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Taylor Swift’s Life Advice is Something We All Need to Learn

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We haven’t seen much of Taylor Swift in 2019, but we have been blessed with two magazine covers thanks to Elle USA and Elle UK featuring her on their newest issues. 2019 is a lot of things, but it is also the year that Swift turns 30, a benchmark in anyone’s life. She has learned a lot since she started in the business at 14 and her views have changed dramatically.

Back in 2012, Swift said that any relationship where the guy isn’t proud to show her off, it isn’t the relationship for her. She didn’t want to be in hiding, she wanted to be able to live her life like a normal 22 year old. Her actions since 2017 have sung a very different tune.

After very public displays of affection with exes Calvin Harris and Tom Hiddleston, it was almost six months before anyone found out she was dating actor Joe Alwyn. The two of have never been officially photographed together, or shared photos of themselves together on social media. They have not spoken up about being a couple in a public setting, but they have been photographed on outings by paparazzi and other onlookers. Is that the secret to their 2.5 year romance? It’s certainly the longest for Swift and yet she still glows with happiness. No doubt there have been hardships over the romance, but none that have ever come to light. They have learned how to navigate a world tour for the singer, along with insane movie schedules for the budding actor. Swift has also tapped back into her acting skills, her movie adaption of the Broadway Musical Cats comes out later this year.

Ahead of turning 30, Swift offers advice of the things she’s learned since then, 30 things in fact. While reading, I found myself agreeing with how important these things are, lessons I’ve learned as someone who has also entered their 30’s. She’s learned the importance of blocking out the hate, focusing on what matters, stressing about the real struggles in life and learning which relationships are meant to last and which have had their time in the sun.

Here are the lessons she learned broken down:

1. She had to turn off her Instagram comments to block out the hate she was receiving in order to leave a healthier life. Unfortunately that means that friends and family can’t also comment, but in the end sanity is worth it. (Years ago I had to turn off anonymous messages on my tumblr after receiving a lot of hateful comments. It’s amazing how quickly those comments disappear when suddenly people have to put their name to the comment). The takeaway? If something is causing you stress, step away from it. We’ve had to see many celebrities take a break from social media due to the constant negativity. Nobody needs that amount of stress in their life.

2. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself, even if you are normally a nice person. Sometimes you have to speak up so you aren’t taken advantage of.

3. Life is about learning lessons, that means failing sometimes. Get back up and try again. We learn by making mistakes.

4. Every body is different, learn to love yours and stop trying to be so perfect.

5. Sometimes you have to press the block button, not only on social media but also in your personal life. (Sometimes that might even mean blocking a family member if they are causing you stress and anxiety in an unhealthy way).

6. Everyone gets older, embrace the changes that come with it, including physical signs of again. It’s never too early to start moisturizing!

7. Her biggest fear is for the physical safety of herself and her fans. She recently had another person break into her apartment after being arrested for previously breaking in and taking a shower and sleeping in her bed. She tries to not let this fear run her life so that she can still live.

8. Create your own values and stop valuing what others think so much. You don’t have to create the Instagram perfect picture or relationship. Your life is yours and no one else’s. Your happiness is what matters.

9. She learned how to make some easy cocktails because 2016 (think Calvin Harris/ KimYe/ Snake)

10. She learned some good recipes for dinner parties and puts her own flare on them.

11. Command tape saves your walls from holes.

12. Apologizing to someone you hurt sincerely can save your relationships and friendships.

13. Believe sexual assault victims.

14. It’s ok not to know how to respond to someone when they are going through a hard time, but it’s not ok to disappear from their life when they need you.

15. Vitamins make you feel so much better!

16. Get to know someone before starting a relationship, first impressions aren’t everything and they won’t make for a lasting relationship.

17. Don’t sleep in your makeup, take care of your face and moisturize!

18. We all have things that were hard in our childhood, whether it was being bullied or feeling alone, be aware of how you act when those things no longer affect you, for they might be happening to someone else.

19. Tell people how you feel and don’t play mind games. No one is a mind reader.

20. People are sometimes only in your life for a season. It’s hard to let them go, but you’ll always have the lessons learned and memoires.

21. It’s ok to experiment with your fashion choices and hair!

22. When you’re fighting with someone, focus less on winning and more on understanding. You don’t get prizes for winning, just a lost relationship.

23. There will always be people who want the best for you and don’t want to see you fail. Surround yourself with those people.

24. Be aware of the real problems in life, for Swift, it’s the return of her mother’s cancer. She focuses her stress and worry and prayers on that.

