(Taylor Swift’s “un-feminist” song and video, Mine)
Doesn’t everyone love a good love story? Maybe not.
At the feminist blog Feministing, commenter Chloe recently confessed that she enjoys listening to Taylor Swift’s music now and then, even if it’s what she calls “an un-feminist guilty pleasure.”
What exactly makes Swift’s music “un-feminist”? Why, it’s the misogynist love-story lyrics, of course. Specifically, the lyrics to Swift’s newest hit, Mine, are scary stuff. They’re full of dangerous woman-hating, man-loving nonsense — at least according to the 18-year-old blogger Jamie Kieles whom Chloe quotes:
This song is rife with freaky-deaky, weirdo language that frames Swift as someone perpetually under the ownership, or at least care, of a male authority. The lyrics describe her as not a woman, but as a “careless man’s careful daughter” that her new boyfriend has “made a rebel of.” This is problematic to me, in the sense that it implies a transfer of her ownership from one man to another. I think it’s weird in this song that she doesn’t seem to have any sense of her own identity away from the love interest, or her father.
As a woman who considers the most important parts of her identity those of being someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, and someone’s mother, and as a mom of a 15-year-old girl who is fairly certain that Taylor Swift walks on water, I have spent some time pondering the question of this particular country star’s popularity …
At Inside Catholic, you can read the rest of my column on Why Taylor Swift Matters.
Feminists broke the glass then became the misogynistic, chauvinist-pig ceiling.
Since we are all NOW forced to live under the oppressive Identity-Political Un-Natural World well then I Am Woman Hear me Roar for more Masculine please.
The Yang is out of balance with the Yin; up-side down and out of whack.
“This song is rife with freaky-deaky, weirdo language that frames Swift as someone perpetually under the ownership, or at least care, of a male authority.”
no doubt the author of this statement is a female who pukes her guts out to look anorexic while stuffing loads of silicone in her breasts just so she bring home a Sugar Daddy to provide her every need.
Unlike most or her contemporaries, Swift is (or was, she’s now 20) a teen who writes songs from a teen’s perspective. You know, songs about having a huge crush on your guy friend, first love, first heartbreak. That’s what makes her music so pleasant and refreshing, it captures the teen experience without an overdose of cynicism, irony, angst, sexual innuendo.
So of course the feminists hate it. She’s not all “empowered by her sexuality” ‘n stuff.
What really gets me is that the song is explicitly at least in part about getting over the pain caused by an (neglectful?) man. That, and the fact that she describes the boy as “hers.”
This is what happens when “close readings” get coupled with overt political intent.
Please pass along to your fellow guest bloggers that I think all of you are doing an outstanding job filling in for the anchoress. Thanks for the great posts! Keep ‘em coming!!
I’m probably going to botch what I’m trying to say, but that has never stopped me from saying things before…and botching them.
I’m in a bible study group, and we’ve been using the upcoming Sunday’s readings as our study topics. I guess our strategy is that after 100 years we’ll have gone through the whole bible.
This Sunday, Paul’s letter to Philemon is about possessing people (literally, a slave). here’s a commnet from some analysis I found (it’s from a Jesuit, so it must be right!):
“If we treat our children as if they are either our possessions or our gods, it will not only be impossible to follow Christ; it will be impossible to love them.
We will strangle them by clinging to them as if they were our property or crush them with the impossible burden of saving us and making us happy.”
So, to follow that idea a little further, if we make anybody or anything a possession or a god, it hinders our love for Christ and for the person we intend to love. The punch line, of course, is that it is God we should love. All else will fall into place. And that leads us to Sunday’s Gospel reading…
All of these ideological -isms (feminism, etc.) quickly become gods for us, in the same way that money or sex or status can. If we can just focus on Jesus Christ then the -isms aren’t the big show anymore. Peace follows.
The word ‘woman’ is general. In the short phrase ‘careless man’s careful daughter ‘ you get a picture of not only a specific woman, but an entire relationship, including the effects it had on the development of the woman.
Plus, it rhymes with ‘water’ ….:)
Good post! I find Swift’s lyrics intelligent and evocative. Teenagey, sure, but very good. And speaking as one who thinks of herself as a feminist (but doesn’t much care for Feministing,)
those gals over there read way too much into them. They’re freakin’ love songs, fer Pete’s sake!!!
[...] The Anchoress | The Sexist Dreams of Little Girls [...]
DWiss: can you tell me which Jesuit wrote the quote?
I like it and want to pass it along!
Although the video does seem to suggest the two young people move in together before getting married, the song isn’t about perfect situations so I didn’t find that part too objectionable. This song is about average and imperfect people (it’s country folks, it’s always about inperfect people, LOL). My 9 year old granddaughter loves Ms. Swift (she likes “Romeo and Juilet” which ends more happily in Swift’s song as the Dad realizes he has two choices–lose a daughter or gain a son and he picks the better choice).
“Mine” is not about “ownership”–as in, “this is my car”; “Mine” is about belonging– as in, “this is my family”.
Listen again to the words: she is a “careful daughter of a careless father”–she means she gives heart , love and affection carefully and cautiously. She will not “throw it away” to any person who comes along (as she felt her father did). The song doesn’t show the parents breaking up–just arguing and not noticing the daughter…the parents could still be married, just not happily in the daughter’s view. It is the daughter who “runs away” (either by moving out or going to school or maybe by just avoiding the parents; the song is vague). She is made into a rebel because the young waiter turns her to thinking she could in fact give him her heart, love and affection.
She is the one calling HIM, mine—not the other way around. She is the one possessing him…he is hers to call her own. Only at the last new stanza in the song does the young man, as he is running out to stop HER from leaving, say that she is, mine…to call his own. So again the emphasis is on belonging to each other….at that point they marry (or so it’s suggested) and their family and their fortunes (notice the nice house and beach trip) rise…because they are committed to each other, they belong to each other and will not be pulled apart.
Swift is merely reviving a biblical thought, perhaps unconsciously and usually told from the male view–A man shall leave his father and mother and CLING to his wife and the two will BECOME one. I emphasize the clinging and becoming as that’s what “belonging” is and yes, they can call each other “Mine”.
If this is anti-feminist, then, Yeah, anti-feminism. I tend to think this is a song about decided for yourself by thinking it through–throughout your life and living by example versus by something “careless” like lip service to your marriage (as her father did).
Back to the issue of moving in—the young man made her a rebel because he convinced her to marry him not just live with him; that’s why this song about imperfect people strikes a good note with me…she was the one who was hesitant–the song says “I was a flight-risk, with a fear of falling…wondering why we would bother with love, if it never lasts”…”flash-forward…you learn my secrets and understand why I’m guarded; you say we’ll never make my parents mistakes…” Interestingly enough my husband of 33 years and I had a similar conversation and promised each other we would not take each other for granted. His parents will still married but he felt they had drifted far apart and only argued with each other all the time…he didn’t want to marry and have it end up like that. So the words ring true to me.
“We’ve got bills to pay, we have nothing figured out but when it got too hard this is what I thought about…..YOU are the best thing that’s ever been mine.” A great line and a great love song.
I don’t want to go to Inside Catholic to read the rest of the article. I’d prefer to read it here.