The Taylor Swift Essay I've Been Too Anxious to Share

Mental Health, Metaphors, Privilege, & Power

Content Warning: This newsletter discusses ableism, institutionalization, incarceration, and suicidality. References to suicidality are surface level without great detail, however please do not read this if you feel it may do more harm than good. Take care of yourself, friend. 

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I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me

You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me

“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” by Taylor Swift

The first time I saw the lyrics “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me,” they were being used as a joke on the internet the day that Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, was released. The lyrics and the accompanying song have since come across my feeds countless times, used as, of all things, a meme. I heard the lyrics so often that they got caught in my head, playing in a never ending loop despite never listening to the song itself. I couldn’t escape this thoughtless use of asylum imagery. As the words played through my head, I went to psychiatry appointments where I tried to express my desire to cease existing in a way that would grant me treatment without institutionalization. Taylor Swift used asylums as a metaphor as though they no longer exist, but disabled and mentally ill people - disproportionately people of color - are institutionalized against their will every single day. 

Taylor Swift is a billionaire white woman with inexplicable power. Her money, her influence, and her voice could contribute to significant societal change, yet she repeatedly stays silent on the most vital issues. She does not proclaim free Palestine. She does not denounce a genocide, even as it unfolds before our very eyes. Instead, she sits on her pedestal, writing and releasing subpar music with the knowledge that she will profit off of it while a not insignificant portion of her fan base will do the dirty work of refusing to critique or criticize her for her silence. They will eat up the content, the extravagant tour, the clues and easter eggs, and they will not demand more from the reigning queen of their consciousness. 

With knowledge of her own power and influence, Taylor Swift released these lyrics as a part of the song “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Before beginning to write this, I took the time to finally read the entirety of the lyrics of the song. It begins with descriptions of her sadness, which quickly turns into rage and indignation. “You don’t get to tell me about sad,” she sings. “You don’t get to tell me you feel bad. Is it a wonder I broke? Let’s hear one more joke. Then we could all just laugh until I cry.” These lyrics and the accompanying emotions are acutely relatable for so many people, and they lend an understanding to the song’s purpose and overarching meaning. As it progresses, however, the lyrics devolve into something with much darker, more harmful connotations. 

She answers the question posed in the title with the repetitive refrain of “You should be” while painting a picture of herself that is wild, unrestrained, and dangerous, “[leaping] from the gallows and [levitating] down your street, crash the party like a record scratch as I scream…I was tame, I was gentle ’til the circus life made me mean.” A narrator in the song says, “Don’t you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth.” I understand the artistic intent behind these lyrics, and they do an excellent job of illustrating the negative portrayal that many misogynists have spouted over the years. Her rage is not uncalled for, but I believe that her use of imagery surrounding insanity is. 

Taylor Swift has undoubtedly experienced her own struggles with her mental health. This is evident in her lyrics and in interviews in which she has, over the years, discussed her experiences with eating disorders and anxiety. Notably, in a 2019 Rolling Stone interview, she says that she had, up until that point, never been to therapy, electing instead to speak to her mom. 2019 was a long time ago, interviews are not always accurate portrayals, and so much can change over the span of five years. Therapy is, undoubtedly, not the answer for everyone. It is inaccessible to many, and for some, mental health care and health care in general is daunting and unhelpful for a variety of individual, unique reasons. Personally, I have never found success in therapy, and that doesn’t diminish the validity and complexity of my experiences with mental illness. With that said, I would like to interrogate the ease with which Taylor Swift released a song and music video employing asylum metaphors, while - to public knowledge - not having these lived experiences. 

In general, I am comfortable with people using metaphors and imagery with which they are not intimately familiar. Taylor Swift is, after all, a writer and an artist, and she, as we all have, has had her own experiences with her mental health - experiences that I will never know. Writers and artists work, often, in the realm of fiction, creating worlds and characters and stories that are not based in reality. In 2019, I would have told anyone that Taylor Swift was a masterful, brilliant songwriter and one of my all time favorite artists. In recent years, however, there has been plentiful discourse surrounding the limits that exist within fiction and the importance of Own Voices material. While I don’t expect Taylor to share her medical history to use metaphors related to mental illness, I do expect her - and any artist - to not turn real, systemic trauma into her own personal aesthetic playground. When that is done, we are left witnessing a white-feminist billionaire turn institutionalization into a metaphor for rage, an internet trend, and a joke. 

This extends past just one song on the album, instead becoming something of a theme. In the opening shots of the music video for her song “Fortnight,” Taylor is depicted chained to a bed in an asylum, fed pills from a bottle that reads “Forget Him.” When released from her handcuffs, she stares into a mirror, dead eyed while singing the lyrics, “I want to kill her.” The music video progresses out of the medical setting, complete with an outfit change and the introduction of Post Malone, who is featured on the track. While the black and white aesthetic of the video is visually compelling and beautifully shot, there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about a glamorized asylum. Once again, Swift has deployed this imagery in a way that overshadows the harsh realities of systemic ableism and the medical industrial complex. 

A black and white photo taken from Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight” music video. Swift, a white woman with long curly hair, is depicted restrained and tied to a machine with a metal piece on her head. Two white men in lab coats are on either side of her.