25. You can still make amazing music while being in love.

26. Make countdowns for things you are excited about. Sometimes we need things to look forward to.

27. When someone is bullying you, learn how to laugh it off. (Think giant inflatable snake after Kim K. called her one, along with the rest of the internet).

28. Get involved and informed about politics. There’s a big race next year.

29. Please pray for the safe return of her curls. Hair can change texture.

30. Forgive yourself, you’re your own worst critique. “Step into the daylight and let it go.”

To read Swift’s words visit her essay on Elle. 

Op-Ed

Tom Hiddleston Opens Up About Lost Love and Taylor Swift

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Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift took the world by storm last Summer as their romance traveled all around the world. Their adventures took them from America, England, Italy and even to Australia. They looked so happy together, so happy that no one could believe their love could truly be real, that it must be some magical PR ploy to help Swift out of her recent heartbreak and to help Hiddleston further his career in America.

 

In the months after, we haven’t heard much about the relationship. Swift hasn’t released any music about him (if she does, we imagine it will be a magical love story), and Hiddleston hasn’t talked about the relationship much in the press. Can you blame him? The entirety of his relationship, his motives and sincerity was being questioned. He couldn’t go out for a run without cameras following him. He was not use to this much attention or distraction from his career roles. Instead of being asked about the movie he was working on (Thor: Ragnarok,) he was asked about his relationship with Swift. Was the relationship real? What was she like.

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I wrote a piece on a similar subject before: Here’s Why Some Celebs Can’t Handle Being Friends With Taylor Swift. In it, I address how hard it is for other celebrities to be friends with Swift, because every interview, every interaction becomes about her instead of about them. The media knows Swift is the biggest Pop star, that her very name will immediately attract attention. So what better way to ensure that their articles do well? Ask a question about Taylor Swift. After they do this, instead of promoting say a model doing a fashion show and leaving the headline to be about what it’s truly about, they turn it into “So and So Says XYZ About Taylor Swift…” Imagine, nothing is about you anymore. You love this person, but you also lose sight of you and the importance of what you’re doing and what you want to say. Only the strongest people can put all of that aside and it’s not for everyone.

This kind of attention takes its toll not just on friendships, but especially on relationships. When the very nature of you is questioned. When every look on your face somehow has an alternative meaning and everything about you from your hair to your shoes is analyzed, simply because of who you are dating. No one else gets this kind of criticism. Why has the world put so much attention and focus on who is in Taylor Swift’s life?

People joke about Swift and how she hasn’t had much luck with dating. Mind you, she spent 15 months in a relationship from 2015-2016. Could anyone find luck with dating when everything that couple does seems to be on some sort of sick public trial? It’s a lot of pressure and relationships, especially new ones, are hard enough. There are enough doubts and insecurities in a new relationship, adding cameras, fake headlines, falsities and rumors can quickly detangle that.

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Hiddleston has finally opened up about his relationship with Swift and not with some quick, over-rehearsed answer. No, he was passionate about his answers, he went on and on even when the reporter told him he didn’t have to talk about it anymore. He wanted to set the record straight, that things done in private, that get broadcasted to the media without permission and taken out of context are the kinds of things that bring sadness and pain. He also wanted people to know how real the relationship was and how they both decided they didn’t want to hide and were going to truly live their lives and do things they wanted to do, despite the cameras.

Hiddleston opened up to GQ about the relationship saying:

“If you’re under attack, if your values are under attack, if you’re being shamed, if you’re being humiliated, the animal response is to hide in the bush. It’s to be less, to make yourself smaller, to diminish in size and volume. And the lesson of 2016 is we have to love more, we have to risk more, we have to be braver, we have to be more outspoken.”

The reporter went on to say: “It wasn’t until much later that night, after we’d parted, that I realized we had started talking about Taylor Swift long before we started talking about Taylor Swift.”

Hiddleston continues with her: “Taylor is an amazing woman, She’s generous and kind and lovely, and we had the best time. Of course it was real.”

When the reporter asks if he wants to say anything about Australia, about the Fourth of July party and the infamous ‘I ♥ T.S’ tank top he says:

 

“The truth is, it was the Fourth of July and a public holiday and we were playing a game and I slipped and hurt my back. And I wanted to protect the graze from the sun and said, ’Does anyone have a T-shirt?’ And one of her friends said, ’I’ve got this.’ ” The friend pulled out the “I ♥ T.S.” And we all laughed about it. It was a joke.”

He went on to shared how he doesn’t want other people’s opinions to affect his life and the way he lives. He definitely found that to be a lot harder than he could have previously imagined.

