Source: Dimitrios Kambouris/VMN19 / Getty
I’m all for people looking out for their friends, but I’m not a fan of them thinking they need to fight their battles. Why? Because they always take it too far. Todrick Hall has been trying to play online bodyguard for Taylor Swift in this whole drama involving her, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and the song “Famous.”
If you didn’t know who Hall is, he is a singer, choreographer and YouTuber who rose to notoriety after making it to the semi-finals on American Idol, and having a show on MTV called Todrick. In the years since, he has formed a friendship, a close one at that, with Swift, dancing and being a producer for a few of her music videos. Their bond is so tight that fans call them “Taydrick.” So when video surfaced recently of Kanye West calling Taylor Swift up about his infamous song, where he says “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that b—h famous,” Hall shouted from the rooftops about his friend being vindicated.
To jog your memory, when the song was initially released, Swift’s team was understandably not happy with it, claiming he did not give her a heads up about what was to come and that “Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message.” Soon after though, Kardashian jumped in, releasing video of West speaking to Swift about the track to get her approval of it, implying that the singer lied. But the full video released recently shows that he didn’t tell her that he was going to refer to her as a “b–h,” and also shows her saying that she needed to think about whether or not she was okay with the track.
Mind you, this drama is literally four years old, but the released long-form clip brought it back to life, with Swift’s fans aiming to cancel West and his wife for making her out to be a liar. Hall was at the front of that pack of fans. He celebrated Swift and trashed West on Twitter on Saturday, saying a mouthful of things, including the following:
As for Swift herself, while she liked a few tweets that said she was telling the truth all along, she kept her response to everything relatively brief to get people to focus their attention on donating to help feed and care for people in the midst of COVID-19.
“Instead of answering those who are asking how I feel about video footage that was leaked, proving that I was telling the truth the whole time about ‘that call’ (you know, the one that was illegally recorded, that somebody edited and manipulated in order to frame me and put me, my family, and fans through hell for 4 years),” she wrote, “Swipe up to see what really matters.”
Kardashian would respond to this on Monday, claiming Swift was rehashing all of this for self-serving reasons. Kardashian said she only released the initial clip because she felt Swift’s team tried to act like a conversation about the song never took place. She also claims she never edited the clip she released.
Well, when Hall found out about Kardashian’s response, he got real catty. And by catty, I mean he brought up Kardashian’s old sex tape drama to shame her for it, talked about the plastic surgery she’s had and literally called her a “queef” (a vaginal fart that he’s never had) before deleting everything:
“Sorry in advance for any grammatical errors, I just had to get that off my chest,” he wrote after his rant. “I’m usually online just to spread love but I will never stand by and let someone publicly drag my friend. It’s not cool & put in the situation I don’t think you would either.”
When I actually read what Hall was saying about Kardashian, though I’m not a fan of the reality star, I felt it crossed a lot of boundaries. Instead of relying on facts, he tore her apart about her physical appearance, he slut-shamed the girl and called her out of her name (which you can do without calling someone a b—h). Though he went all out for Swift, I couldn’t help but wonder if she would go this hard for him, particularly about something she would have no involvement in (like, for example, the accusations fielded against him about not paying his dancers, making anti-Black statements and engaging in sexual harassment).
But more than anything, I was grossed out to see a man hopping in women’s business to stoop to levels that even Swift herself, after years of alleged bullying and tarnishing of her image, wouldn’t herself go. It’s always bothersome to me because men who do this tend to jump to misogynistic and/or sexist commentary (about a woman’s sexual history, her body, etc.) to get their point across, as he did. Men arguing with women about business pertaining to women, whether on reality TV, on social media, or in real everyday life, has always been ridiculous and uncalled for. The women they claim to be defending are fully capable of saying what’s on their mind and dealing with things as they see fit. Before Hall jumped in to save his dear friend, both Swift and Kardashian had kept their responses pretty mature and reasonable, though they clearly didn’t agree. But here he had to go to drag the whole thing in the gutter, worrying about another woman’s vagina and what she chooses to do with her body. C’mon, man.
It didn’t need to happen. It never does. There isn’t a situation that comes to mind that gives a man the green light to publicly disparage a woman; not because she may be wrong, not because you care about your BFF, not because you’re a minority, and not because you’re part of a marginalized group. Stay out of women’s sh-t, sir. If he wanted to address West, which he did on Saturday (though West has never spoken on the situation following Swift’s statements in 2016) he could have stuck to that. There was no need to go after Kardashian, because if the truth has been revealed, as he and Swfty fans say it has, be mature enough to leave it at that and let it speak for itself.
It’s commendable his love for his friend. I get it. She has given him some big opportunities. But Taylor Swift is a big girl. Without the help of him, or her millions of fans, let that woman fight and win her own battles and pull herself out of victimization for once.
