i’ve said it before i’ll say it again there’s a difference between lady gaga singing born this way in 2011 and taylor swift singing “shade never made anyone less gay” (whatever the fuck that means) to profit off of it in 2019
The difference is that Lady Gaga is bisexual and Taylor Swift is straight
Honestly, even if Taylor came out as gay or bi tomorrow, “You Need To Calm Down” would still be tacky because of tone an content.
Born This Way was, unequivocally, “You are beautiful for being YOU in a world that often tells you you’re not” while “You Need To Calm Down” is basically “Me, and The Gays™, have haters”.
Gaga was singing about celebrating herself with Born This Way. Taylor Swift comes off as comparing homophobia as equivocable the beef she had with Katy Perry.
I feel a better comparison from the early 10s is Same Love by Macklemore. While yeah, the song is clumsy and hokey, at least “I received a lot of misdirected homophobia growing up and I can only imagine how much worse it is for gay folks” is more tasteful than “homophobia is just like when critics say my songs aren’t good or I get snake emoji replies on Twitter.”
Even if she has the best intentions, the final product comes off as, well, tone deaf and a little exploitative.
thousands of christians petitioning the wrong company to cancel good omens has the same energy as aziraphale and crowley watching over the wrong kid for 11 years
I read too many books about the ocean and deep sea creatures as a kid and it ruined my life. you can’t expose children to that shit or they’ll spend the rest of their lives cowering in fear from the blue-ringed octopus. the mere knowledge that things like the gulper eel exist is keeping me from becoming a fully-realized adult
book about dolphins that you bought at the scholastic book fair and are now beaming directly into your seven-year-old brain like the feed line of an IV: dolphins sleep by resting one half of their brain at a time so they can still surface for air! you are going to grow up and become a depressed nervous adult
