bybdolan

[bybdolan]

give me a world you have taken the world i was tuesday

#marloncore

[bybdolan]

"I could be really brash and really loud and really dressed however I wanted to and almost made [Chappell] on purpose a drag version of myself so I can be whatever I want. It allows me to feel really safe exploring those aspects of myself. I’d never be able to do that if I took myself super seriously with pop. I think that the project has allowed me to be a part of the queer community in a deeper way because I'm not observing from the outside anymore. I feel like I'm in it. I am the queer community–it's allowed me to just feel queer, feel like a queer person and feel freedom in that."

[bybdolan]

The "Free Britney"-movement plus accompanying documentary etc. was crucial in making people rethink the way we view women in the public eye (as part of the general reevaluation of 90s and 2000s misogyny), which is a very very good thing (!), but the specific way in which that discourse has entered Swiftdom sometimes feels a bit ... revisionist? It is not done on purpose, but once in a while I see a post or TikTok screenshot that places Taylor firmly in the “child star” category – where she does belong! – and automatically assumes that she thus has faced all the obstacles of people like Britney or her Disney peers. And it is not on me to say whether or not she has or hasn’t, or – God forbid – whether or not she had it “easier” than them (whatever that would mean), but it irks me when people frame certain choices Taylor made solely as the doing of Big Publicist or Her Overbearing Parents. Those two parties surely played a part in shaping Taylor and her career, and certainly not always in a gentle way that really and truly only had Taylor’s best interests at heart, but Taylor has always been extremely aware of The Culture, the demands of people, what sells and doesn’t sell, and, most importantly: what you should never ever do in the public eye. In the beginning of her career she constantly mentions watching “Behind the Music” and analyzing why musicians failed. Her 2019 Billboard Woman of the Year speech consists entirely of her listing the demands of people and how she responded to them by contorting herself into a shape she herself didn’t recognize. We can all make jokes about Andrea or Paula telling Taylor to not put “I Can See You” on Speak Now, but the reality could very well be that 19-year-old Taylor Swift saw the way her colleagues were getting torn apart for daring to be sexual in public, and chose to spare herself that. (After all, when her manager Paula tried to push the “good virginial pure girl” image on a Taylor who did not want to be that anymore, Paula got fired.) And of course that still fucks you up!!! And it’s still fucking evil!!! But it is not the same as having your entire life dictated by somebody else – for better or for worse: part of what makes Taylor’s musings about fame so interesting is that she is very much saying “this is what you (the public) did to me”, but she is also always grappling with the “and this is how I reacted to it”. I also do not want to insinuate that Taylor was 100% free in her choices and had a smooth and easy ride (because that would be a big fat lie). But she has had a great sense of self-preservation and likely a good deal of autonomy from day one, and it feels strange to try and take that away from her.

[bybdolan]

Making playlists n creating fake album covers for them my beloved

#this bitch (me) loves a circle

[bybdolan]

looking for alternative titles for ttpd for an edit and i am taking suggestions in the replies n my inbox

#i am thinking of the chairwoman (my fave); the bolter; the prophecy; little old me #but nothing feels perfect #calling midnights 'graveyard shift'? stroke of genius #i need that high again

[bybdolan]

The "Free Britney"-movement plus accompanying documentary etc. was crucial in making people rethink the way we view women in the public eye (as part of the general reevaluation of 90s and 2000s misogyny), which is a very very good thing (!), but the specific way in which that discourse has entered Swiftdom sometimes feels a bit ... revisionist? It is not done on purpose, but once in a while I see a post or TikTok screenshot that places Taylor firmly in the “child star” category – where she does belong! – and automatically assumes that she thus has faced all the obstacles of people like Britney or her Disney peers. And it is not on me to say whether or not she has or hasn’t, or – God forbid – whether or not she had it “easier” than them (whatever that would mean), but it irks me when people frame certain choices Taylor made solely as the doing of Big Publicist or Her Overbearing Parents. Those two parties surely played a part in shaping Taylor and her career, and certainly not always in a gentle way that really and truly only had Taylor’s best interests at heart, but Taylor has always been extremely aware of The Culture, the demands of people, what sells and doesn’t sell, and, most importantly: what you should never ever do in the public eye. In the beginning of her career she constantly mentions watching “Behind the Music” and analyzing why musicians failed. Her 2019 Billboard Woman of the Year speech consists entirely of her listing the demands of people and how she responded to them by contorting herself into a shape she herself didn’t recognize. We can all make jokes about Andrea or Paula telling Taylor to not put “I Can See You” on Speak Now, but the reality could very well be that 19-year-old Taylor Swift saw the way her colleagues were getting torn apart for daring to be sexual in public, and chose to spare herself that. (After all, when her manager Paula tried to push the “good virginial pure girl” image on a Taylor who did not want to be that anymore, Paula got fired.) And of course that still fucks you up!!! And it’s still fucking evil!!! But it is not the same as having your entire life dictated by somebody else – for better or for worse: part of what makes Taylor’s musings about fame so interesting is that she is very much saying “this is what you (the public) did to me”, but she is also always grappling with the “and this is how I reacted to it”. I also do not want to insinuate that Taylor was 100% free in her choices and had a smooth and easy ride (because that would be a big fat lie). But she has had a great sense of self-preservation and likely a good deal of autonomy from day one, and it feels strange to try and take that away from her.

