Pop Culture Writer Calls Taylor Swift’s song Anti-Hero Self Loathing
and I wonder why. I mean —
has she never drank herself so blind
that she threw up into her own lap?
Haven’t we all skipped a few meals
to fit into the dress?
Left somebody on read?
She says the song is dark,
and I wonder why to be
real is to be considered ruinous?
Just kidding.
I know why.
If they can’t keep us begging for Botox
they better call us the problem.
Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
and I’m a monster on the hill.
The writer says these lyrics are confounding
and I wonder why.
Has she never been highjacked by hormones,
held hostage by her own blood?
Maybe she’s numb to herself, or
under the thumb of the paper that pays her.
In that case I believe the label
of self-loathing might be misplaced.
Thousands will read her column this week,
regurgitate the ideas on social media feeds,
dismiss the song as music for teenaged girls.
And the rest of us
we carry Taylor’s chorus like an inverted prayer
while looking at airbrushed models in underwear
reading the news about roe v wade
being cat called on the street
headphones on as we repeat
It’s me,
Hi.
I’m the problem, it’s me.
*
Jaime Jacques is an itinerant writer who currently calls the east coast of Canada home. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Birdcoat Quarterly, Cagibi, Anti-Heroin Chic, Brazos River Review and others. She is the author of Moon El Salvador and her reporting and travel writing can be found in Salon, NPR, Narratively, and Roads and Kingdoms among others. Find her on Instagram @calamity__jaime.
