The Life of a NO, GIRL!!!!!!
album review and why the right can't recognize or create good art
First of all, I’m a Swiftie. May none of what I’m about to say be held against me in my show trial.
The long anticipated Life of a Showgirl is out, and I spent the day working with it on in the background. That’s the thing about Max Martin; he makes great background noise. It’s pop. I’m not terribly compelled by anything but “Opalite.” I miss Jack Antonoff. I also miss who I was before “Wood.” Oh, wood I go back in time in order to never hear all that about Travis Kelce’s penis! Or to return to the days when Taylor Swift did not feel the need to do lyrical OnlyFans so people would stop talking about the gay conspiracy. Because as my friend Romola said, I’m now more convinced than ever. Do normal heterosexual people talk about one another this way? I think Sabrina Carpenter can get away with it because she’s funny. Is Taylor now doing to Sabrina what she did to Lana with the Covid albums? Uncanny mimicry? Tongue-in-cheek works better without the outright vulgarity. We get it, you enjoy heterosexual sex. Congratulations!
Anyway, the most hilarious part of this release was the fact that conservative Twitter is now in a frenzy trying to convince themselves and the world that, actually, this is an album about secret feminist fantasies to be “traditional.” Lord have mercy, could the Chat GPT tradslop get any dumber? We need a complete and total shutdown on Evie magazine until we can figure out what’s going on.
I have gotten in hot water plenty of times with conservatives for pointing out that they’re getting really weird and frankly idolatrous about the things they (most normal people?) like: babies, marriage, religion, maxi dresses. These are all great things, some of the best parts of my life, that have been totally flattened into these ridiculous memes that influencers are using as weapons of information war specifically in order to sow division and self-congratulate. No, I’m being too cynical. It’s because engagement pays, and memes are predictably engaging.
In case anyone needs to be reminded, as Cartoons Hate Her wrote a couple months back, women loving men is a totally normal and not particularly political choice whatsoever. This desperate need to code (and, more often than not, distort) basic realities as “conservative” or “liberal” betrays the fact that you’ve been mentally raped by memes. This album has nothing whatsoever to do with so-called “traditional” living. She’s a female billionaire who wrote an album in no small part (harhar) about her boyfriend’s privates! What are you talking about!!!?
There’s a secondary annoyance here, which is that outrage reaction slop is just the whole content ecosystem now, especially on the right.