#the post by sapphicswift reminded me of the way ppl spoke about i can see you back when it came out and generally speaking the way some fans #frame the early days of taylor's stardom #like. ultimately there are aspects in which taylor got 'lucky' #e.g. her being able to come into her sexuality on her own terms (at least publically) #'omg andrea forbid taylor to do a sexy dance move on tour :(' #is that alarming and sad? sure! is this a mother shielding her teenage daughter from sexualization and scrutiny? yea! #wanting to be horny and hot at 18 most normal thing in the world but it is difficult when you are on A Stage every night

[bybdolan]

Lauren Bacall, To Have and Have Not, 1944

#Alisoncore

[bybdolan]

something...something about taylor swift being sold as a product her literal entire life. something about trying to make messy unpalatable art this time but it's still covered in a layer of artifice and acceptability because she can't escape it, i'm still getting ads for it on every platform, there was still a deeply capitalist and deeply swiftian album rollout. i don't intend this really as a criticism i think it's actually very impressive that she hasn't had a true public meltdown. but there's something freeing about the public meltdown, right? and she in all likelihood will never have that moment.

#Yea ..... #Tho after thinking about it i think very very few people who have experienced it think about it this way #E.g. Britney was forced back into the good girl shell immediately #It was freeing for miley but for who else?

[bybdolan]

i have been saying since day one that a bit of depth and texture would have done wonders for this album cover and once again i was right

[bybdolan]

I’m gonna say something potentially controversial

[bybdolan]

Taylor's 2011 interview with The New Yorker is so interesting in the context of Clara Bow...

"Swift is sometimes called a twenty-one-year-old 2.0—the girl next door, but with a superior talent set. She has an Oprah-like gift for emotional expressiveness. While many young stars have a programmed, slightly robotic affect, she radiates unjaded sincerity no matter how contrived the situation—press junkets, awards shows, meet and greets." ("Flesh and blood amongst war machines.")

"Swift has the pretty, but not aggressively sexy, look of a nineteen-thirties movie siren. She is tall and gangly, with porcelain skin, long butterscotch hair that seems crimped, as if from a time before curling irons, and smallish eyes that often look as if they were squinting. She loves to wear makeup, but it tends to resemble stage makeup: red lipstick, thick mascara. . . . She is in the midst of her second world tour, and every show begins with a moment in which she stands silently at the lip of the stage and listens to her fans scream. She tilts her head from side to side and appears to blink back tears—the expression, which is projected onto a pair of Jumbotron screens, is part Bambi, part Baby June." ("You look like Clara Bow.")

[bybdolan]

“I used to sit in record labels trying to get a record deal when I was a little kid. And they’d say, ‘you know, you remind us of’ and then they’d name an artist, and then they’d kind of say something disparaging about her, ‘but you’re this, you’re so much better in this way or that way.’ And that’s how we teach women to see themselves, as like you could be the new replacement for this woman who’s done something great before you. I picked women who have done great things in the past and have been these archetypes of greatness in the entertainment industry. Clara Bow was the first ‘it girl.’ Stevie Nicks is an icon and an incredible example for anyone who wants to write songs and make music.”

— Taylor on Clara Bow

#Boom i was rifht

[bybdolan]

"How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs", Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec

#marloncore

[bybdolan]

i have been saying since day one that a bit of depth and texture would have done wonders for this album cover and once again i was right

#did something extremely similar for folkmore once #and might make a full mockup of ttpd in this style #i really dislike the cover pic but this was for showcase purposes so it's okay

[bybdolan]

As for “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” Swift revealed that she wrote the tune “alone, sitting at the piano in one of those moments when I felt bitter about just all the things we do to our artists as a society and as a culture.” “There’s a lot about this particular concept on ‘The Tortured Poets Department,'” she added. “What do we do to our writers, and our artists, and our creatives? We put them through hell. We watch what they create, then we judge it. We love to watch artists in pain, often to the point where I think sometimes as a society we provoke that pain and we just watch what happens.”

Taylor on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” (Variety)

#LOVE what she said about the concept of The Tortured Artist #'oh she has had such a bad time what will she create out of it???' #But 'we watch what they create and we judge it' ? Mh #I think i know what she means by that ('judging' as in 'being overly judgemental') #But still jumped out at me in times of stans tearing apart critics for daring to critique an album #As soon as you charge $20 for a cd your art partially transforms into a product #That people pay for. N thus get to evaluate on what it did for them

[bybdolan]

No thoughts just this photo of Bruce Springsteen

[bybdolan]

why is taylorpictures down .... Lawd