Hi everyone, your Swiftian (conspiracy) Theory newsletter this month is written by Satu.
I had already written a whole newsletter about Taylor’s clothes and worked hard on this image:
when a more urgent Taylor-related matter came up: Gaylor went mainstream.
One of the best things about Taylor songs is how they seem to be about your own life. If this newsletter was nearly 5,000 words on how Taylor is secretly a Moomin enthusiast with a complex about her career in non-fiction publishing, that would be the Swiftian Theory equivalent of the piece published last week in the New York Times opinion section. It begged a lot of questions, such as what happens when writing finds its way to an audience it wasn’t written for. And how to manage a fan community as large as Taylor’s, with so many conflicting opinions within in.
I am neither pro- nor anti- the Gaylor theory in principle. I have sympathy for the tender places where we keep our most personal daydreams and thoughts, especially ones that others might look down on. Fanfiction and fan theories are part of an imaginative life for a lot of people and what’s wrong with that? Gaylor is an emotional support conspiracy theory for many. And after all, Taylor re-wrote the most powerful forbidden love narrative, Romeo + Juliet (1996) in Love Story, so she gets it. There’s not many places to find that kind of yearning romance in the modern day (except in Bollywood) Women no longer get sold off in marriage. You don’t have to marry one guy and make eyes at the gardener for the rest of your life, you can date around as much as you want and the worst penalty will be having to pay the whole gas bill yourself. Even the classic “miscommunication” plot point was on its last legs when Serena Van Der Woodsen dropped her phone in that bin. So, some hopeless romantics reach for what’s left: the closeting narrative. There’s been an interest in discovering “the truth” about celebrity sexualities since we’ve had celebrities in the modern sense. The podcast You Must Remember This explored the interest in Marlene Dietrich’s sexuality and discussed how people have often cited a photo of her sitting in between another female film star’s legs as “evidence” of their affair. Dietrich wasn’t even closeted and I’m sure she would have told you if you asked about it in the bar at the Chateau Marmont. Today’s sexuality detectives might have found her a boring subject to investigate because of the lack of a great mystery.
Gaylor-believers are also in a minority: I read a report about how the subculture works and it turns out there are more anti-Gaylor accounts. So up til now there hasn’t been a danger of journalists demanding answers of Taylor about her sexuality, which did happen to other popstars who struck up rumours. It harmed no one and brought comfort to some.
However, my sympathy for Gaylor has recently been put under stress. I listened to the Culture Study episode about Taylor and two of the guests talked about their love for the theory. I was really amazed to learn that Gaylors are not only or mostly people from a minority group looking for representation in a singer they love. The guests made it sound like they were solving a true crime case. The gusto in their voices as they reeled off their “evidence” really took me aback. For them, this wasn’t about vulnerability at all, but about knowing something other people don’t. Crusading for the “truth” when it comes to people’s sexuality isn’t the one. I’m not saying artists never hint at things in their art: they do, and sometimes people can’t help but put parts of themselves into their work unconsciously. Subtext is a gift, because you can interpret it how you want. The only thing the Swiftian Theory groupchat can completely agree on is that Taylor’s next sound should be “mediocre 90s teen movie soundtrack” and also Harry should grow his hair back.
When it comes to Gaylor, I don’t care about the individual “arguments” but you’re in the New York Times telling me this look means someone is gay:
This suggestion is itself a hate crime.
The article is like someone baked a cake from literary theory, conspiracy theory and that particular kind of tweet that insists all close friendships in history were gay. What’s sometimes posited as queer reclamation can end up making whacking great assumptions about real people that has the unintended consequence of squeezing all nuance out of human relationships. I don’t know the truth of Taylor’s private life any more than the NYT writer. But I do know that friendships can be tempestuous and awesome and painful, and that people’s sexuality can be more complicated and more personal than just a set of colours and a label. A lot of people don’t enjoy living in a labelled box, even if the people writing the labels think they’re doing it for the right reasons. There’s no way around it, whatever you believe: the author tried to out Taylor on one of the world’s most influential platforms in the name of queer liberation. I would call it a moment in internet discourse history.
It makes you think about how much fame must sometimes feel like an abusive relationship to celebrities. All their money and power comes from capturing our attention and there comes a time where we believe we own them. The Gaylors urgently need their own Tree Paine to address their current PR problem. But what does this kerfuffle tell us about fandom in 2024? The Taylor fandom is so big at this stage that it’s basically like living in a country. People have very different opinions on Taylor depending on where in her kingdom they dwell, and we can’t control who else lives there or how they vote. But we can work on a better discourse. The New York Times showed me that picture of Taylor in the rainbow lace-up shorts over 40-denier textured brown shimmer tights, and then I showed it to you. Who will break the cycle?
The NYT article is so misguided and has prompted so much backlash that I’m actually back to sympathy again. In an effort to understand my fellow Swifties, I have created this quick grid diagram that locates Gaylors in a COMMUNITY of Taylor fans, to allow us a pathway to empathy and reconciliation.
In love and hope for TS11, see you next time!
If you love reading about Taylor you may be interested to know that my book, “Into the Taylor-verse” will be published by Bantam in May. I had the time of my life writing it, especially the chapter about how much fun it is to be a Taylor fan. You can pre-order the book here to indulge in lots of Taylor history, facts, and pure adoration just before she arrives in the UK for the European leg of the Eras tour.
It's such a two sided coin with Taylor conspiracies - half of me wants to plead that people only follow the hints she's deliberately dropping and leave the rest of her private life private, the other half enjoys the drama 😅
At the end of the day though, if she wanted us to see her sexuality as anything other than straight, she would be taking steps to do so. She's not, so mainstream media should leave well enough alone. She gives us enough.
Also, that outfit is pretty awful, but it's definitely not evidence that she's gay. I mean, honestly 🤣