For every article that's been written about Taylor Swift's music, there is at least one on her dating life — or so it feels like. According to Taylor, that is not OK.
The artist, who often draws inspiration for her music from her own life, has an issue with being "reduced" to her love life — and she definitely has a point.
In a recent interview with Apple Music's Beats 1, Taylor talked about the slut-shaming she and other women experience in the music industry and how damaging it is.
She recalled the time "when I was 23 and people were just kind of reducing me to, like, kind of making [photo] slideshows of my dating life and putting people in there that I'd sat next to at a party once, and deciding that my songwriting was like a trick rather than a skill and a craft."
In Taylor's (and my) opinion, giving her personal life more attention than her art — in a way that female musicians are overwhelmingly more subjected to than their male peers — is really problematic.
It's a way to take a woman who's doing her job and succeeding at doing her job and ... completely minimize that skill by taking something that everyone ... in their darkest, darkest moments loves to do, which is just to slut-shame.
Taylor also called out some of the language being used in these kinds of sexist articles, like "another breakup," which she says puts her in a "real sad place."
"I don't want that to keep happening, and I don't think people understand how easy it is to infer that someone who's a female artist or a female in our industry is somehow doing something wrong by wanting love, wanting money, wanting success," she added.
Most important, she doesn't want these kinds of sexist comments to discourage other artists from making the kind of music they want to.
"Do not let anything stop you from making art. Just make things," she suggested. "Do not get so caught up in this that it stops you from making art — or, if you need to, make art about this — but never stop making things."
