Taylor Swift’s ‘Elizabeth taylor’ is about a woman
Elizabeth Taylor, do you think it’s forever?
In case you’ve stumbled upon this blog with no knowledge of me and my storied internet lore, allow me to clarify: I am a gaylor. That is, I believe Taylor Swift is gay.
Within the Gaylor archetype there are several sub-genres I also occupy - already outlor (someone who believes Taylor Swift is already out as queer to anyone paying attention), Kaylor (Taylor is currently in a relationship with Karlie Kloss), performance artlor (Taylor is putting on a years-long performance art piece involving many, many people), toplor (you get it). But the thing I am most sure of is that Taylor is a queer woman. What specific label she identifies with (bi, pan, lesbian, non-binary, etc.) I cannot know - I just know that woman is gay.
On her most recent album, The Life Of A Showgirl, Taylor has some of her gayest songs to date. She is intentionally blurring the lines more and more, making it harder for people to (logically) say she’s “the straightest woman alive” (what does that even mean?). In Actually Romantic, she says a woman is making her wet. In The Life of a Showgirl (ft. Sabrina Carpenter), she says ‘wow, she came out, i said “you’re living my dream’ (there are innumerable other ways to word this if she didn’t want people to speculate that she’s gay). And in Elizabeth Taylor, she sings directly to famous queer icon Elizabeth Taylor (or someone standing in for her - perhaps Karlie Elizabeth (Betty) Kloss?).
Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that homophobic people significantly value their own homophobia and ignorance over the rules of grammar and the English language. No matter how many tik toks I make explaining all the reasons this song is indisputably addressing a woman, they continue to claim it’s about Travis Kelce. So, in the words of Taylor Swift, I think it’s time to teach some lessons!
the vibes of this song are just sapphic through and through, sorry if you don’t get it
The song begins “Elizabeth Taylor, do you think it’s forever?” which is a little bit of an ironic joke as Elizabeth Taylor’s loves famously did NOT last forever. She was married eight times to seven men over the course of her life (I have a YouTube video where I elaborate on her marriages), and most if not all of these were not ‘love marriages.’ In her 1988 book Elizabeth Takes Off, she says “As I learned how to perfect my screen image, I determined to find an area where I could comfortably move into independent adulthood. I soon realized the only way I could escape was through marriage.” Elizabeth is historically remembered as a ‘queer ally’ but was almost certainly gay herself, with many of these marriages being lavender.
So, right off the bat, Taylor has established that ‘you’ in this song is ‘Elizabeth Taylor’. There is no perspective switch in the song, you remains Elizabeth throughout the duration. Taylor is an intentional and very talented songwriter. She is not so sloppy as to use the same pronoun to refer to multiple different people in one song without a clear perspective switch. Therefore, no more analysis is needed, this song is addressed to a woman - not to a man, and certainly NOT to Travis Kelce. But I’ll continue, because I love this song and I have more to say.
‘All the right guys promised they’d stay. Under bright lights, they withered away. But you bloom”
When’s the last time you said a man bloomed? Be completely honest. Blooming is a female term. Blossoming as well. I digress.
Sure, you could say that Travis is the only ‘right guy’ who hasn’t withered under the bright lights… but ‘you’ is a woman, as we’ve established. And it makes a lot of sense (especially being a lesbian myself) to be like yeah all those men failed but my SAPPHIC LOVER will never fail hehehe #menarefools #karlieklossblooms
I also just want you to think of Taylor Swift lounging by the window at the Plaza Athenee, gazing at the horizon and yearning (lesbian activity), when suddenly she gets a call from Travis Kelce and he goes “yo! you up?” It’s just not possible… as I’ve said, there’s NOTHING heterosexual about this song. It’s basically Sappho, to be quite honest. By and for woman.
