Watching the Taylor Swift Documentary and Making It About Me

The central theme of Taylor Swift’s documentary, Miss Americana, is, as I understand it, becoming unmuzzled. Say what you will about Taylor Swift, I certainly have, but the film successfully tackles what some would consider to be a universal female experience. Taylor grapples with her relationship to her past self, her people-pleasing self conditioned to respond to praise and adoration. It was refreshing for me, as someone that grew up with Taylor’s career as an inescapable marker of time, to finally hear her admit to what many of us were thinking. She needed, almost pathologically, to be liked, praised, and seen as good. She says early in the film, “My entire moral code as a kid and now is a need to be thought of as good.”

What struck me was the honesty with which Taylor says she felt the need to be good not for goodness sake, but to be seen as good, to have people believe she was good. The climax of the film is, of course, Taylor stepping out and taking a political stance and for the first time, choosing to be “unmuzzled” in support of women’s rights. This shift was dramatic for Taylor because it came after years of personal silence to protect her image.

In February I had the privilege of seeing Amber Tamblyn and America Ferreira in conversation at The Wing in West Hollywood to discuss Amber’s book, Era of Ignition, which was released last year. Era of Ignition is the continuation of Amber Tamblyn’s unmuzzling since she has been an outspoken activist women’s rights advocate for years now. When asked about her age in regards to the subtitle Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution,  Tamblyn said that her late 20s into her 30s was the time during which she emerged apart from her career as an actor. She spoke to the experience of being an object in the industry and choosing to step out and achieve her potential after years of feeling silenced and repressed. This didn’t happen in her early 20s or even her late 20s, it happened in her 30s.

I’m so young. I think about that all the time. Often I laugh at how old I feel. I feel 17 and completely unprepared for life in just about every way. But also, in other ways, I feel like I have lived too long and seen too much. I do think I have a lot to say and a lot of experiences to share for someone who is essentially toddling aimlessly through life. Sometimes I feel like Boss Baby, but most of the time I feel like just a regular baby. This blog has laid dormant specifically because it is a Blog. A blog is essentially a public dairy. I have written and withheld many incomplete, rambling entries that are simply about blogging and how I’m uncomfortable doing it. I’m not particularly embarrassed about writing about myself. More-so, I am deeply concerned that I will write something now that I will disagree with and be embarrassed by years down the line.

The truth is, I have nothing to write about on this blog that isn’t somewhat intimate and potentially embarrassing. I love being honest. I treasure radical honesty and vulnerability from others. I found myself and my confidence through reading Rookie Magazine, may she rest in peace, and being endlessly inspired by Tavi Gevinson’s honesty and emotional vulnerability. People often tell me I’m an open book which I resent because, of course, I would prefer to have people believe I carry an air of sexy mystery. That’s simply not my reality. Despite having a big, loud mouth I often feel like I have left things unsaid. I love to share my most flippant thoughts as soon as they pass through my brain, but when it comes to my more intimate experiences, beliefs, and feelings, I find it hard to put the words down on the page.

You may be asking how I managed to make a Taylor Swift documentary and an Amber Tamblyn book talk about me. My answer is that, as a white woman, it is very easy for me to make everything about me. Then again, I think I might be the target audience for both the doc and the book. It makes sense that they would stimulate something in me. I don’t feel muzzled by society. Sure, I often feel that people, specifically older men, don’t take me seriously. But being underestimated by men (or seen as a semi-sentient fuck-hole) makes me roll my eyes more than it hurts my feelings. I’m not after the favor of any old men, I don’t need to win them over. Like Taylor and Amber, I think the only thing standing in my way is myself and my discomfort with the truths of my own life. The minute I say something I feel or have experienced it will become real, and I will be imprisoned to it. I won't be able to lie to myself.

Here is the ugly truth: I feel like I’m violently spinning and flailing in the vast emptiness. 2019 was brutal and 2020 hasn’t improved for me or seemingly anyone. I am desperate to write. I have to write and I have to post or I will simply disappear like Tinker Bell when no one believes in her. I don’t think I pathologically need to be liked so much as I need to be seen. I hope to not be this way one day. I hope to go offline and live in Santa Fe with my dogs, painting and reading Joan Didion until I quietly pass away. But I guess, before I do that, I have to write a fucking blog.

