Monday evening, thousands of people turned their TV’s on to watch the Grammy Awards to see what the attendees wore, view live performances such as Lady Gaga’s act, and learn the winners of various music awards. Considering how easily many of these songs become a part of our everyday lives, the Grammy’s can be a big deal to a lot of people. Like some of my friends, I tuned in mostly because I wanted to see the live-streamed performance of Hamilton, but I ended up watching the entire broadcast.
So, ultimately, I listened to Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Album of the Year, where she spoke to the young girls watching. In her speech, she encouraged viewers to work hard and focus on themselves in order to get where they want to be, and to ignore the haters and to push back people who try to take credit for their work. I’m not the biggest Swift fan to ever walk the earth, but upon first hearing Taylor Swift’s speech, I was glad she said what she did. Growing up, and as I begin to enter the workforce, I’ve heard plenty of stories of women, people of color, and other minorities being undercut and pushed down. A self-proclaimed feminist, Swift is one among the many celebrities who is both loved and judged: her songs are catchy, though many people have angrily called her out on being a “white feminist,” among other things. But ultimately, as someone who identifies as female, I think that an acceptance speech like Swift’s was necessary. I saw it as another step towards creating the equal world that many of my generation, as well as generations before, have been working towards.
But of course, one cannot walk away from the Grammy’s reading news headlines that only state the winners of each award and who wore what. The next morning, it seemed that a lot of what happened at the Grammy’s was up in flames, from a lack of a memoriam for Natalie Cole to the mic glitch when Adele performed “All I Ask.” Taylor Swift was also making headlines, not just because she won Album of the Year for the second time, but because her speech was apparently a backlash to Kanye West.
This was all news to me. After reading more about this ‘feud’ between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, I was left questioning our celebrity culture and social construct, some of which I’m still trying to understand. I don’t want to start a conversation of why we should demean or flatter Kanye West and Taylor Swift, though I find Kanye West’s lyrics about Taylor Swift to be quite degrading. But still, why is pitting these celebrities against each other a part of our entertainment? Can’t celebrities resolve their issues out of the public eye? And more importantly, why is it considered OK to degrade women, and other people affected by discriminations? In the future, it is critical that we continue conversations about feminism, racism, and other prejudices that exist in our world so we can eliminate as much as we can of them. One way I think we could do this is by encouraging this generation, as well as the next, to break barriers—just as Taylor Swift did in her acceptance speech at the Grammys last Monday.
Swift’s acceptance speech can be viewed below.
