We all know that restaurants have taken a hit over the past two years. We see the “We’re Hiring!” signs plastered all over our Maine towns, the Facebook posts begging customers for the simple gift of patience and I’m sure we have all come across the heartbreaking news that one of our hometown favorites, those iconic mom and pops that we thought would never die, have done just that, and closed their doors for good. In nearly every sense, what is happening within the Maine service industry is a tragedy.

As someone who has been working within this industry throughout the past two years, I can tell you that even from within, the outlook is bleak. Pay is more inconsistent than ever, we are understaffed and fear that our livelihoods will once again surrender to the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. All the while, Maine restaurants are handling an influx of frustration and impatience from guests.

Subsequently, it is no wonder why more and more restaurant workers are deciding to leave the industry for good. Eli Rosenberg from the Washington Post reports that nationally, there are 1.7% fewer service industry jobs filled than there were prior to the pandemic. It is important to note preexisting labor standards within the restaurant industry; Rosenberg points to a history of sexual harassment, verbal harassment, inconsistent hours and little, if any, benefits. For some, the hardships brought on by the pandemic can be considered a final straw for many in the industry. Maine’s labor commissioner, Laura Fortman, also cites lack of childcare, affordable housing and transportation as well as general burnout for restaurant labor shortages.

This stark decline in the restaurant work force and the prospect of declining Maine restaurants also poses a threat to Maine’s economy. The Bangor Daily News estimates that the hospitality industry in Maine generates some $7 billion annual revenue; meanwhile, an economic profile on Maine from IBISWorld demonstrates that accommodation and food service industries have taken the largest hit from COVID-19 economic exposure. Thus, the current situation negatively affects both restaurant workers’ income and the state’s economy.

Local restaurants curate a community––one where people can come together and support their own. So go do just that. Support your local hospitality centers. Grab that drink with a friend whenever you can. Order takeout when you’re feeling lazy, and most importantly, be kind to those that are serving you when you do. As the famous saying goes, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

I think that anyone who has been enrolled in college over these past few pandemic-ridden years can agree – it’s been a weird time. Whether it’s true or just a result of way too much reflection and sit-still anxiety, our education feels diluted, clouded by awkward Zoom calls and muffled masked lectures. There’s a universal sense of frustration, fatigue and irritability. I myself am entering my final year of college feeling wholly unprepared for the professional world that awaits me after graduation this May. 

This begs the question, is there anything we can do to make things better? To keep ourselves submerged in the college culture while also keeping ourselves safe? To prepare ourselves for internships, jobs and the terrifying title of “adult” that is constantly hanging over our heads? The answer is yes, and it lies right here at the Maine Campus. 

The Maine Campus is the student newspaper here at the University of Maine and we are hiring for the 2021-22 academic year. The Maine Campus is looking for students to fill contribution positions within the opinion, culture, sports and news sections. If writing for a section doesn’t seem like a good fit, you can also apply to be a Copy Editor or a Photographer for the paper. 

There is something for everyone here at the Maine Campus, and there is a lot to gain by getting involved. First and foremost, it is the perfect environment for your writing skills to flourish in. Writing skills are an important quality when considering hireability, and yet, college grads over the recent years seem to be dropping the ball in this court. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has published data exploring college graduate readiness for professional settings where they found that hiring leaders say writing skills are one of the biggest gaps in professional readiness. An analysis of job advertisements has also found that writing and communication skills are among the most requested job requirements across every discipline. 

In case you are wondering if it’s really important to be prepared for the workforce – it is. Another study found that 53% of college graduates are either unemployed or are working jobs that do not require bachelor degrees; additionally, it takes college grads on average three to six months after graduation to secure employment.

This information is not intended to scare you, but rather to present you with an opportunity to grow your skill, to stick out among other applicants, advocate for your own goals and abilities and in the meantime, take back some of those missed opportunities over the recent years. At a college newspaper, especially one that is completely student-run like the Maine Campus, you are able to build these important skills among the companionship and leadership of your peers. 

