POP CULTURE

NEWS | ENTERTAINMENT | HEARSAY

Taylor Swift AND

THE MEDIA’S DOUBLE STANDARDS

A 2019 Netflix documentary, ‘Miss America’, looks at the 15-year career of singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. Swift opens up to the cameras like never before, and explores “raw and emotional” topics such as sexism, body image and media scrutiny. We see Swift learn to “embrace her role not only as a songwriter and performer, but as a woman harnessing the full power of her voice”.

Last month, Netflix released what is now a hugely popular American drama series called ‘Ginny & Georgia’. It follows 15-year old, Ginny Miller, and her seemingly less mature 30-year old mother, Georgia. In an episode aired on the first day of Women’s History Month, the pair have a heated discussion about relationships, during which Georgia assumes that Ginny as split up with her boyfriend. Ginny snaps, “What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift”.

The joke caused uproar amongst Swift’s fans, and led to the Twitter trend “Respect Taylor Swift”. Swift herself tweeted: “Hey Ginny & Georgia2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse s*** as FuNnY. Also, @netflix, after Miss Americana this outfit doesn’t look cute on you... Happy Women’s History Month I guess”.

This is not the first time Netflix has been implicated in a similar sexist joke directed at the artist. In another Netflix original, ‘Degrassi: Next Class’, a character claimed “Taylor Swift made an entire career off her exes”.

Swift, who is in a long-term relationship with actor Joe Alwyn, rightly highlights the double standards she faces compared to her male counterparts. In a 2015 interview with Maxim, she argued that male artists writing about their feelings are said to be “brave”, whilst woman doing the same are said to be “oversharing”.

Whilst on Australian radio station 2DayFM the year before, Swift responded to claims that all her songs vare about her ex-partners. “No-onesays that about Ed Sheeran. No-one says that about Bruno Mars,” she said. “Frankly, that is a very sexist angle to take.” She went on to say “I have a really strict personal policy that I never name names. So anybody saying that a song is about a specific person is purely speculating”.

Such double standards should be called out whenever and wherever they emerge. I Am Beyoutiful supports Taylor Swift and her battle for gender equality. She is not just fighting for herself; she is fighting for all women. It is the same battle that we and many others across the world are also committed to winning. Unity is strength, strength is power, and power is what brings about change. Beginning with unity, and one step at a time, we will win and bring about the change that is needed.

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Britney Spears

‘Framing  Britney  Spears’:

The  Untold  Story  of  Control  and  Exploitation

The 2021 New York Times documentary, ‘Framing Britney Spears’, explores the life and career of the American singer-songwriter. It focuses on the manner in which the media and people close to her have treated her. But more than this, it aims to shed light on the conservatorship that she has been living under since 2008, which has sparked the fan-driven #FreeBritney movement.

Following Britney Spears’ public mental breakdown in 2007, her father, Jamie Spears, was granted conservatorship over her estate, her career, her finances, medical decisions and other major life choices. A conservatorship is the legal appointment of an individual to make important decisions on behalf of someone else who is deemed unfit to make those decisions themselves. It is usually reserved for people with diminished capacity to make decisions, and Spears’ supporters argue that she is more than capable of making decisions of her own. With their support, she has been fighting the conservatorship for many years.

As the legal row over the conservatorship has escalated, the #FreeBritney social media campaign has gone viral, and since the release of the documentary, it has attracted dozens of celebrities too.

Fellow singer and actor, Justin Timberlake, who dated Spears between 1998 and 2002, is also facing a backlash of criticism over his treatment of the singer. The documentary depicts the media smear campaign of Spears following allegations that she cheated on Timberlake. It details a2003 interview during which she was reduced to tears when asked what she did to cause Timberlake “so much pain, so much suffering”. The documentary goes on to allege that Timberlake stoked the flames of these allegations with the music video to his single ‘Cry Me a River’, which portrays Timberlake catching a Spears lookalike sleeping with someone else. Many describe this as “slut-shaming” and argue that he exploited their breakup to further his career.

At the very beginning of her career, Spears said she was waiting until she was married to lose her virginity. But during a radio interview, a clip of which features in the documentary, Timberlake enthusiastically revealed that the then couple had slept together, despite her desperately wanting to keep her private life private. This again fed into the demeaning and misogynistic media scrutiny of the female singer.

The documentary goes on to describe how Spears was manipulated and exploited by her record label, to the extent that they demanded she sing in a voice unnatural to her in order to maximise her appeal. The paparazzi are also called out for their hounding of the singer, which was ruthless and cruel, despite her desperate pleas to be left alone.

The treatment of Britney Spears depicted in the documentary is likely to have made her feel very alone, but she is unfortunately not alone in suffering this type of abuse. Too many female celebrities, and women in general, are treated similarly. As heart breaking as it is to acknowledge, many more women will fall victim to this before we manage to instigate real lasting change that ends it once and for all.