This next part of the song establishes an important plot point - her lover, ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, is sending her letters. Considering every time we’ve seen Taylor and Travis together he’s like ‘wow babe you use so many big words, yuk yuk, what is ‘esoteric’?’ we can infer that he is not the type to write the flowery love letters one would expect that world-famous poet Taylor Swift desires. Multiple homophobes in my tik tok comments said “the letters are a metaphor for text messages.” 1) no, they’re not, 2) how come you acknowledge she uses metaphors now, yet not when we explain how she uses metaphors as queer flags?
This is once again beside the point because the sentence structure says enough all on its own. “And if your letters ever said goodbye I’d cry my eyes violet, ELIZABETH TAYLOR.” The statement is ADDRESSED to the Elizabeth Taylor figure. Elizabeth Taylor is writing the letters. There’s just not a way to make this about a man.
Homophobes tried to argue that those statements are separate - that “and if your letters ever said goodbye” ends with a period (which it doesn’t, but i’ll ignore that) and the chorus starts with “I’d cry my eyes violet”. This leads us to a place where the chorus is still addressing Elizabeth, and says “and I can’t have fun if I can’t have you.” The ‘you’ is Elizabeth, the whole song. I feel like a broken record but I just want to make sure everyone hears me loud and clear!
Also, PLEASE enlighten me on how ‘Be my NY when Hollywood hates me’ could possibly be about Travis, a man born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio who has never lived in New York and currently splits his time between his home in Miami where he lives with his boyfriend, Ross Travis, and Kansas City while it’s football season. You can’t! It makes no sense.
The whole point of this comparison, in my opinion, is to illustrate that like Elizabeth Taylor’s many ‘husbands’, Travis is her beard. He is a convenient cover relationship to keep the public distracted while she goes and lives her life with her real lover, a woman. Can she make it any more obvious?!
Same thing here - “if you ever leave me high and dry I’d cry my eyes violet, Elizabeth Taylor”. It’s not “I’d cry my eyes violet LIKE Elizabeth Taylor” - there is no missing word. Again, Taylor is an intentional songwriter. Whenever someone says this, I have war flashbacks to the ‘Hits Different’ of it all - people claiming “Bet I could still melt your world, argumentative antithetical dreamgirl’ means Taylor is the dreamgirl in question and there is an omitted ‘your’. Source: just trust me, bro.
And finally, let’s examine the (very loud!) bridge.
‘White Diamonds’ was Elizabeth Taylor’s brand, it’s the name of her perfume. So White Diamonds here can be interpreted as a metaphor (see how that works?) for Taylor’s brand.
Therefore, this is saying “My brand and my lovers are forever in the tabloids, the videos, and in peoples’ minds.” Her ‘lovers’ here seeming to refer to the ‘long list of ex-lovers’ she cites in Blank Space - John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joe Alwyn, Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Calvin Harris, Tom Hiddleston, Matty Healy, and - yes - Travis Kelce. Like a who’s who of closeted gay men in Hollywood, and I truly have no clue how people don’t see that. Especially Jake and Joe Alwyn - the closet is GLASS.
She then repeats, ‘My brand and my lovers are forever, don’t you ever end up anything but mine.’ So now we KNOW that the ‘you’, the ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, is NOT one of her long list of public lovers, because they don’t belong to the people via the papers, screens, and their memory. Therefore, it is not Travis Kelce.
I was a math major and I genuinely feel like I just solved a mathematical proof.
In conclusion, the song Elizabeth Taylor is addressed to a woman. And the part of the homophobia that most bothers me is that her writing a love song to a woman DOES NOT INHERENTLY TAKE AWAY FROM ANY OF HER OTHER SONGS BEING ABOUT MEN (allegedly)! People REFUSE to acknowledge that she could be bi or pan or queer in any way. They NEED her to be the ‘straightest woman alive’ for reasons outside my comprehension.
I just can’t wait til she burns it all down. And there are rumors that she’s going to release a music video for ET, which I’m hoping and praying wll be her gayest music video of all time and will feature her blonde self making out with herself wearing a dark wig. Manifesting!
Anyway, women are gay, even women you don’t think are gay, and it ROCKS!
XOXO,
Jesse