We are all learning here at the Maine Campus; we’re all taking steps to improve ourselves and those around us through interacting with the greater UMaine community and each other. In the meantime, we get to interact with some really great people and produce something that we can all be proud of. So do yourself a favor and come join the team! 

For more information on applying see the Maine Campus website or check out our Instagram at @themainecampus.

Tuesday was April 20, or 4/20, so here’s a friendly reminder in light of the holiday; Barack Obama smoked marijuana, and he isn’t a degenerate, he was the 44th president of the United States. Marijuana has been legalized in 16 states as well as Washington, D.C., and there are numerous studies showing that marijuana is, at the very least, just as safe as alcohol. 

So why are over 40,000 Americans still incarcerated for marijuana-related charges? 

One answer to that question is fairly simple: decriminalizing marijuana nationwide would take away one “legal” way our country disproportionately incarcerates Black people and people of color. According to a 2020 Forbes article, Black people are 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people. While marijuana use becomes more mainstream and geared towards white, middle and upper-income consumers in some states it remains a legal justification for racial injustice. 

Here are a few quick facts to compare alcohol and marijuana: the risk of death from marijuana use is about 114 times lower than that of alcohol use, it’s less addictive than alcohol or any other drug, and it’s rarely associated with emergency room visits compared to the 21% of all injuries and 36% of hospitalized assaults that are attributed to alcohol use. If alcohol is not only legal but widely normalized, then possession of marijuana shouldn’t be a ticket to prison. 

Yet somehow, 43% of all drug arrests in 2018 were for marijuana — and of that 43%, 89.6% were for possession alone. That is a massive amount of marijuana arrests, all simply for having a drug that, on paper, poses less of a danger to the consumer and others than alcohol. 

Our justice system dehumanizes those who are arrested for these petty charges, and so it is important that we make a personal choice to see incarcerated individuals as people. They’re not just a statistic, they’re people with lives and families, jobs and futures. With a drug arrest on your record, and potential time in prison, moving forward and living life without being pegged as a criminal isn’t an easy accomplishment. Rather, it’s a set-up for failure. 

According to Forbes, the rate of unemployment among those with criminal records was a whopping 30% before the pandemic. That figure includes anyone with a drug-related criminal record. To put it plainly, you can be arrested for simply having marijuana in your possession in a state where it’s not recreationally legal and your job prospects could be permanently impacted as a result. That’s exactly what will likely happen to many of those 40,000 people who are currently in jail for a substance you can buy at an apothecary in Waterville, Maine. 

Let’s remember that, as the comedian John Mulaney said, marijuana has always been practically legal for white people. 

“We don’t go to jail for marijuana, you silly billy,” Mulaney said in his special, “The Comeback Kid,” the “we” being, of course, white people. It’s a sad truth behind a thin veil of humor. It’s time to stop putting people of color in jail for a drug that just about any study shows is not any more dangerous to you, others or society than alcohol is. Let’s get those 40,000 people out, let’s stop using marijuana as a tool to put people of color behind bars, and let’s decriminalize it everywhere.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on our modern world. On top of a public health crisis, the virus has clearly illustrated that many of our public systems are in need of reform. The area of concern which has proven especially relevant in Bangor is the growing rates of homelessness without the adequate shelter and housing capacity to accommodate for this population.

While the exact increase in Bangor’s homeless population is unknown, the Bangor Daily News reported that the city counted 140 unsheltered homeless people in the fall of 2020. At this same time a year prior, the city counted only 25-30 unsheltered homeless people. Rates of homelessness within the community are rising, and far fewer are getting access to affordable housing.

