Being a Swifty

I was getting ready before school one morning in my bedroom, it was my sophomore year of high school and it was at a new school. One different from the town I essentially grew up in. I didn’t have a lot of friends, I didn’t listen to the same music as other people in that school and I was in a really hard place for an adolescent. I always listened to the country music station in the morning on cable. That’s when it happened. A song called “Tim McGraw” came on and I was really confused why I heard a girl’s voice and not Tim Mcgraw’s voice (I loved him at the time). But the song spoke to my soul, omg did I love that song. I remember thinking “Wow, this girl is seriously smart for making her first single the name of the most popular singer in this genre.”

Shortly after that my move to Vermont happened and I literally listened to that song over and over for months. That is when my Taylor Swift only music listening started. My love for her began with her music but it expanded when I learned more about her as a person. She is the one who influenced me to decide if I like celebrities (or anyone really) based off of their character, and not their talent.

She was like me, she loved dresses, sparkly things and was only concerned with loving people. She wasn’t being over sexual, she didn’t curse in her songs and there were no photos of her at clubs drinking underage. She was the representation of me, but in a super rich and blonde girl form haha!

The songs she’s written on her albums have had an eerie reflection of my life. I made some relationship decisions based off of the songs “The Moment I knew” and “Come Back…Be here”. Her entire RED album spoke about a relationship of mine that took up the majority of my late teens to early twenties (I actually have a whole blog series I've since taken offline telling a story about every single one of her songs in relation to my life...maybe i'll put them back up). I remember I was in the car driving to NYC with my bf at the time, his best friend and his gf. I was in the front seat with my friend (the gf) and we were both Taylor Swift obsessed. The song “You’re Not Sorry” came on and I remember telling her that this song was the relationship I was currently in and I was ready to say goodbye. She was kind of shocked haha and said she hopes she never got to that point in her relationship. I have no idea if the boyfriends heard me say this, I was so hurt and disrespected at that point in time that it didn’t matter.

Taylor and I were both born in the same month, in the same year! She is 13 days older than me! All the life experiences she’s gone through and written about in her albums have always fit my life perfectly, because we’re in the same stage of life (well, with the exception of her being a millionaire lol). I remember for so long I got "a look" when I said I loved Taylor Swift, because people just suck and like to judge others. Then 1989 came out and BOOM everyone was a Taylor Swift fan. It changed the fan base a lot, and made being a fan of hers a lot different. “Stan” culture started and I can 100% say that is not something I support. According to google, Stan’s definition is “an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.” This essentially means people become obsessed with the person and not the art. I love Taylor for her art, not for her cheek bones or her hair or her eyes or her clothes. The fan base went from being about her art to being about being obsessed with a human. Which is just super weird to me, I can’t lie lol!

Something else happened when the fanbase blew up, people started to sort of judge each other off of who has met her and who hasn’t. Now, don’t get me wrong I would love to meet her but some people take it too far. I 100% felt angry for a while because so many people who weren’t even born yet when I started to love her were meeting her. A kid from my town got to go to her house for a secret session! I felt like I deserved to meet her more than anyone else because I had been through all of these life situations with her, I loved her art no matter what the media said — and that is not a healthy way of thinking. I saw myself letting these “teeny bopper Stans” change how I felt about being a fan of hers! One specific thing that played into this was how I used to LIVE on Tumblr, I had a lot of traffic to my blog. It wasn’t 100% about Taylor, but she was on there and I was a big part of that community. There was a group of girls who became obsessed with me and my blog (that is a story for another time) so I ended up deleting it. It wasn’t soon after that Taylor joined Tumblr and started making personal connections with fans. Wow, sucks for me right? Haha!

Taylor’s music has been such a perfect representation of my emotions and the situations I’ve been through and who she is as a person represents me perfectly that when I see anything in relation to her, I see myself too. Her music has been such a big part of my life, her music was there playing through some of my darkest moments. I am ecstatic that she has found fortune and fame to the point she has, but it made being a fan of her a lot different.

Outside of the online space, getting together with swifties is one of my favorite things to do. In general, people are always more aggressive and rude online, but in person you don’t see that as much. Going to concerts and being in an ocean of people who love the music you do is a special kind of sensation. This past summer when I went to NYC to see her perform on GMA was really cool too. I got to meet a teen swiftie and she was the cutest little babe, omg. She showed me pics of her at the Fearless concert when she was still in elementary school - I attended that concert when I was in college! Haha! She is going to come up this summer to attend Lover Fest with us, as a high school graduate and I'm so excited to have her go with us!!

Even to this day Taylor continues to prove that she’s worthy of being considered a role model. I don’t really consider her my role model, because I think idolizing other humans in any way is a fast path to mental health issues BUT I do approve of what she continues to represent. She fights for the rights of other artists, even when it means she will lose something she really wanted (her masters). She isn’t letting the time old tale of power hungry men control her narrative. She has called out the men by name who have wronged her (which is something I was sad she stopped doing after her second album in music) and that shows serious commitment to the cause.

I love Taylor for her music, her words, how she can tell a story. I love her for sticking up for people less fortunate than her. I love her for still acting like a normal person to her fans even though her fame and fortune has her living in a different world than us. I love Taylor for all of the times her words and voice were there when I was rotting on the inside from being betrayed by someone who I thought loved me. I love her for the friendships and connections I’ve made with people through her art. I love her for throwing concerts that are out of this world, that are so fun to plan for! I love her because I know she’s never going to stop creating art, and neither will I.

Happy Birthday Taylor, I’ll meet you in the 30’s club in 13 days!

Check out some photos from the various tours of her's I've been to: