{"id":65031,"date":"2025-10-08T07:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/65031\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T07:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:43:10","slug":"what-the-taylor-swift-and-charli-xcx-beef-reveals-about-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/65031\/","title":{"rendered":"What The Taylor Swift And Charli XCX Beef Reveals About Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"

All it takes is some drama-thirsty fans to conjure alleged beef so epic that everyone\u2019s speculating about the next step, which apparently could be a diss track<\/a>. If this turns out to be the gentrified version of Kendrick and Drake, God help us all.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t yet sampled the tea, here are the Cliff\u2019s Notes: Swift\u2019s newest album, \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl,\u201d includes a track called \u201cActually Romantic\u201d that features lines that appear to address Charli xcx negatively \u2014 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\u2019re siding with. <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but see the larger social implications of this potential beef, though.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just about music, but about a larger tension between two belief systems. Specifically, the systems laid bare are Charli\u2019s brand of feminism, which involves speaking candidly about the messy feelings that sometimes perpetuate the very systems oppressing us, and Swift\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a queer person of color, this battle between the two feminisms mirrors the fractures we see in other arenas in leftist discourse. There\u2019s the type of activism that examines systems of oppression as being interconnected and understands the need for marginalized groups to work together \u2014 and the type of activism that has difficulty contending with how people who are oppressed are also capable of oppressing others.<\/p>\n

In this instance, it\u2019s important to understand these artists in context. Before her album \u201cBrat\u201d blew up, Charli xcx always wrote music \u2014 almost exclusively, it seemed \u2014 for communities who were driven underground. In fact, after getting a taste of mainstream success in the early 2010s with songs like \u201cI Love It,\u201d Charli deliberately shifted to creating more experimental music. In interviews, she often talked about her preference for having a smaller, loyal following<\/a> rather than chasing mass market success. She made music for us, and consistently collaborated with trans artists like Sophie and Kim Petras. <\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019s well-being is deeply entangled with her own success as a woman in the music industry.<\/p>\n

Swift\u2019s approach to supporting other marginalized communities, including trans people, has always felt a little bit less natural. In her 2020 documentary, \u201cMiss Americana,\u201d 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\u2019m aware of) she made music directly for the LGBTQ community was in 2020, with her song and music video, \u201cYou Need to Calm Down.\u201d <\/p>\n

Although every act of advocacy should be celebrated, Swift seems bent on telling everyone exactly how she\u2019s showing up for the queer community, and trans activists have expressed concerns about Swift\u2019s support feeling performative<\/a>. She seems to love queer people, but they are not an indispensable part of her world.<\/p>\n

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But that\u2019s the thing about Swift\u2019s advocacy, including her feminism \u2014 it tends to be loud and public, and contains little nuance. It\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

Lyrics aside, Charli has demonstrated that her brand of feminism is one that organically brings in queer people, isn\u2019t afraid to get complicated, and also doesn\u2019t center on straight men \u2014 a refreshing contrast to Swift\u2019s, whose biggest swing is to claim that Charli xcx loves her \u201cmore than a man ever could.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All it takes is some drama-thirsty fans to conjure alleged beef so epic that everyone\u2019s speculating about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19219,156,52667,157,111,139,69,3480,6456,50454],"class_list":{"0":"post-65031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-charli-xcx","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-feminism","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-queer-voices","16":"tag-taylor-swift","17":"tag-trans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}