While a large amount of money, including the CARES Act, has been devoted to safely housing our homeless population during the pandemic, this money has been focused on finding short term solutions for housing. Bangor started housing people in the Ramada Inn to address overwhelming numbers of unhoused individuals. These “quick fixes” were certainly needed earlier on in the pandemic, especially during winter months. However, it is time to start using these incoming funds to create permanent housing opportunities.

Makayla White, a behavioral health coordinator (MHRT/C credentials) at Acadia Hospital in Bangor, shared her experiences working with homeless patients. White says that about one-third of her cases are transient (the term the hospital uses instead of “homeless”), and of those cases, many are chronically transient, meaning that they have been unhoused for several months and often return to homelessness after brief stays in other settings. White also says that, of her caseload that frequently reaches well over 30 individuals, the majority are “experiencing chronic housing difficulties.”

One of White’s biggest frustrations working with people without housing is that there is a serious disconnect surrounding what some individuals and organizations think that a case manager can do for a homeless individual versus the resources that are actually available. Unsurprisingly, much of this has to do with matters of finding housing. Many people will come to her saying that they think a case manager will help them get into Bridging Rental Assistance Program (BRAP) or Shelter Plus Care (programs that offer rental assistance to those with mental health difficulties or who are homeless), but transient individuals aren’t typically aware that these programs have very strict criteria.

“Oftentimes even when they do qualify, there aren’t any immediate solutions or availability for apartments,” White said. 

The waiting list for section 8 housing is currently 6-8 years, and these unfeasible waitlists are common across all affordable housing options in the area, White says.

As for the future, White hopes to see more landlords accepting rental vouchers from the state, and more buildings being constructed or used for income-based housing.

“In a dream world I would love to see funding for a new, large development so that we can shorten the very long waitlist for federal housing,” she said. 

But this might not only have to exist in a dream world; WABI-5 reported that the city of Bangor has received $1 million to help the homeless population. Hopefully some of these funds will be put toward building long-term solutions for the city’s most vulnerable people.

In an editorial, the Portland Press Herald reported that permanent housing opportunities save taxpayer money due to the correlational decrease in police intervention, ambulance rides and emergency room visits. Affordable housing also encourages more local spending, an overall healthier population, and a better future.

Housed individuals are more likely to have access to mental health and substance use services, be better equipped to find work, and have an overall improved standard of living. Affordable public housing would not just benefit individuals in need either; this would be something that could help strengthen our entire community.

Picture this: it’s 2010. The Ave doesn’t yet exist, with its abundance of officers patrolling for groups of people and any noise slightly above a dull roar. The Reserve is, at this time, the infamous Grove, a quintessential college living option. You’re getting ready with friends to head over for dollar wells on a Wednesday at one of the bars on Mill Street that sell wildly cheap drinks. There’s a hockey game on Friday that will create a line of students from the doors of the Alfond to the entrance to the football field. Life is good. 

Fast forward a decade, and there’s really only one true bar in Orono. Sporting events aren’t nearly what they used to be. One of the best teams on campus, the women’s basketball team, doesn’t even play their home games in Orono, but in Bangor. The disconnect between the campus and the surrounding town is as great as ever. This town, the home of the University of Maine, is no longer much of a college town.

Orono has potential. Tons of it. If you ask a group of UMaine grads from the early 2000s, they’ll tell you that Orono was a blast. But since then, the town has inched further from a college town and closer to a cute little family town, and when examining Orono and UMaine’s qualities over the years, it’s easy to see why.

First, it’s important to note that a college town and a college experience aren’t just about drinking. It’s also important to note that drinking is something that does attract students, as most come of age while in college and are eager to exercise that new right in whatever ways they desire. A couple of fun bars also change the vibe of the town. In a 2015 article from Business Insider, the very first line emphasizes the importance of campus bars as a part of the college experience. Now, UMaine doesn’t really have any campus bars, aside from the Bear’s Den in the Memorial Union, which in itself is a shame. But in the nearby town, having a couple of bars for college students to hang out in is, in fact, a large part of what differentiates a town from a college town. 

