It seems it doesn’t matter where you look these days: Taylor Swift‘s name is likely to be present there in some capacity.
While the singer has been steadily climbing the rungs of fame for the better part of the last decade, the sudden rise that has seen her declared arguably the biggest music artist around at the moment has been nothing short of meteoric.
Add to that her relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce and you have a recipe for intense media scrutiny. So it has proven these past few months, with Swift making newspaper headlines all over the world on a daily basis.
Perhaps it’s no great surprise, then, that the 34-year-old has found herself one of the biggest talking points from this year’s Golden Globes.
The event took place on Sunday, January 7, in Beverly Hills, California, and saw a who’s who of high-profile celebrities in attendance. Swift, who last year sold upwards of 17 million albums, was one of them, with her Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film nominated for a Golden Globe in the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement category.
While Swift’s attendance was always likely to become a talking point anyway, the star went viral due to a joke made at her expense by the evening’s host, comedian Jo Koy.
It’s common practice for hosts of the big awards shows to poke a bit of fun at those sitting in the audience – see Ricky Gervais’s Golden Globes offerings for reference – but Koy’s monologue was largely criticized in the hours/days after this year’s event.
“We came on after a football doubleheader,” Koy said before introducing two presenters. “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL… On the Golden Globes we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.”
Of course, Koy’s joke was in reference to Swift’s new relationship with her aforementioned boyfriend, Travis Kelce, but neither Swift’s immediate reaction – the singer simply sipped her champagne and retained a nondescript expression – nor the comments made by her legion of fans were overly positive.
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And while Koy’s joke – while harmless enough – drove a lot of her followers to ire, it was nothing compared to the op-ed published by the New York Times that speculated whether or not Swift was a closeted queer person.
A source with reported knowledge of the situation told CNN that the piece was not only “in poor taste” but also “unethical”.
The source said: “This article wouldn’t have been allowed to be written about Shawn Mendes or any male artist whose sexuality has been questioned by fans. There seems to be no boundary some journalists won’t cross when writing about Taylor, regardless of how invasive, untrue, and inappropriate it is – all under the protective veil of an ‘opinion piece.’”
Needless to say, making assumptions about a celebrity’s sexuality for clicks should never be OK, so it’s rather unsurprising that the backlash in this instance has been fierce and widespread.
In any case, we can only imagine that Swift has enough recent success to think about to comfortably ignore her detractors, whatever shape or form they may take.
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