Killing Eve Has The Best Pussy On TV

Killing Eve is my favorite show right now, not just because it’s run entirely by women with storybook names (the show was created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who turned the show-running duties over to executive producer Sally Woodward Gentle and actress-writer Emerald Fennell for Season 2). I’m attracted to Killing Eve in the way I’m attracted to most women. I gravitate toward stylish angry business ladies with femme-dom energy. And Killing Eve has given me female characters that I haven’t seen before. They’re complex and mean and vulnerable and not defined solely by their trauma!

Killing Eve is a cat and mouse game where both leads are the cat and the mouse. They equally pursue and evade each other. It’s also about lesbian desire. But Villanelle and Eve’s relationship is deviant for reasons other than their genders. The show is about Eve’s fall from grace. It’s about secrets, shame, lies, and of course, murder.

Eve is the heroine of the story but she’s certainly no hero. She’s far too selfish and deceitful to represent goodness to the viewer. Still, you root for her because you understand her boredom, her fascination with the forbidden and her lack of satisfaction in her marriage.

TV is often afraid is show women’s dark sides with out demonizing them. In Killing Eve I get to see a woman struggle with her darkest desires, her shame, her fear, while still seeing her as a whole woman and not a “whore” or villain who exists to antagonize the man. The show begins with the quietly brilliant Eve bored of being overlooked, of not having her opinions valued, or her insight appreciated. Now, Eve has power, and an open door to the darkness she spent years repressing. Eve wants Villanelle, a violent psychopath who murdered her partner and tormented her husband. On paper, it isn’t ok. If I was Eve’s friend I’d definitely worry about her sorry ass. But as a viewer, I enjoy seeing a character uncover what, in reality, we are all trying to hide: lust, greed, selfishness and downright dirtiness.

I can’t talk about Killing Eve without bringing up the aesthetic euphoria, particularly of Jodie Comer’s character, Villanelle. She’s almost too perfect of a television character: the beautiful psychopathic assassin. She’s unbreakable and uncatchable, lead astray from her murder path only by her obsession with Eve Polastri. Does she love her, lust after her, or want to kill her? Villanelle gets in trouble the way a murderous psychopath does best, in a violent play for attention and desire for near worship. Of course, in fabulous outfits, soundtracked by 60s pop, and groovy, haunting originals by Unloved. She’s a sexy comic book villain, grounded by a dynamic performance by Comer that maintains believability.

But her outfits are delicious! Villanelle (more accurately, her costume designer Charlotte Michell) is as unafraid of bold color and pattern mixing as she is of armed men and government pursuit. She delights in the details and the performance. She dresses for the occasion, whether is a power suit or vintage couture. When Villanelle visits Oxford University, she sports a cream ensemble (à la Man Repeller’s #stickofbutter campaign) with a cable-knit sweater knotted around her shoulders. The unspoken truth is that she bought this outfit to have a 3-minute conversation in an alleyway. That is the flamboyance that makes her such a joy to watch.

I’ve watched the marketability of (often faux) girl power grow exponentially in my lifetime of media consumption. Perhaps it was around the peak Hunger Games craze when I started to realize people were suddenly marketing Powerful Kickass Women at me HARD. Then we started seeing male-centered series get remade with female casts. It’s shocking to no one that most of Hollywood’s Female Empowerment is directed by men. For generations, men have made money off of women’s insecurities. Now they’re making money off of telling us to get over those insecurities and love ourselves and also kick ass. This article from Buzzfeed does a good job rounding up the female empowerment entertainment of 2018. It is a distinct delight to enjoy a piece of media about women that is actually made by women. For that reason alone, I’ll keep defending Killing Eve as having the best pussy on television.

What Phoebe Waller-Bridge does best is hold a mirror up to what women are most ashamed of, and then smile about it. She does it on her Amazon original Fleabag and again on Killing Eve. I suppose, I like seeing women whose minds are as dark as mine, whose desires are as “deviant” and whose behavior is as regrettable. I’ve been trying, so ardently, to become comfortable with myself as I am. I’m so sick of trying to change. I can’t rewrite my code. I’m not saying I’m going to fuck a sociopathic assassin, but I sure-as-shit might wear a bold printed pant-suit and lust after some folks with questionable behavior. I might even wear head-to-toe cream and leave my husband for woman. Who knows. Whether or not I decide to actually take inspiration from the women of Killing Eve, I will continue to enjoy seeing women wrestle with darkness on TV. Because we’re wrestling in real life and it’s ripe with entertainment value.