You Belong with Me?

In the land of fairies, princes and princesses, and knights in shining armor, there lives a musician by the name of Taylor Swift, who swiftly (pun intended), captures the hearts of ardent little girls, women, young and old, and little boys, whom are too young to know the difference, with her music of Love and Love lost, of boys, and of life; better yet, tales only true to fables. Taylor's approach to life is light, but hopeful, starry eyed, but earth bound, essentially it is willing to embrace the dreamer in all of us, but it constructs very rigid structures, who in their deconstruction, destroy the very fantasy she has created.

Miss Swift implies plenty about the roles of men and women in her music videos, often with males being the inferior of the two sexes. An example of this is in You Belong with Me, the gentleman, says [writes] at the beginning of the video, "I'm tired of Anna." This is his cheer-leading Captain, girlfriend who is apparently only with him because he is a status symbol for her. He continues to put up with her ridiculousness, up until the very end of the video where he finally realizes he loves Swift's character and they kiss and the rest is history. According to Taylor, men are not smart enough to realize when they are being abused. Another example of this is when, Anna is on the sideline at the game flirting with another one of the guys from the football team, the boyfriend walks up after catch the game winning pass- another subset of a fantasy- only to confront Anna about it then and she looks as though she snaps at him, he storms off the field. The most pronounced view is when the guy and Swift are sitting on the bench outside her house waiting for Anna to pull up, when Anna finally gets there he gets in the car and Anna makes out with him in front of Swift not to make out with him, but to send a message to Swift about talking to her ‘man’.

Basically the gist of the fantasy is men don’t know when to walk away from a situation which clearly makes them not an equal. Essentially this entire video is a slam to the male perception of life. Swift, attempts to create a cute love story, but what she really is creating is a complicated construction of the male structure. Men, only pay attention to cheerleaders, who drive red sports cars, and are the most sought after in the school. And although initially Swift opts out of the social construct of blond headed women being the object of men’s fascinations, she throws it back in at the end when presenting herself as the end all catch. She also makes a heavy assumption with going to what looks to be prom that night. She assumes he wants out of current relationship, she assumes, he wants to be more than friends, and she assumes, he is not just trying to make Anna jealous.

Swift creates all of these fantasized, story book scenarios, but loosely backs them up and places them all on the head of men to be the scapegoat. Her basic message is men are stupid, or at least not smart enough to know when to leave, all they are looking for is an ego stoke, not a legitimate relationship, and that men bounce from girl to girl to girl, based off what they have been treated like previously. Swift’s simple story becomes extremely complex in its attempt to create all of these fantasies. She does not give the option for men to opt out of any of these binaries, to cut across the grass instead of staying on the socially acceptable, sidewalk.

So, for all those little ones who do not quite understand the opposite sex and are still in the run and hide stage of having a boyfriend or girlfriend, I hope they don’t use Taylor Swift as a guide to telling them what is or is not acceptable, because most little boys will grow up and be very independent men and most little girls, will not actually being pompous and arrogant, so the fantasy of having the dependent boy leave the bossy girl, may just not happen.

Serena Williams... what shall we do with you?

Yesterday, at the US Open, the world watched as Tennis extraordinaire, Serena Williams, not only played hard, but yelled hard too. For those of you unfamiliar with this story you can find it right here on youtube, or here on ESPN.

This little stunt told the public several things, one- I can't handle my emotions when I'm in potentially steamy situations, two- I need to understand the power of my passion before I handle the situation.

I am a firm believer in leaving it all on the field, the court, or whatever, but there is a line that has to be drawn at the point where my feelings begin to overpower me. I liken this situation to watching people who are dog walking, especially when the dogs are HUGE! Often times you wonder who is walking whom, the dog walking the person, or the person walking the dog. Although the dog may be very powerful, proper discipline can bring him inline and allow for his master to walk his dog-not the other way around. I feel these scenarios are very similar. If you are as passionate as Serena Williams or Lagarrette Blout (Oregon's now suspended former running back) about what you are playing for, I can understand fully that emotions will fly high; I wholly expect that to happen, but it's understanding the power and magnitude of your emotions that will humble you and keep you from having a display of ill-willed passion, which could lose you the game- Williams- or get you suspended for the season-Blout.
Now, both of these two athletes have come back and apologized accordingly for the misconduct they showed on the court and the field, but they have lost the respect of hundreds, or in Williams case, even thousands of fans, solely because of the response in the moment. This is something which occurs multiple times a week between peers and friends. You could be in physical Education at school in the third grade and go and punch a kid or (in the case of my girlfriend's summer camp) kick a kid in the nuts.

This is one of those binaries which we are taught from a younger age; that we should be as passionate about whatever and do whatever it takes to ensure that passion is seen through and through. We don't learn how to understand our emotions in a more sub-grouped fashion. We believe that if we're not gung-ho about everything we do to the point we're willing to fight for it, than we're not passionate, not really. This is where we are wrong. What if we flipped the script and change our societal position and said at the point where we need to fight about something, our passion, our emotions, our excitement is getting the best of us and we should probably step back and reassess. What if we looked at our emotions and instead of being completely distraught or crazy about something we're passionate about, what if we had a gray area, where we could be extremely passionate, but realize we need to stay grounded and not blow up if something doesn't go our way? Opting out of the binary of being all or nothing, might actually save more than just your career, it might actually save your life one day.

But the question lies in the hands of each person; are you a binary, only on or off, black or white; or are you better than that- do you have built-in gray? I challenge you to reassess.