Taylor Swift talks being 'target of slut shaming' in prologue for '1989' re-release
Taylor Swift is getting candid about being shamed for her dating habits.
In the prologue for "1989 (Taylor's Version)," out today, the singer writes about how she was trying to "reinvent herself" during the making of the original 2014 album -- not just sonically with her fully transitioning into the pop world or geographically by moving to New York City, but in her personal life, too.
"The voices that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman? I wanted to silence them," she says.
Swift writes that in the years preceding this album, she had become the "target of slut shaming -- the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today."
"The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt," she says.
Swift says it became clear to her that "there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with."
"If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him," she continues, saying she "swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era."
As a "consummate optimist," she writes, she assumed this could be fixed by changing her behavior and decided to "focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female relationships."
"If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn't sensationalize or sexualize that -- right?" she reasons. "I would learn later on that people could and people would."
The singer later says she surrounded herself with female friends as an adult to make up for the lack of them in her childhood, not -- as she put it -- to "[start] a tyrannical hot girl cult."
Further reflecting on that era in her life, Swift, who was 24 when the original "1989" was released and is now 33, says it's good that there was a lot she didn't know at that time.
"Of course everyone had something to say. But they always will," she writes. "I learned lessons, paid prices, and tried to... don't say it... don't say it... I'm sorry, I have to say it... shake it off."
"1989 (Taylor's Version)" is available now.
