A prolonged essay speculating over famous person Taylor Swift’s sexuality has triggered anger on-line, with some social media customers calling for its retraction.
The 5,000-word visitor column printed within the paper’s opinion pages suggests the wildly in style singer is sending veiled indicators to her followers that she is queer, regardless of figuring out publicly as straight.
Neither The Times nor Swift’s representatives instantly responded to an AFP request for remark over the piece or the backlash.
Speaking anonymously to CNN, an individual in Swift’s camp known as the column “invasive, untrue, and inappropriate.”
The essay by Anna Marks, an editor for the NYT’s Opinion part, strings collectively a listing of instances Swift has seemingly recommended she is queer.
“In isolation, a single dropped hairpin is perhaps meaningless or accidental, but considered together, they’re the unfurling of a ballerina bun after a long performance,” Marks wrote. “Those dropped hairpins began to appear in Ms Swift’s artistry long before queer identity was undeniably marketable to mainstream America. They suggest to queer people that she is one of us.”
In 2022 Marks printed a visitor essay speculating over the gender identification of Harry Styles, a pop star Swift has dated, inspecting accusations of queerbaiting in opposition to him.
Marks opened her Swift column by referencing the internal turmoil of Chely Wright, a queer nation musician and activist who has described staying closeted for years for each profession and private causes.
Following the essay’s publication, Wright lambasted it as “triggering.”
“I was mentioned in the piece, so I’ll weigh in,” Wright wrote on X. “I think it was awful of @nytimes to publish. Triggering for me to read — not because the writer mentioned my nearly ending my life — but seeing a public person’s sexuality being discussed is upsetting.”
Swift posted a banner 2023 as she continues her blockbuster “Eras” tour and catapults to an otherworldly realm of stardom.
For months the 34-year-old has brazenly dated NFL participant Travis Kelce, bringing new legions of viewers to soccer video games because the digicam routinely pans to Swift.
Her courting life has lengthy been fodder for tabloids, followers, and her songwriting. Swift has been linked to high-profile males together with the actors Tom Hiddleston, Jake Gyllenhaal and Joe Alwyn, in addition to the singers Styles, 1975 frontman Matt Healy and John Mayer.
Swift herself has by no means publicly indicated that she identifies as queer, though hypothesis has persevered for years.
She has championed LGBTQ+ rights, which she mentioned in a 2019 interview with Vogue: “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.”
And within the prologue to her latest re-release of her album “1989,” Swift mirrored that in her 20s she “swore off hanging out with guys” due to media assumptions that she was sleeping with each man she hung out with.
“I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships,” she stated. “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.”
Kayla Gagnet — director of digital content material at Equal Pride, an umbrella model of queer-focused media shops together with The Advocate and Out — stated relating to celeb news protection, “pointing out obvious signals is not inherently problematic.”
Noticing indicators of queerness, she informed AFP, “should be no different” than media noticing Swift was courting Kelce earlier than the pair had confirmed it.
On the opposite hand, Gagnet stated, the backlash to the Times essay “is really focused on not the reading of queerness into her work, which I think is totally valid, but more on ignoring or being dismissive of what she herself has said about it.”
Followers of popular culture will all the time be fascinated about who celebrities are courting, she continued. “It’s fair game to sort of be interested in what that might mean about their sexuality.”
But at Equal Pride shops, Gagnet stated “we believe people when they tell us who they are. And that is true for queer people and straight people and everybody in between.”
© 2024 AFP