I have four Taylor Swift nazi memes that I’ve been moving from phone to phone since my 4s. I got them from a password protected tumblr I followed that posted what I guess we would call ‘edge lord’ shit, but in the most feminine way possible. Menstruation, ballerinas with spinal malformations, dying your pubic hair, self harm, eating disorders, the general kaleidoscope of femme horror.
I wanted to learn how to interact with Taylor Swift. Almost desperately. Interact, meaning I wanted to write about her. Write, meaning I wanted to think about her. Which meant I wanted to like her. But I couldn’t tell you shit. She was the girl done wrong by Kanye and then right by Beyoncé when we were both leggy nineteen year olds but I couldn’t even tell you what song Taylor Swift was up there winning for. The incident was happening when I was homeless and recently off the gear, wandering around the country like a feral child, so while I was upset about the whole thing, the dark racial dynamics at play in particular, trying to ‘get’ Taylor Swift was not that important at the time. Then I thought it was too late and I couldn’t figure out how to join the party.
Which sucked, because then all these things started happening around her that I was super interested in. The nazi stuff was obviously nuts, the ever spiraling Kanye revelations were still happening and ugly, people found her girl gang sinister, it was all really fascinating to me! So, after years of carrying around this Taylor Swift regret, I took Taylor Swift and the nazis and the femmes online who had shared them with me to the woods of MacDowell, where I promised myself that any time I felt stuck with my work there, I would give Taylor Swift a good old college try. Sitting by the fire in my studio, watching Miss Americana on my iPad and trying not to be terrified of the New Hampshire winter dark. When I got home on March 8 2020, I thought I had done alright, and put the project in the ‘weekend work’ pile. Which is where it sat, until September 19 2021 when, halfdrunk and depressed at 2am, I let Netflix autoplay and I met Betty Cooper.
twin peaks mom is not very nice person
what in the taylor swift is this looking into each other’s bedrooms and not fucking?
i’m on s1 e5
I typed in ‘Taylor Swift bedroom video’ and things spiraled quickly after that. “You Belong With Me”, of course, being the video Taylor Swift was up there on that MTV stage winning an award for. By the time 6am rolled around and Betty Cooper is revenge doming a Black football player with a latina girl she met a week ago - I was delighted. Riverdale was going to get me blacked at the Taylor Swift party.
‘Blacked’ isn’t polite, but it’s the closest word I can think use. It’s the only term we’ve got in this language that means the stain of blackness without being born. It also suggests agency, that someone can choose. That it can be taken or given or forced, but never stolen. Think of the ways Black people have always claimed Paramore, Fall Out Boy, An Extremely Goofy Movie or certain other behaviors that non Black people exhibit that we feel belongs to us. It’s more than the temporary, easily revokable hood pass, and probably the nicest thing we can do. Just a little hit of death, a little taste of freedom, as a treat. What Kanye did to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé was a dick move, but it worked. It was too big, too public, too forced, too complete, with too many powerful people involved not work. What Kanye did was public and reflected in her public life, and what I think Beyoncé did was private, now that we can see what was happening to her in the years after that.
After Veronica uploads the video she makes of their revenge on Chuck, he’s removed from the football team, suspended from school, and publicly ostracized. Veronica has not included Betty, or her more torturous behaviors in the video. Chuck decides to tell everyone about what Betty actually did to get him to confess at Jughead’s birthday party, where Betty sits silently, not moving. Jughead punches him, and Chuck, larger, stronger, more powerful than our friendly neighborhood school shooter, lays him flat out and the party is over. Betty and Jughead sit at Pops, where Betty reveals her self harm and her dark, obsessive need for control (she means sexually), the most significant disclosure she could ever make. Veronica was the one slutshamed by Chuck, the whole reason for Betty’s scam, but it’s Betty who is changed the most. After the party, she’s released from the obligation of being normal or perfect or whatever else her mother and Archie call her. She’s free to start caming, or stripping to join her boyfriend’s dad’s gang, or whatever. She starts blackmailing people, she breaks into cars. She solves a murder. She slows her self harming. She can do whatever she wants.
After the MTV incident, we now know, Taylor Swift — a Christian who was planning on saving her virginity for marriage — loses her virginity to Jake Gyllenhaal and embarks on the type of relationship every too smart, too beautiful girl has had with an older, more powerful man. The result was Red, which was “inconsistent” and “expanding”, which sums up the person a girl is after the mirror breaks.
After the voicemail / Notes app / other Kanye incident, (which coincided with her winning a court case against a man who sexually assaulted her on camera), Taylor Swift removed herself from public life. When she came back she released her Blackest album, reputation. And here is where I think Beyoncé’s part of the bargain pays out. Swift breaks up with her label and its new ownership by Emory Mafia party fuckboy Scooter Braun. She decides to trust her fans and announces she’s going to re-record her first six albums. She includes in her new contract a demand that if Universal sells its huge stake in Spotify, her label mates must be paid, which is something only someone with a great deal of power could make happen. Only two people, really, and the other one is Beyoncé. She came out of the political closet and began vocally championing LGBTQ, feminist, pro-choice causes and youth voters. She donated to BLM and the NAACP. She fell in love and released Lover, probably the most poptimistic album of the past forty years. She gets Idris Elba to say ‘get on my scooter.’ Her love interests in videos become Black, and trans. She can do whatever she wants.
It only took one season of Riverdale for me to learn how to interact with Taylor Swift, after thirteen years of trying.
I certainly did not try to even get involved with trying to get a Taylor Swift ticket. Beyoncé was the priority. I’m still nervous this might be Beyoncé’s last tour, and I was preparing to fight my way to having a southern ticket, I was not going to fucking Belgium for Beyoncé. I cheered on the Swifties who, after being involved with this artist for some of the most formative years of their lives, now women with jobs and money, took Ticketmaster to task. I haven’t looked at any polls but I would believe that Ticketmaster has dethroned Comcast as the most hated company in America. But Dustin called and said do you want to go to Taylor Swift two weeks before the show and I immediately sent the money. It felt like things in Atlanta were speeding up and the Taylor Swift concert was just the beginning, and how the show went would be the forecast for the Atlanta summer, which means the forecast for the American people.
Neither Dustin nor I’s outfits arrived in time. Walking to Dustin’s house to take a car downtown, I was stung by a bee twice on my eye. Holding a smashed cigarette and tea bag combo on my eye and trying to make sure we were both caught up enough on Taylor Swift to not make a fool of ourselves. The Atlanta contingent was overwhelmingly reputationthemed, lots of snakes, lots of black, lots of blood red. Both Dustin and I were wearing pink. The other Black people I saw were also all wearing pink.
It’s hard to make an arena show special, especially one that is so tightly structured. But Atlanta managed it. We made her opening act cry, and before we were even out of the Lover era we were making Taylor Swift cry as one of the rare “super crowds” - all bounce, all screams, all knowing every word. She messed up, not just once, or twice, but three times, which feels like its own kind of special thing to accomplish.
At the end of the night, we exited the Dome with a pack of very otter, very excited, very white young men all wearing matching shirts that said “I GOT BLACKED AT BETTY’S PARTY.” If I see them at Beyoncé, I will assume they managed to achieve their Atlanta Dream.