Straight talking

Sarah Ditum

● A WEIRD THING HAPPENED on the opinion pages of the New York Times at the beginning of this year: the paper published a 5,000-word essay by a writer called Anna Marks, speculating on Taylor Swift’s sexuality. Was Swift, wondered Marks, deliberately dropping “hairpins” to subtly announce herself as not straight? Country music (the genre where Swift got her start) is afflicted with “lingering anti-queerness”, wrote Marks: it needed “heroes”, big names ready to take the risk of outing themselves. But, wondered Marks, “What if someone had already tried, at least once, to change the culture by becoming such a hero? What if, because our culture had yet to come to terms with homophobia, it wasn’t ready for her? What if that hero’s name was Taylor Alison Swift?” Even as…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2024

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