Why is Camille Paglia picking on Taylor Swift?

Turning? That’s her shtick, posing pleas for attention as bold and brave opinions.

It’s like loudly farting in church and pumping your fist in triumph – “People looked at me, I AM IMPORTANT!”

Somebody’s gotta do it!

I read the article.

“In our wide-open modern era of independent careers, girl squads can help women advance if they avoid presenting a silly, regressive public image — as in the tittering, tongues-out mugging of Swift’s bear-hugging posse.”

“Girl squads ought to be about mentoring, exchanging advice and experience and launching exciting and innovative joint projects. Women need to study the immensely productive dynamic of male bonding in history. With their results-oriented teamwork, men largely have escaped the sexual jealousy, emotionalism and spiteful turf wars that sometimes dog women.”

Dismissing young women as silly, frivolous, and not to be taken seriously goes way, way back. It’s about as regressive of an argument as you can make. There’s nothing in this article that helps women.

The second paragraph quoted here makes steam come out of my ears. To escape sexual jealousy, we have to be more like men? REALLY? Sexual jealousy comes from a history of men holding all the power and resources. For most of history, women had to marry well or starve. We’ve only been able to make our own living for a couple generations. Sexual competition in women is just like men backstabbing each other to climb the corporate ladder. It’s not because men are better at friendship and teamwork (which is itself a sexist argument.) JFC. Female friendship itself is an antidote to this.

On the other hand, I think Taylor Swift is helping women. She’s a hugely successful public figure, and she’s bringing female friendship into the limelight. They’re pop stars and actors, so it’s supposed to be a bit over the top.

They’re basically doing the celebrity version of dressing up with your girlfriends for a night out on the town. The point of that is to spend time with some of your favorite people while looking/ feeling amazing- basically, an antidote to the everyday grind of work and school. It’s awesome, and this is the first time I’ve seen it in the limelight in quite a while. Paglia mentions Sex and the City a few times in her article, which is the highest-profile example I can think of, too. So it’s been since, what, the 90s?? since we’ve had female friendship in the public eye this much.

OH and one more thing. This article itself is an example of a woman cutting down another woman. I’m pretty sure calling another woman “nazi barbie” is sexual competition. So it’s a bit rich for the author to say what female friendship should or shouldn’t look like.

Poor Tay Tay. A beautiful, successful young woman, doing things on her terms and even declaring herself a feminist is not enough?

I was a Women’s Studies major and I think Taylor Swift is living the life she desires and promotes female solidarity. I never liked Paglia. She’s such a second wave feminist. She has never understood new generations of women and how they create their own feminism.

@Haleth

“Women need to study the immensely productive dynamic of male bonding in history.”

Paglia needs to remember that most women have already had to study examples of male bonding: the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the KKK, the Mafia, etc.

“Turning into a crabby bitch”?

She holds the original license for the crabby bitch franchise. She has always been dismissive of those whom she perceives as lesser than herself.

Just because she’s an academic doesn’t make her either perceptive or correct in her pronouncements.

She’s been badly in need of a good enema for years :)

It’s getting them both some nice publicity.

It just stirs up controversy and brings publicity and attention to her cause. I bet not one person in 10,000 ever heard of Paglia or her cause prior to the badmouthing of Swift.

@stanleybmanly, actually until this post, I had never heard of Camille Paglia

I’ve known of Paglia for years, but I sort of put her in the category of “interesting but ignore” – I’m not into people who are into polemics as a lifestyle.

This one ticked me off.

@stanleybmanly

Unfortunately, she’s not quite that obscure (particularly to anyone who is living, or has lived, in Phila.)

She’s a Prof. at the University of the Arts and fairly active locally. It’s difficult to avoid hearing about her.

I lived in Philly for many years and similar to @elbanditoroso she was pretty much on my ignore list since she is basically a consistent wet blanket and hyper-critical on many issues.

Fortunately, i’ve never had the displeasure of meeting her but know several people who have. Their accounts are not exactly glowing with praise :)

That’s interesting, because when I read the bandit’s question the wheels spun as I tried to figure out why I recognized the name, and why anyone would want to badmouth Swift.

She has also written a number of books so also has some name recognition there.

But her entire demeanor and the negative judgements she pronounces don’t exactly endear her to people and lots of people just want to forget about her altogether.

For the entire time I lived in Philly I never met one person with anything positive to say about her. But I guess she carries a certain cache in the corridors of academe simply because she can string words together into comprehensible sentences, negative as they may be :)

At least that’s my guess :)