In Defense of Taylor Swift

Unless you live under a rock, you know about Taylor Swift's new album. It was released on Monday, and with the album have come the haters.

I have seen tons of hate towards my girl Taylor. And I take it way more personally than I probably should (seeing as I myself am not Taylor Swift). The hate is coming from all sides. It's one thing to hate on her music, because everyone has an opinion, but what gets me is people that are hating on her persona. They see her good girl image as just an act: that she's fake, immature, etc. I think that in the age of social media, Twitter and Instagram especially, an image like that is pretty hard to create if it's not at least based on something real. Maybe that's just me being naive.

I saw one article calling her a feminist's worst nightmare. Whoa there. I think that's a little harsh, and I beg to differ. I love Taylor Swift, because I feel like she stands for the same kind of feminism that I do. The kind where just because you can wear something revealing or outrageous, doesn't mean you have to. The kind where being soft and kind is embraced and seen as strength, not weakness. What's wrong with being a good girl? What's wrong with appearing on talk shows in knee length skirts? How does that make you someone to look down on? Who do we look up to now? Girls that flip off paparazzi at baseball games. Nice.

So say what you will about Taylor. Hate her music, but don't hate her. Remember that there are girls sitting at home wearing cat socks (read: me) who look up to her. Who see a little bit of themselves in her and hear their stories in her songs. Who feel that falling too fast or too hard isn't a sin, and that being you is the best you can be, even if it means laughing at your own jokes and baking by yourself. 

Keep it Together

My mom has taught me a lot of things. She taught me how to swing and how to color inside the lines. She taught me how to make pizza dough and chicken pasta salad. She taught me to be good at memorizing: whether it's the thirteen original colonies or every word of "Aaron's Party (Come and Get It)," if you need something memorized I'm your girl.

But I think the most important thing she taught me was how to keep it together. How important it is to get up in the morning and do your hair, even if the world is crashing down around you. About, to quote Miranda Lambert, "hiding your crazy." About how you need to walk into a room and be sparkly (being sparkly is a Connor family phrase that means being charming in social situations, even if your life is in shambles, you just got done yelling at your kids, you are in a fight with your husband, the neighbor kid just carved her name into the side of your car with a rock, etc. I didn't realize this wasn't a normal phrase until I told a friend to go be sparkly in his interview. Whoops.)

I know as much as the next person that keeping it together isn't the easiest thing in the world. I remember once, during the summer of the big heartbreak, when I was laying on my bed crying. I missed D so much I could barely breathe and I kept waiting for that feeling of comfort that everyone talks about. Where they feel that someone come and put their arms around them, or a friend turns up out of nowhere with a plate of cookies.

It wasn't happening. I waited and waited. I was, to use another Connor family phrase, in a puddle. I'd used all my tears so I was just laying there. Then suddenly, I had a feeling. It wasn't a warm, fuzzy feeling. It was a voice in my head telling me to get off my ass (sorry for the language, the voice was a little sick of me by that point) and do something. It was a voice telling me to take a shower, put on lotion, paint my nails and go outside. It was telling me to keep it together.

I had to relearn this lesson recently. Sure, it's a lot more fun to gather your roommates around you for a good cry and ice cream binge. It's a lot easier to lay in your bed and, when you are forced to get up, put on a nasty tshirt and forget your makeup. But that's not what Linda taught me. She taught me to lose the drama and walk outside with my head held high. To go to the party and be sparkly, even if it's easier to sit in the corner.

And that's what I'm gonna do.

Taylor Swift for Vogue

I love Taylor Swift. I'm not afraid to say it. I love her sad songs and I love her love songs. I love her style and that sometimes she dresses like a grandma, like me. I love that she is three months younger than me, to the day. I love her new bangs. I love that she's a hugger and didn't really fit in in middle school. But mostly I love that she's managed to stay classy despite being in the public eye for over five years.

Taylor's going to be on the cover of Vogue in February. In her interview, she talks about "fame, ambition and the joys of being on her own."

The writer followed Taylor around fashion show houses in New York, interviewing her and watching how she talked to the designer. He called her "reflexively generous." I would love to have someone describe me as reflexively generous.

He observed that Taylor is: "(1) smarter than the average bear; (2) excessively gracious; (3) happy to talk a blue streak about music; (4) preternaturally ambitious." Even without a full-day interview, I think you can tell that about her. And that's exactly why I admire her so much. That and her sample size body.

The writer recalled an interview Taylor had with Katie Couric a while back. Katie asked Taylor when her next scandal would be. She answered:

“I think, for me, the bigger pitfall is losing your self-awareness. Even though I am at a place where my dresses are really pretty and the red carpets have a lot of bright lights and I get to play to thousands of people . . . you have to take that with a grain of salt. The stakes are really high if you mess up, if you slack off and don’t make a good record, if you make mistakes based on the idea that you are larger than life and you can just coast. If you start thinking you’ve got it down, that’s when you run into trouble—either by getting complacent or becoming mouthy. And nobody likes that.”

We're all rooting for you, Taylor.

Redefining the Southern Belle

I found this article a couple months ago called "Redefining the Southern Belle."

"It is not posturing, or hyperbole, or marketing. Southern women, unlike women from Boston or Des Moines or Albuquerque, are leashed to history. For better or worse, we are forever entangled in and infused by a miasma of mercy and cruelty, order and chaos, cornpone and cornball, a potent mix that leaves us wise, morbid, good-humored, God-fearing, outspoken and immutable."

I like to consider myself Southern: I've spent most of my life in Arkansas, my grandmothers are from West Virginia and Alabama, and I've yet to kick my habit of saying "y'all" and the occasional (though my mother hates it) "fixin'."

I feel like this article pinpoints everything I believe in: I believe in hand-written thank-you notes and offering people a drink when they come to my house. I believe in making cookies. I believe in what my mother always told me, that you never leave the house without at least something on your lips. I believe that a fresh coat of nail polish can cure anything. I believe in caring because "not caring is not something Southern women do, at least when it comes to our hair."


I know I want to raise my kids Southern, even if I don't live in the South. I want to teach them "yes, ma'am" and "no sir." I'm going to put my daughters' hair in curlers and tighten them in the middle of the night, just like my mom did to me. But even more than that, I'm going to teach them that they are kind, smart and important. And I'm going to teach them to be sweet, sweeter than I am, because "daring to stay sweet is about the most radical thing you can do."


Bless your heart.

Kate Spade

I love Kate Spade sentiments:

Kate Spade Sentiment   (clipped to polyvore.com)

Kate Spade Sentiment   (clipped to polyvore.com)

kate spade sentiment   (clipped to polyvore.com)

Kate Spade Sentiment   (clipped to polyvore.com)

Kate Spade Sentiment   (clipped to polyvore.com)

Kate Spade Sentiments

New Life Motto

I know this is cheesy. I don't care.

With style and grace, kick ass and take names.

New life motto? I think so

Blog Stalking and Being a Lady

So I found this little gem while blog stalking today:

"All of the wonderful ladies I've known have some things in common, sure; but they have more differences. They've written their own lists and created their own lives. I know a great woman who feeds her family the best foods. I know a true lady who has red glasses and carries literary journals in her purse and another who paints late at night and prays in her car each morning. I know a lady who sings loudly in the shower. A true lady is herself. She is authentic and genuine. Honest. She knows her uniqueness is what agitates the pretentious and the prejudiced. She is not afraid of her own influence or her mistakes. A lady finds her own way to do what Tom Ford suggests: "You have to be passionate, you have to be engaged, and you have to be contributing to the world."

Really, she is her greatest self. And that's all I really want to be anyway."