Over the course of the past decade, Orono’s bar scene has been slowly disappearing. There’s no Bear Brew, no Roost, etc. Barstool Sports has a competition going for “Barstool Best Bar,” and while our very own Orono House of Pizza (OHOP) is still in the running, it’s interesting to note that there’s not a single other bar in Orono that could’ve made this list anymore, while a few years ago, there were at least a couple of others that could’ve been in the running. Now, they’ve been replaced by restaurants that, while they’re great places that serve their purpose, aren’t places that people actually go out to. In 2021, Orono’s single small downtown street is mainly a handful of restaurants that you’d bring your kids to any night of the week. That’s not how a college town looks. 

So Orono needs more bars. That’s a step. But there’s more to it, and a study conducted by UMaine students highlights some other issues. The 2013 study surveyed UMaine students, faculty, staff and Orono residents unaffiliated with the university about how satisfied they are with Orono as a college town. While UMaine students were only 40% satisfied, residents of Orono unaffiliated with the university were 80% satisfied. It’s great that Orono residents are happy, but it just goes to show that it’s not much of a college town, and there must be a way to bridge that gap to bring student satisfaction up as well. The study, as well as a Bangor Daily News article, also brings up the lack of connection between downtown Orono and the campus — both in distance, but also in the culture of the two communities. The short distance from Orono’s downtown to the UMaine campus doesn’t need to be something that creates a disconnect, but at the moment the divide that it has fostered is significant. 

Overall, Orono has some work to do at this time. It’s closer to a small town feel than that of a college town, and there are a handful of directions the town could go in to get that college feel back. But ultimately, the lack of connection between the campus and the town, the lack of events on campus and the major lack of places for college kids to socialize in town are matters that need to be addressed to revive Orono as a great college town.

Again and again, there we sit, unconsciously opening social media app after social media app, eyes glazed over, binging on any new content we can get our hands on. We sometimes realize what we are doing and put the phone down, only to be drawn back in by a new notification soon after. The process feels exhausting, and all the while there really are productive things that could be done, but they just don’t seem as satisfying as this – what is it they say about insanity again?  

I don’t have to tell anyone that our generation, like many others, loves their cellphones. Or maybe, rather than loving them, we feel an eminent sense of connection to them; they are one of the constants of our lives, however strange that might be. Our dependency on our phones, and the never-ending access to social media that comes with phone use, has been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. Our phones have become our central hub: the place where most of our social interaction and experimentation is taking place; where our lives are able to expand past our own homes and those in our immediate circle.

Phones also offer us quick entertainment and what we might consider a break from the stress of our world. However, our phones and the entertainment that we are offered by them may be causing more harm than good, especially when social media use is happening at really high rates. It is a problem when it becomes a passive behavior rather than an active one.

This is not to say, however, that social media is bad and we should shun it from our lives completely — mostly because there is just no possibility of that ever happening and to even suggest it feels like a sort of joke — but also because social media does have its benefits. The ability to stay connected to other people, interact with new and exciting information and feel like we are still actively participating in society are just a few of those benefits, ones that feel especially important right now. But this is not how we are always using our phones; scrolling can become an unconscious habit rather than something we are really engaging with. It can suck away our time, pulling us away from things in the physical world and diminish our productivity.

There is staggering evidence that decreasing the amount of time that we spend on our phones, and specifically social media, would not only help to improve our mental health but also help to encourage more meaningful phone usage when it does occur. This is especially true if you are experiencing feelings of anxiety or depression.

One 2018 study in the Journal of Social and Physical Psychology found that limiting one’s use of social media can result in significantly decreased feelings of loneliness and depression. Another study from 2018 in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking demonstrated how passive social media use (that would be the eyes-glazed-over, caveman-like interaction that I described earlier) results in higher feelings of depression than active use.

