Swift Justice

OMG! Special Friday edition of Pharon Square!!! It must be important, you may be thinking. It must be something well-worth the weekend read, you likely expect.

Sorry, this is just a post about Taylor Swift.

Besides the fact that Miley and her chicken butt (ha!) and gross tongue have been in the spotlight lately, one event from the VMAs recently caught my eye. It was Little Miss Perfect mouthing "Shut the $#%& up" to her pal Selena Gomez while one of her billion ex-boyfriends spoke on stage. I was annoyed.

Taylor Swift is everything at 23 that I was when I was 12. I was a flurry of extreme emotions, bouncing from boyfriend to boyfriend, constantly chasing the same thing over and over without realizing that it was my desperation, not mousey face, that was turning so many dudes off. I'd be depressed and elated 50 different times in 8 minutes and go chasing after bad boys despite the fact that my parents (much like her rep as a goodie-goodie) made it impossible to actually bag one.

Now that I'm older, I feel I should give Miss Swift the benefit of my wisdom. Why she never figured this stuff out in high school, I'll never know. But here's my biggest tip for Swift: Be an adult and raise your expectations and standards.

Here is why I say this. The following is a list of lines from her songs which are supposed to illustrate the magical moment or trait that made her fall for whatever completely replaceable blahfriend she happened to be into at the time. I swear, I wrote half of these exact phrases in my middle school diaries:

* I guess you didn't care and I guess I liked that
* I knew you were trouble when you walked in
* You make your way through the crowd and say "hello"
* He opens up my car door
* He says "you look beautiful tonight"
* You looked me in the eye and told me you loved me
* And you stood there in front of me
* You('re) doing your best to avoid me
* Your eyes whispered "Have we met?"
* I love your handshake
* You came in wearing a football helmet and said "Okay, let's talk."
* You open your eyes into mine and everything feels better

OMG. I have to stop. I can't read these TERRIBLE lyrics anymore. WAH WAH WAH. A boy said he loved you and turned out to be a dick. Big surprise, lady. You insist on fishing in a very shallow pool where all the fish are exactly the same.

But seriously, can you do us all a favor and stop falling for every d-bag who makes eye contact with you or breathes in the moonlight or ignores you or completes a polite gesture? Make the dude work for it, Swift. When I was 13, I was convinced a boy named Tony liked me because he loaned me a pencil. He did not like me. He was gay (seriously). Life lesson: Everyone who does something nice for you is not in love with you.

And consider the men you are attracting. Who the eff wants to date an emotional nightmare with access to a music studio? A person who, although very pretty, is hellbent on making every relationship end in such a way that she feels "ugly"? An ADULT who writes more about love stories and princes and fairy tales than a preteen girl at a Lisa Frank convention?

The answer, my dear, is social-climbing, fame-whoring idiots. And I swear, if you can't figure that out by now, I'm pretty sure it's your own fault. So put down the glittery pens and slumber party invitations and woman up. Stop complaining about how all your relationships end tragically and break the cycle. And PLEASE stop writing about the men who tell you they love you and don't mean it because it makes YOU look like a gullible moron. In other words: Shut the %&$@ up.