Just when you thought Nazi comparisons were perhaps getting a bit frivolous in the media, feminist theorist Camille Paglia is here to convince you Nazi comparisons have absolutely become totally frivolous in the media. The author and professor has been a longtime writer of contrarian-feminist art and cultural criticism, and today she set her sights on “girl squads,” which is apparently what it’s called when famous women have female friends. You might have guessed that in Paglia’s opinion, T-Swift is doing it all wrong.
In our wide-open modern era of independent careers, girl squads can help women advance if they avoid presenting a silly, regressive public image — as in the tittering, tongues-out mugging of Swift’s bear-hugging posse. Swift herself should retire that obnoxious Nazi Barbie routine of wheeling out friends and celebrities as performance props, an exhibitionistic overkill that Lara Marie Schoenhals brilliantly parodied in her scathing viral video “Please Welcome to the Stage.”
Paglia has a point: Swift is well known for her fascist appeals to racial purity, and is, unlike other pop idols and actresses, blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Sharp observation, professor.