Next time you find yourself mindlessly scrolling, try to find something besides your phone to occupy your time. Go for a walk, watch a movie, cook a new meal or maybe even do the reading for that online class that you have been putting off since the semester started. But do it without the company of your phone. By making sure that your personal time is not always being gobbled up by your phone, you are doing your mental health a huge favor, and probably getting more done in the process.

My three younger siblings and I were raised by the restaurant industry. My mother has either worked in or run restaurants all over central Maine for my entire life. This is a career path that I began exploring in grade school, when I would bus tables at my family’s pub in exchange for crumpled up $5 bills from the more generous servers at the end of the night; sometimes my mom would even throw in a root beer. Waitressing is now what allows me to stay enrolled in college. If you would have asked me a year ago, I would have said it was a nearly-perfect job for a college student, or at least that the pros heavily outweigh the cons. But things have changed.

Throughout my years in a restaurant, I have witnessed the unfathomable highs of a record-breaking week in sales and the lows of those three slow weeks in November and February, but nothing has really compared to the penny-pinching months of 2020. Each shift is tainted with defeat and exhaustion. This exhaustion is not the typical “sore body after your third 12-hour day of racing around a busy restaurant” kind, or the “headache following a particularly difficult customer interaction” kind. It is a collective exhaustion of worry.

My coworkers are former students struggling to chip away at their student loan debt; they are parents wondering what they are going to get their kids for Christmas, or how they are going to pay rent after another $20 day. After months of waiting for the customers, we are now waiting for the stimulus money our government promised us — money that will both bring our bank accounts some security and bring in customers.

It’s hard to say when this money will arrive, and though recent events in Washington on the topic of COVID-19 relief show steps towards bipartisanship, they also make government aid seem even further out of reach.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins has been leading a push from Republican Party senators for serious reconsideration of President Biden’s initial COVID-19 relief package. His proposed $1.9 trillion bill was met with the Republicans’ $618 billion stimulus proposal in the spirit of bipartisanship, and avoiding a bill that is really only backed by Democrats. In an interview with the Bangor Daily News, Collins recounted her current standing on aid, a bipartisan solution, and the dispersing of stimulus money.

 Collins brings up valid concerns with Biden’s current bill, such as accounting for billions of unspent dollars from the CARES Act, and $200 million dollars in rent relief for Maine. These are funds that have already passed, but people still aren’t able to access because of hold-ups in the government. The Maine senator has also been spearheading a movement to reassess who will get stimulus checks, one that has been well-received by Biden. The Washington Post reports that Biden is now in support of giving $1,400 payments to individuals who make under $50,000 and couples whose collective income is less than $100,000. These cut-offs have been adjusted from the initial bill in order to ensure that stimulus money is put back into the economy, rather than left sitting in a bank account.

 Despite Collins’ successful moves in support of a bipartisan solution, and encouragement of an economically salient stimulus package, there is something missing. Where is the senator’s drive to support Maine people –– Maine people who are fighting for their livelihoods and their sanity in a time of economic uncertainty?

 There is no question whether government support is needed in Maine’s current economic situation. Clearly, Mainers need the money. But by looking at restaurant workers as a single example, it becomes even more apparent that relief is necessary, in the form of more direct payments, for people who still have their jobs, but have lost much of their income. If Collins is interested in standing for Maine people in Washington, getting direct stimulus passed without delay should be a first priority; further negotiations and popularity among her Republican colleagues can come later.

Whenever I go home to see my grandparents, within the hour that I walk through the door I begin receiving requests for help. Typically, they first ask how I am, what’s new, and how’s school — but then the conversation takes a turn, beginning with a question that’s something like, “oh hey, while you’re here, can you help me with this one thing on the computer?” Now, my grandparents are young — in their 60s — and they, like many in their generation, are somewhat inept when it comes to technology. This is an issue that is only exacerbated by age, and given Maine’s notoriously large community of people over the age of 65, it is no surprise that there have been roadblocks in a largely web-based registration system for the COVID-19 vaccine. Maine’s population of older adults is now left trying to navigate an unfamiliar and unintuitive system to get a vaccine that could be the difference between life and death.

