen not to detail them here as they are a less common interpretation of events and in order to not tread over the same time too many times for too many different people.