One of the most anticipated parts of the rollout of a new Taylor Swift album is the prologue Taylor writes to go along with each record.
Now that 1989 (Taylor’s Version) has dropped, its prologue has as well, and Taylor’s given fans a new look into what went in to making her fifth studio album back in 2014.
While Taylor’s talked extensively about how she was the target of slut-shaming during this time, she’s never explicitly spoken about certain fan theories claiming she has been romantically interested in women. That is, until now.
“It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with,” Taylor writes. “I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era.”
To counter this, Taylor says she focused her time on strengthening her female friendships. Surprisingly, this, too, was sexualized.
“If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that – right?” she writes. “I would learn later on that people could and people would.”
This is seemingly the first time Taylor has addressed the subsect of her fans — known colloquially as “Gaylors” — who theorize Taylor was romantically involved with several of her friends, including Karlie Kloss and Dianna Agron.
Want to hear more of Taylor’s thoughts about this rerelease? She’s also dropped new voice memos describing her process behind several vault tracks, including ‘”Slut!”‘
“I sort of cheekily play with the discussions at that time in my life around my dating life,” Taylor says in the song’s voice memo.
Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.