This brings to light two issues with the online COVID-19 vaccine registration system that Maine has adopted. The first is that, unlike us college students and even our parents, older adults simply didn’t have computers or the internet as a tool in the formative years of their lives. Thus, their comfort level with this kind of technology just isn’t the same as ours. According to a Pew Research Center poll, fewer than half of adults age 65 or older used the internet until 2012. In 2012, today’s college students were in middle school and already logging onto Facebook.

The second issue is one that may be even more unique to Maine: lack of internet access. This is an issue that has been brought to light as people over the age of 65 have become eligible for the vaccine, and yet have struggled to actually get the vaccine because of the online format.

Maine is not alone in these struggles. The entire country has been faced with difficulties regarding older adults’ challenges with navigating online registration, but Maine’s large population of older adults makes the state a unique example. A 2018 article by the Bangor Daily News explains that Maine was projected to have more people over the age of 65 than people under by 2020 — and 28% of the state would be 65 or older by 2030, bringing it to the highest percentage of adults over 65 in the nation. Combine these statistics with Maine’s vaccination rollout plan, and it seems obvious that it’s a recipe for disaster. The plan targets adults 70 and older first, but it also relies on online registration, requiring many members in this group to not only be well-versed in internet technology but also to have reliable internet to begin with — which tens of thousands of Mainers don’t, according to News Center Maine.

These are issues that the entire country is facing, but with our vast expanse of broadband-less rural areas combined with our large population of older adults, Maine seems to have gotten the short end of the stick. Processes are already underway to combat this issue, but until then, check in on your parents, grandparents, great aunts or sweet neighbors, and make sure they have the resources that they need in order to register and get the proper information about vaccinations.

In the past five years, the phrase “fake news” has firmly established itself in our cultural lexicon. It’s safe to assume that any piece of political media coverage is going to be surrounded by questions of its truthfulness, and these statements are typically grounded in one’s political affiliation. President Donald Trump has successfully crafted a reality for his supporters in which any negative coverage of himself is presumed to be “fake.” While it can be considered a good thing that there is now more pressure on media companies to deliver fact-based reporting, a national distrust of the media presents a danger to democracy, one that will be felt long after Trump’s presidency.

There is an irony to Trump’s claims of mass media corruption, as the Washington Post reports that the president has made over 20,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency. This has resulted in a very confusing dichotomy of a president who has a tendency for spreading false or inaccurate information, yet criticizes the media for similar transgressions, founded or otherwise.

This seemingly presents a dilemma: Is the media to accurately report the news, and essentially call the president a liar? Or, should it suffer, and therefore perpetuate, the spread of false information?

This is a tricky situation that was made painfully obvious by the 2020 presidential election. If a news outlet was to accurately report the results of the election, they were going to be criticized by the president and his loyal followers. To report the truth had become, to many, controversial and political.

This criticism may have originally been focused on national, more left-leaning news corporations, such as CNN, The New York Times and NPR, but it now exists everywhere. Responses to the local media organizations like Bangor Daily News and WABI frequently criticize the outlets for “fake” reporting, being “liberal snowflakes” and, in light of election results, encouraging fraud.

It is no surprise that Gallup has reported that, in 2020, 27% of people in the U.S. have “not very much” trust in mass media, and 33% have no trust at all. 

In another ironic twist, Trump’s presidency has actually brought forth more fact checking in reporting and overall better and more diligent news reporting from large media outlets.  CNN’s Chief Media Correspondent Brian Stelter told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro that, on one hand, “the public has been well served by the increase in fact-checking.” On other hand, the line between fact itself and truth has been blurred.

Despite an increase in fact checking from many reputable outlets, the ability for misinformation to spread remains high, and this is something Trump came to rely on in his tenure, as his own narrative naturally paints him in a much better light than the truth.

