Taylor Swift’s #SquadGoals have been the subject of a lot of scrutiny, but mostly in small and trivial ways. For example, when we see numerous pictures of Taylor and her various friends on the 1989 tour, or on vacation, we can’t help but wish we were either in her friend group, or that we had a similar squad of our own. However, this week, feminist critic and academic Camille Paglia had some strong words for Swift and her #SquadGoals movement, calling her to “retire that obnoxious Nazi Barbie routine of wheeling out friends and celebrities as performance props.”
While those are certainly strong words to use, Paglia’s article in The Hollywood Reporter was not totally against Swift or her #SquadGoals. If anything, she thinks that the current trend of girl squads has an important value, because they provide a foundation for women bonding that has been absent from modern society for quite a while: “Women have lost the natural solidarity and companionship they enjoyed for thousands of years in the preindustrial agrarian world, where multiple generations chatted through the day as they shared chores, cooking and child care.” According to Paglia, “girl squads can help women advance if they avoid presenting a silly, regressive public image.” Her major criticism of Swift is that her squad is not one that allows for innovative collaboration between girls or mentorship, but is instead “the tittering, tongues-out mugging of Swift’s bear-hugging posse”. Ironically enough, Swift and many of her girlfriends have actually collaborated on a project, which we all know as the epic “Bad Blood” music video; it made a tremendous impact on pop culture history.
Paglia is a professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and she is also the author of many books and essays that analyze feminism and popular culture. This is not the first time she has made bold claims about female celebrities, having called Madonna “the face of feminism” in the 1990s, and more recently calling Lady Gaga “calculated and artificial” and “strangely antiseptic.”
This also isn’t the first time Swift and her squad have been publicly criticized. This past July, The Washington Post journalist Jill Filipovic criticized Swift’s “superficial understanding” of feminism in the midst of her Twitter debate with Nicki Minaj. In the article, Filipovic stated, “Feminism is more than just supporting your girlfriends or churning out charming catchphrases about girl power; it’s a political movement, with political aims.” Although the article did not focus on her squad, like Paglia, Filipovic accentuated the flaws in Swift’s grasp and public displays of feminism and female support systems.
What can we take from the criticism? We can clearly see that there is a difference in how female bonding is represented in the media today, and in the days of the Spice Girls, who constantly embodied the ideas of “girl power” and “friendship never ends” in the latter half of the nineties. Swift and her girl group bond by banding together, like the badass army they play in “Bad Blood”, to support and defend each other, whether it’s in a music video or in real life as it’s clearly evident on the superstar’s Instagram page. While Paglia and many others see such support as business-motivated and fake, many young women greatly appreciate those moments when we see the girls hanging out in different countries at different times of the year, always having a great time when they’re together. Swift and the rotating members of the squad also show us that there are diverse kinds of friends that we make throughout our lives, from brooding beauties, like Lorde, to the hipster rock chicks, like the Haim sisters, and that one true friend who has lived through all of life’s most defining moments with you, like Selena Gomez is to Swift. Even though the critics’ points are valid, the good in Swift’s #SquadGoals have still managed to overcome all the possible negativity surrounding it.
Information Obtained From:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/13/camille-paglia-lady-gaga
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/apr/05/women
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/camille-paglia-takes-taylor-swift-845827
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