Unfortunately, this is still not the last careless reference that Taylor Swift makes in this album to systems that violently destroy lives. In “Fresh Out the Slammer,” Swift sings, “Handcuffed to the spell I was under, For just one hour of sunshine, Years of labor, locks and ceilings” relating a romantic relationship to incarceration, a system that disproportionately impacts impoverished people of color, specifically Black men. 

It is because of Taylor Swift’s status that she possesses increased responsibility to not directly contribute to the already exponential harm of these systems. This is not strictly a responsibility held by Taylor Swift. When Beyonce released Renaissance, she was publicly critiqued by the disability community for utilizing a slur in the song “Heated.” The lyric was quickly changed. Lizzo was similarly called in for utilizing the same slur in her track “Grrrls,” and, as in the case of Beyonce, it was removed from the song. These are excellent examples of the difference between intention and impact and the importance of listening to the affected community and making changes as needed. These are also excellent examples of the differing standards that Black women are held to in comparison to white artists like Taylor Swift, who, when critiqued, repeatedly falls back on her fans and the ever present accusation of misogyny. 

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For most of my life, I have focused on treating every faltering part of my body except my mental health. I have accepted the steady drone of suicidality as the expected side effect of a life with inescapable chronic pain, and I have managed it alone with varying degrees of success. After living through two of the worst years of my life, I finally committed to pursuing mental health care treatment via psychiatry. 

It started with months and months - more than I can count on one hand - of waiting on a list for a psychiatrist at Mayo Clinic to open up. I wasn’t scheduled for an intake appointment until I broke down with my neurologist, begging for help. I rarely cry in doctor’s appointments. I am used to the medications not working and to the symptoms not relenting. I have even, for the most part, hardened to the medical gaslighting and the shrugs of “there is nothing left to do.” It took the breaking of this internal dam to finally be scheduled for an intake.

I learned several things from spending my early twenties managing mental health clinics, and one of them is that many must delicately toe the line between convincing a provider that they are depressed enough to need help but not depressed enough to be a danger to themselves. This comes in the form of constant qualifiers. For me, they sound something like this:

When I was ten, I started praying not to wake up the next day, but I have never acted on that desire. 

No, I can’t remember the last time I was consistently happy, but I have a strong support system. 

No, I can’t remember a time when I wanted to live, but I have a firm crisis plan in place.

In medical appointments - psychiatric and otherwise - I am privileged by many things. My whiteness shields me from medical racism. My education, generational knowledge, and work experience have given me the language to speak clearly and firmly with doctors. I have health insurance and money for co-pays and medical bills, which allows me to attend appointments. My work history, current presence in the education system, and the fact that I am not on SSDI (Social Security-Disability Insurance, America’s federal disability program) help to manage the hurtles of ableism and judgment that many others face.

Still, with all of these protections from the system of institutionalization and the ableism that supports it, I go into each appointment with a new doctor petrified. My hands and voice shake. My mind races with ways to convince them, in advance, that I cannot afford to be hospitalized, for more reasons than one. I fear that they won’t trust me - enough to treat me, but also enough to allow me to maintain my current level of autonomy. Make no mistake: this fear is almost entirely an irrational one because of my aforementioned privileges. 

It is this fear that came to mind the first moment I saw Taylor Swift dressed in a white, floor length gown, with elaborately styled hair and a bold lip, strapped to a bed in a mocked up asylum room. It is this fear and the ever present fatigue of living with a chronically depressed brain that flashes through my mind every time I see someone make a joke saying, “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.” 

And, more than anything, when I hear these lyrics and witness them being turned into a mockery, I am not thinking of myself but of the most marginalized people in our communities. I am thinking of those disabled community members who have lived through, and are living through, involuntary institutionalization. I am thinking of those who have been or are incarcerated or who have loved ones who have been incarcerated, as Taylor Swift turns the “slammer” into the basis of a song. I am thinking of these communities, and I am watching Taylor Swift profit off of these words, amassing her wealth and deftly playing the ivories of capitalism while staying silent. 

Art is meant to be critiqued. Billionaires shouldn’t exist. 

Why does Taylor Swift seem untouchable by those statements?

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A Parting Note from the Depressed (Perhaps a Bit Tortured) Writer:

Someday I will not need to thank each reader for their patience with me as I disappear from the internet for large swaths of time and hoard unedited drafts in my ancient computer. Today is not that day, however, so thank you.

I understand that this discussion has long since fallen out of the zeitgeist, though it never truly was a part of it. My inner critic warns me that sharing this now reeks of being “triggered,” of blowing the artistic decisions of one woman drastically out of proportion. A louder internal voice reminds me, though, that this is precisely why ableism remains such an insidious driving force within society.

I cannot truly practice Disability Justice without deeply considering (and reconsidering) moments in media like this one. This consideration drives me towards community, towards dialogue, and towards the continual daydreaming of what a liberated future could be. I like to imagine that is what a newsletter like this is, in the end. It’s a welcoming of the reader into my critiques of the present in the hopes for a different future.

So, listen to Taylor Swift, love Taylor Swift, loathe Taylor Swift, never think about Taylor Swift - I don’t particularly care. What I do care about is this: does that love - as loud, unapologetic, and fierce as it is - extend to disabled and mentally ill people? To impoverished people? To unhoused people? To queer and trans people? To people of color? To Palestinians? To all of those who have been and are being forced out of society and into medical institutions against their will?

I will leave you with this: To truly love is to encourage and foster growth. A refusal to critique the artists we love is not, then, really love at all.