News reporting is an integral part of democracy. Media organizations are a vital check on our government, and the fact that we have not only blurred, but erased the lines between the truth and fabricated information presents a serious danger to our democracy. Political reporting has become a tool for dividing the American people, and to assume that this trend will conclude with Trump’s presidency is naive.

In the summer of 2019, when Taylor Swift released her album “Lover,” I reacted the same way to it as I have since about 2014: I listened to the entire album, absolutely loved it, but insisted to anyone who was willing to listen that I hate Taylor Swift, and that her music is simply a guilty pleasure. Here’s the catch: I couldn’t really explain why I hated her — at least not without applying a handful of double standards, or just leaving it with “she’s annoying.” And I wasn’t alone on this.

There are a number of common reasons that many cite for their dislike of Miss Americana. Just about all of them fall into two categories: critique of her personality, and critique of her personal choices. Critique about her music has been less common, which is part of the reason she has remained on top, but for one of the most popular musical superstars in the world, she has simultaneously been a widely unpopular celebrity. Considering the explanation of what Swift went through in her Netflix documentary “Miss Americana,” it’s clear that it’s not about the music, nor is it about her personality, or about her choices. It’s about us, the audience. It’s about our expectations of women, and the double standards that we’ve become too comfortable with applying; the very double standards, in fact, that Swift sings about in her song “The Man.”

When we critique Swift’s personal choices, two popular topics are her love life and her feuds. Yet, there are a handful of male musicians who frequently sing about their love lives, and plenty of male celebrities that publicly feud with other celebrities. An article by NPR dives into Swift’s music and style, and how both mirror hip hop and rap music in many ways. This is part of where the double standard comes in. As Journey Magazine explains, misogyny and rap music have been intertwined for a while, so why can men rap about women in a misogynistic way, or have public dating lives with a handful of women, without millions of “fans” publicly disapproving of that artist as a person? When it comes to feuds, Swift has been involved in a couple, but a quick Google search shows multiple top-10 or top-20 lists of rapper feuds — as entertainment, rather than as something to scoff at, as many do with Swift’s feuds.

When it comes to her personality, critics call her fake, shallow, self-absorbed and, very frequently, annoying. The media, and the world, seem to jump on any opportunity to attack. If she spoke out for a political or social cause, it was deemed fake or for her own profit, but if she didn’t speak out, which she didn’t for years, then she was deemed a coward and a fake for even attempting to act like a feminist. This incredibly harsh critique begs the question: Why? Why is Swift any different than any other female musician, or any musician at all? Why do we hold her to this impossible standard?

In my own experience, my negative perception of Swift ended when I saw her documentary. I used to view Swift as a once-sweet, young country music artist who sold-out once she entered the world of pop, and I wasn’t alone on that. In an article for popdust.com, Eden Arielle Gordon refers to this new, pop-Taylor as “a cheerleader” and a “white feminist figurehead.” Once she was no longer a young girl, it seemed like the world, myself included, wanted her to drop the “good girl” act. Only it wasn’t an act, and it still isn’t.

Upon watching her documentary, I realized that any assumptions I had about her were completely wrong, and that the ways she presents herself are not only authentic, but also up to her, and I have no right to decide that it’s insincere. 

Swift is allowed to be sweet and kind, a little bashful even, and still be a strong, passionate, smart woman. She can come off as a “good girl,” and she can still have relationships, she can speak out politically, she can feud a little if she wants. Women are allowed to do any of those things, and that doesn’t preclude Swift. It was never really about her, or her music. It was about us.

Taylor Swift creates art. Her songs are unique, complex and pretty much a guaranteed billboard hit. The 30-year-old singer has been nominated for 32 Grammys, and won 10. She will be known as one of the most talented musicians of our generation. Let’s all just agree to stop subjecting her to our patriarchal biases.