All it takes is some drama-thirsty fans to conjure alleged beef so epic that everyone’s speculating about the next step, which apparently could be a diss track. If this turns out to be the gentrified version of Kendrick and Drake, God help us all.
If you haven’t yet sampled the tea, here are the Cliff’s Notes: Swift’s newest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” includes a track called “Actually Romantic” that features lines that appear to address Charli xcx negatively — in response to a song Charli wrote about feeling inadequate next to Swift, a major pop star. Many of us have made up their mind about who we’re siding with.
I can’t help but see the larger social implications of this potential beef, though.
It’s not just about music, but about a larger tension between two belief systems. Specifically, the systems laid bare are Charli’s brand of feminism, which involves speaking candidly about the messy feelings that sometimes perpetuate the very systems oppressing us, and Swift’s brand of feminism, which feels just a bit more self-centered, and relies on hyper-visible declarations of equal rights and on maintaining a sense of being under attack.
As a queer person of color, this battle between the two feminisms mirrors the fractures we see in other arenas in leftist discourse. There’s the type of activism that examines systems of oppression as being interconnected and understands the need for marginalized groups to work together — and the type of activism that has difficulty contending with how people who are oppressed are also capable of oppressing others.
In this instance, it’s important to understand these artists in context. Before her album “Brat” blew up, Charli xcx always wrote music — almost exclusively, it seemed — for communities who were driven underground. In fact, after getting a taste of mainstream success in the early 2010s with songs like “I Love It,” Charli deliberately shifted to creating more experimental music. In interviews, she often talked about her preference for having a smaller, loyal following rather than chasing mass market success. She made music for us, and consistently collaborated with trans artists like Sophie and Kim Petras.
For her Brat era, Charli brought many of her closest friends with her, including trans model Alex Consani and trans stylist-slash-socialite Richie Shazam. In these instances, Charli made no declarations about having trans people in her art. In my opinion, she didn’t need to. Her world was built alongside trans women, and so they were organically absorbed into it. She always seemed to understand that the trans and queer community’s well-being is deeply entangled with her own success as a woman in the music industry.
Swift’s approach to supporting other marginalized communities, including trans people, has always felt a little bit less natural. In her 2020 documentary, “Miss Americana,” Swift infamously talked about how much difficulty she had taking a stance on several issues for fear of alienating her fan base. The first time (that I’m aware of) she made music directly for the LGBTQ community was in 2020, with her song and music video, “You Need to Calm Down.”
Although every act of advocacy should be celebrated, Swift seems bent on telling everyone exactly how she’s showing up for the queer community, and trans activists have expressed concerns about Swift’s support feeling performative. She seems to love queer people, but they are not an indispensable part of her world.
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But that’s the thing about Swift’s advocacy, including her feminism — it tends to be loud and public, and contains little nuance. It’s no surprise that when she was presented with an opportunity to have a hard conversation about how another woman might feel insecure around her, she appeared to take it purely as a jab.
Lyrics aside, Charli has demonstrated that her brand of feminism is one that organically brings in queer people, isn’t afraid to get complicated, and also doesn’t center on straight men — a refreshing contrast to Swift’s, whose biggest swing is to claim that Charli xcx loves her “more than a man ever could.”