“I have to be so psychologically strong about not letting other people’s interpretations about my life affect my life. A relationship exists between two people. We will always know what it was. The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context. Nobody had the context for that story. And I’m still trying to work out a way of having a personal life and protecting it, but also without hiding. So the hardest thing is that was a joke among friends on the Fourth of July. I don’t know, I just, I was surprised. I was just surprised that it got so much attention. The tank top became an emblem of this thing. I only know the woman I met. She’s incredible. A relationship in the limelight… A relationship always takes work. A relationship in the limelight takes work. And it’s not just the limelight. It’s everything else. (They both wanted a regular relationship) So we decided to go out for dinner, we decided to travel.”

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After going to Australia to film Thor: Ragnarok, he would get up in the morning to run and the cameras would be there. He says: “I’m getting up so I can do this job well. I’m getting up to go for my run so I can play Loki as well as I can.”

The reporter shares one of the most important parts about the difficulty of a relationship in the limelight:

“Everywhere he went, whether it was checking e-mail on a park bench or looking at a menu, if he furrowed his brow it meant he was miserable and that would incite a new tabloid story about how hard he was taking all of this. It was a tough time, a public tough time. Chris Hemsworth gave him some good guidance; Hugh Laurie checked in. His family worried. So you can think whatever you want about Tom Hiddleston, you can swift-boat Hiddleswift all you want. But he is as bewildered by the whole thing as you and I are.

He looks at me finally and he says;

“I’m not going to live my life in hiding. Because you have to fight for love. You can’t live in fear of what people might say. You know, you have to be true to yourself.”

 

The end of the article is the most vulnerable, it’s not recorded, it’s not documented for the world to read, but the reporter gives us true insight into how broken the world can make a person. How despite the fact there is “freedom of press and speech” that what people fail to realize is while they’re trying to make a buck, they’re destroying lives by writing about things that 1. aren’t even true and 2. don’t even matter. People all need to spend a little more time analyzing their own lives and relationships and why those are going wrong instead of trying to ruin and pick a part perfectly happy ones.

“I turn my tape recorder off and I stand up, but he doesn’t. He shakes his head again, his hands clasped together, and he hangs his head. I sit back down and we talk some more because I finally understand that he isn’t here as someone who needs to explain his side in a PR battle; he’s here as someone who is still crushed by the end of a relationship.

So we sit and talk for a while. We talk about how relationships go sideways, how the ripples of a breakup can still pin you to a wall even months later. We talk about heartache. We talk about sadness and healing. We talk about what it’s like to love and what happens when the object of that love withdraws but all your love is still there. We talk about how those things can really change a person. The world will chip away at your optimism, and you just have to fight back. You have to be someone who is still full of joy and full of love, who can still use a word like “obsessed” about porridge. You have to be bold and open. You have to be honest. You have to be like Tom Hanks. We all have to be more like Tom Hanks.”

Let’s promote love and cheer people on who find happiness instead of trying to destroy it. After all, love is what creates us in the first place and hate is what is destroying the world around us.

Op-Ed

Here’s Why Some Celebs Can’t Handle Being Friends With Taylor Swift

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If you happen to be a middle child, then you can image what it’s like being friends with Taylor Swift. Wait, stay with me.

Here’s what it was like for me, growing up as a middle child:

Everyone used to know me as “so and so’s sibling.” I used to think it was just because I had older siblings, and my younger sister would eventually experience the same indignity, but somehow that never happened. Instead I became know as her sibling as well. I’d wonder, why can’t I just be me?

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You see, whether you’re friends with Swift, know her by association, or have just been spotted with her, you’re going to be asked about it—possibly in every interview you do.

Why? Because people care about her, in fact she’s one of the most cared about celebs in existence..

When you are constantly asked about someone, you can start to resent them because you want to be known as your own person. You don’t want to be constantly asked how your sibling is doing and what are they up to and do you have a favorite memory with them. Or how about being asked when the last time you saw them was and what did you talk about? What am I their secretary? Go ask them! Ask me about me, show a little interest in my life!

That’s what it’s like to be friends with Taylor Swift. It takes a special kind of person to be able to handle that. To not care that every interview you do, they will ask about your friendship.

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It happened when Swift went to Australia. The media is so obsessed with her that they had a “Tay Tay Cam” recording her plane landing. Then it became breaking news—despite everything else happening in the world—that Taylor and her “boyfriend” were there. Forget the fact, they are there because of her boyfriend who just so happens to be a well known actor who is currently reprising his role as Loki in Thor 3. When they walk by the news crews, people are shouting for Taylor (not Tom Hiddleston, which was the reason they were there). Not to rag on Australia or their media, they are actually quite lovely and have been actively defending her after all of the drama that has been happening lately. More to make a point, that those are the lengths and the extremes of being Taylor Swift and not everyone can handle that.

