When it comes to Taylor Swift’s squad versus the Kardashian dynasty, I’m afraid to say I take no sides. That’s not to say I didn’t whoop and clap at the octuple-stacked fall-out between Taylor and Kanye West. Because it’s attractive to see celebrities peel the veneer back, proving that they’re just as mouthy and flawed as the rest of us. But true to the adage of ‘don’t fight with pigs, you both get dirty but the pig enjoys it’, everyone - and I mean everyone - involved, came off muckier than a wet weekend in a peat bog after what came to be known as the #RIPTaylorSwiftParty.
Kim Kardashian was doing her husband’s bidding by releasing on Snapchat a video of Kanye asking Taylor for permission to mention her in his song, _Famou_s. Kanye was getting his wife to do his bidding instead of showing Taylor her ‘receipts’ himself. Finally, it appeared Taylor had approved half of a lyric of Kanye’s, contrary to a statement her ‘people’ put out when Famous was first released, which said Taylor never approved anything of Kanye’s!
Chloe Moretz’s call for people to get their 'heads out a hole' and focus on 'what’s happening in the REAL world' backfired when it emerged she had previously spent the day after the Orlando shooting tweeting about Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles (for the record, Chloe isn’t even mates with Taylor, but maybe that’ll change?). Selena Gomez, who is BFFs with Taylor (except for the purposes of the Bad Blood video, widely believed to be about Katy Perry) did a similar request for people to ‘use their voice for something that fucking matters?’ and was called out for never having mentioned, um, Black Lives Matter, the biggest activist movement in the US that isn’t a Trump rally. Selena then tweeted and deleted, that she won’t use the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter because 'lol so that means if I hashtag something I save lives?’, perhaps realising only too late how hypocritical she’d been.
Khloe Kardashian, who responded to Chloe Moretz’s ‘a hole’ comment with a picture of a bikini-ed woman, appearing to be Chloe (who has since denied this), experiencing an anus-exposing ‘wardrobe malfunction’ needs to take a look at her family history and realise that using nonconsensual nudity to shame women is pretty…done. And then Ruby Rose, wading in with her guru-level preaching came across as patronising. And of course we, as spectators, are hardly innocent, with our faves and our retweets, we helped contribute to something that wasn’t just mean but also so utterly temporary in its joy. It makes sense that people want to tear Taylor down. The long-term haters are frustrated that she portrays herself as a geeky underdog, when she’s unarguably dominant and popular, and she’s recently confused adoring fans with her sudden, smug romance with Tom Hiddleston. Of course every person e.g. commenting with snake emojis on Taylor’s Instagram were all punching upwards, only going after the rich and famous who are big enough to handle it. But do we really want to be using the same flimsy justification as those who trolled Leslie Jones off of Twitter? Famous people, even those with Swiftian veneers, are still people and even if they’re not (let’s say a team manages their social media, blocking all the haters), what do we normals personally gain from having a go at people who’ve already been ‘dragged’ by the most famous couple in the world?
Ironically, Kanye West’s song Famous has gained most of its fame because of the furore over the lines about Taylor: ‘I feel like me and Taylor Swift still might have sex/ Because I made that bitch famous’. It’s like the pair are umbilically reliant on one another to sell their personalities as brands; he, a give-no-fucks controversial rockstar, her, a faux-horrified WASP who just wants everyone to get along and bake cookies. There’s an interesting argument that Taylor really did deserve being called out by Kanye/Kim specifically because she’s spent years fuelling a narrative of Kanye being a dangerous black man here to upset innocent little white girls, but it’s kind of hard to convince people that he too doesn’t play up to this reputation when he tweets stuff like ‘BILL COSBY INNOCENT!!!!’ I don’t think Kanye’s as nutty or irrationally angry as people say he is, and I don’t think a white guy who did what he does would get anywhere near as much flack, but it still stands that he’s not without problems.
As the week’s unfolded, we’ve gained some perspective on the #RIPTaylorSwiftParty, and can now see the average, healthy, not-going-through-a-divorce celebrity is doing what they’re meant to do: entertain. While the Carpool Karaoke of Michelle Obama, Missy Elliott and James Corden rapping in a car was undoubtedly precision-planned, so many unguarded moments can delight. There’s Big Brother contestant and incumbent tabloid star Jayne Connery fainting after getting a wet sponge to the head. Cara Delevingne pretty much admitting to fingering someone on a plane, in their seats, and then complaining to air stewardesses about a man staring at them. Lottie Moss, sister of Kate, stumbling out of a club with drink stains down her satin dress, just days after tweeting a meme about drunkenly typing your alarm clock time into your calculator app. Chrissy Teigen jokingly having a pop at husband John Legend for showing off about their daughter, Luna, a bit too much. None of these have got me howling, but at least I don’t feel dirty after appreciating these celebrity titbits. It’s incredibly easy to get sucked into the melee of celebrities being mean to one another, but in doing so I briefly fell for the mirage that all unguarded, unfiltered celebrity is ultimate celebrity. When it comes to ‘realness’, I know which side I’m on.
You might also be interested in:
Slut-Shaming Taylor Swift Just Undoes All Our Hard Work For Sexual Equality
5 Reasons The Internet Thinks Taylor Swift And Tom Hiddleston Are Staged
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.