If you mention Taylor Swift; if there’s even any hint at her name, it’s going to make a headline. That kind of thing can get emasculating and it takes a hell of a guy to be able to withstand that level of fame and be able to hold their own. Let’s not bring up Swift’s last relationship with he who shall not be named.

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Now back to the other matter at hand… friendships. Selena Gomez is a perfect example. She is one of Swift’s longest and closest celeb friends. I’ve seen countless interviews with her and Swift is almost always brought up. It doesn’t matter if Gomez is promoting a new song, album or movie… the headline always becomes something like ‘Selena Gomez Dishes on Girl Time With Taylor Swift.’ It doesn’t matter if the interview was 20 minutes long and only 30 seconds was about Swift, the rest gets overshadowed.

 

 

 

So there are certain people, like Gomez who don’t let those things get in the way of their friendship, and there are others who decide they don’t want to share that spotlight and are going to make headlines by doing their own (usually ill thought out) thing.

There are others who have opened for Swift on her tours or maybe they were just a guest who walked the catwalk during the 1989 tour. I have seen countless interviews with the same people who walked the catwalk once, and they are still being asked what that was like (over a year later). They walked a catwalk during a concert…. interview them about something relevant…. like their movie or album or tv show. This is why people who aren’t Swift fans get tired of hearing about her, stop brining her up every five seconds!

However, I do love hearing all the nice things they those people have to say about Taylor. I feel it is helpful to see people like Ruby Rose and Mariska Hargitay standing up and singing her praises. With the amount of people that are constantly saying how down to earth and wonderful she is, you are probably wondering why there are others who can’t seem to get along with her.

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It comes back to being confident in yourself. If you know your self-worth and aren’t looking to be validated by the media and every single person in the world then you’re that supportive middle sibling. You can still be you and be proud of who you are without needing every inch of spotlight.

The media knows they will get more clicks if they relate someone more unknown with Swift’s name and that’s why they do it. A lot of people I’ve never even heard of until someone asks them about Taylor and then I see it on my Tumblr dashboard that this person said such and such about Taylor. In a way, it’s good for them. More people are checking out that person’s music they otherwise wouldn’t have, had it not been for the mention of Swift’s name.

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In a way, I also feel sorry for those people because their spotlight is taken away. It’s being shared when it shouldn’t be because it was never about Taylor. But then I also feel bad for Taylor… because she didn’t ask for that. She has no control over what the media writes and so when people say “who cares” it’s because they are sick of seeing her name everywhere. It’s not because they’ve taken the time to find out about her and see she’s been recognized as the most charitable celeb the last couple of years. They still see her name everywhere in a time where she isn’t releasing new music, and isn’t on tour simply because mentioning her name immediately attracts attention… positive or negative it’s still attention. It’s still traffic to the media sites and so they continue to use her name to promote people you might not otherwise read about (enter Kimye).

It’s so easy to hate people sometimes isn’t it? You want to read about what this person you can’t stand is doing, just so you can text your friends and make fun of them, even though there’s really nothing to make fun of. “Oh my gosh, did you see what (so and so) did last week… she thinks she’s so cool….” I’ve had it done to me. People who regularly made fun of me were watching my youtube videos or reading my posts so they could make fun of them… but wait… you’re still giving me views… you’re taking the time out of your day to check on what I’m doing, someone you supposedly can’t stand…

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So you see, good or bad, people keep clicking those articles… so the media keeps writing about her and it probably won’t end any time soon.

To the friends who have stuck by her side, thank you. You’re the real MVPs. Thank you for sharing the photos and answering the interview questions, even when they took time away from you. When you find a friend worth keeping, like Taylor, you don’t mind being the proud middle sibling singing their praises. You answer the questions, let them know how they’re doing and share stories of when you were last together. It’s easy to get upset about not being the center of attention, but it’s a lot better to keep a friend that’s so worth having.

jencita

Taylor Swift

This Picture of Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston at the Met Gala is Too Adorable!

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Now that Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift are officially together, new photos are surfacing of them during the Met Gala Ball last month! Swift was a co-chair of the event and never afraid to have a little fun, she frequently invites those around her to get in on it. Hiddleston is also known for his dancing!

The two co-chairs and shared a dance together to support The Weeknd who was performing. One of the photographers recently posted a photo of the moment. #Hiddleswift

In a weird plot twist, back in 2014 US Weekly dreamed up the couple as a dream couple and now they’re dating in real life! What is this madness?!

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