English 105 Unit 2 Project

Vanessa Compton discusses sexism in her project on Taylor Swift. She explains that sexism is discrimination based on someone's sex or gender, with examples including prejudice, unequal treatment, gender stereotyping, and microaggressions. Vanessa explores the question of whether dislike for Taylor Swift correlates with sexism, using examples of double standards in media coverage and backlash on social media. She conducts interviews with a diverse group of people and analyzes their responses, finding that gender discrimination exists and that Taylor Swift has been unfairly criticized based on her gender. Vanessa concludes that sexism is evident in the music industry and that women are not treated the same as men. Hi, my name is Vanessa Compton, and for my English 105 Unit 2 project, I wanted to do something about Taylor Swift. I think that this project is really unique because in no other class would I be able to do a project talking about something with Taylor Swift, so I thought this was really fascinating. So, as you can see on my first slide, I'm going to be talking about sexism. So, you may ask, if you don't already know, what is sexism? And sexism is a form of discrimination based on someone's sex or gender. And below, I have a few examples of this. So the first one is prejudice or discrimination, and this is just when sexism refers to prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination based on someone's sex or gender. And then I have unequal treatment, and this involves treating people differently or unfairly because of their gender, often favoring one gender or another, and we'll see a lot of this throughout my project. Thirdly, we have gender stereotyping, which is when sexism often involves the preparation of stereotypes about what roles, behaviors, or attributes are appropriate for individuals based on their gender. And then lastly, we have microaggressions, and this is when sexism can manifest through subtle or indirect forms of discrimination, such as microaggressions, which are brief and commonplace verbal behavior or environmental. And I think we see a lot of mostly microaggressions and just unequal treatment throughout my project, but let's go ahead and continue. So what is the point of my project? So the whole point of my project is just to talk about how sexism is very alive and well, and I kind of wanted to just talk about the question of, does dislike in Taylor Swift correlate to sexism? And here is one of the examples I came up with. So on the top picture, we have Justin Bieber and Usher attending a basketball game together courtside, and oftentimes when we see celebrities going to any type of NFL game, NBA game, the camera often, like, they'll show them going to the game, and it's just to show that, oh, we have some celebrities on the side, and I have a little quote that just says someone posted an article being like, oh, here we have Usher and Justin Bieber attending this basketball game together. And then the bottom picture is Taylor Swift at an NFL game, which we're seeing a lot now on social media, and she's getting a lot of backlash for it. And this is a quote from an article saying, Taylor Swift is a problem for the NFL. We have to unite as a group of fans. We can't let this happen. She's got to stop going to games, added co-host Katz, to which Sullenberger added, she's bad for football. So I just want to talk about just the double standards that exist between men and women that we evidently see between these two photos. On one hand, we have two celebrities attending a game, and it's, oh, they're having fun going to the game together. And then we have Taylor Swift going to a game, and it's, she's ruining the game. She's a reason we're not winning, blah, blah, blah. So I just really think that this shows the double standards and sexism and the microaggressions as I talked about. So real quick, I just want to relate this project on a personal level. So like I have written down, I've never been, growing up, been the biggest Taylor Swift fan. Like, I know her main songs that most people do, but over the past couple of years, I've been really getting into two specific albums. The top one picture is Folklore, and the bottom one is Evermore. I just really like these two albums. She has, as we know, a whole bunch of albums, but these are the ones I mainly listen to. I wouldn't really consider myself, like, a huge Swifty, but I mean, I do enjoy some of her music, so, I mean, I guess in some ways you can say that I am, um, but I have been noticing a lot on social media, especially on TikTok, some of the recent backlash that she has been receiving, especially from men on TikTok, and I think that this backlash shows the double standards that are very prevalent and obvious. Um, so, one of the examples, I recently saw a TikTok of a girl, and she talked about how one day, like, she was in class, and her professor started talking about, like, Taylor Swift or something, and the guy was like, yeah, like, I hate Taylor Swift, and the girl was like, or he said to the girl, he was like, I bet you love Taylor Swift, and she's like, no, I actually don't really like Taylor Swift, she's like, but I bet we dislike Taylor Swift for completely different reasons, and she talked about how she dislikes Taylor Swift because of reasons like her impact on carbon emissions, and he was just like, oh, I just hate her, and she was like, oh, why do you hate her, and he couldn't come up with an actual explanation, so, there are, I think there are very different reasons as to why men and women don't like Taylor Swift, and I think a lot of times, if you ask a man why he doesn't like Taylor Swift, they a lot of times become very aggressive with their answer, which I think kind of shows a lot. Okay, so, I kind of, I wanted to conduct an interview for my project, um, so the next slide right here shows what I did, okay, so, I asked six interview questions to six different interviewees, and I wanted to make the people that I interviewed a very diverse group of people, like, not just men, or not just women, or not just people from the same race and age, so that I would get a different, you know, some broad answers, so, as we see on the left, here are some of the questions that I asked, the first one is, do you believe that gender discrimination exists in our society? Do you frequently stream Taylor Swift's music? Do you like Taylor Swift as a person? If no, elaborate why? Has Taylor Swift been criticized unfairly based on her gender rather than her musical talent? Do you think that Taylor Swift's frequent attendance at NFL games and her presence on screen during broadcast may potentially overshadow other aspects of the game? Do you think Taylor Swift's journey in the music industry reflects broader societal challenges regarding sexism and gender discrimination? And then, on the right, you can see my six different interviewees, we have, I chose to do half and half, three girls, three boys, they're all, like, mostly college students, the few aren't, so they're mostly around the same age, most of them are students, some aren't, but we have people of different races and genders, so, on the next slide, I have the interview results, so, for the first question, which was, do you believe that gender discrimination exists in our society, we had six out of six people say yes. And then, for question two, which was, do you frequently stream Taylor Swift's music, we have three out of three said yes, two out of the six that said yes were female, and one out of six that said no were male. And then, for question three, we have, do you like Taylor Swift as a person, if no, elaborate why? So, four out of six said yes, and the two out of six that said no were male. And I'm actually just going to go to the next slide right now, which is where I kind of, like, elaborated on their answer to the elaborate if no. So, we had two people that said no, so, do you like Taylor Swift as a person, if no, elaborate why? So, the first participant said, when asked to elaborate on his answer, participant one said, I think she's annoying and her music is horrible. She has no reason going to all these football games and taking up half the screen time. She has no talent. Participant two said, when asked to elaborate on his answer, participant two stated, I have never personally liked her music because it all sounds the same, and I don't understand why she is so famous. Continuing on to question four, which was, has Taylor Swift been criticized unfairly based on her gender rather than her music talent? We have four out of six that said yes, the four out of six that said yes were female, and the two out of six that said no were male, and for question five, which is, do you think that Taylor Swift's frequent attendance at the NFL games and her presence on screen during broadcast may potentially overshadow other aspects of the game? So, for question five, our results were two out of six said yes, and the two out of six that said yes were male, and four out of six that said no were female, and it just so happens on question three, where they were asked to elaborate on why they didn't like Taylor Swift as a person, those were the same people that answered no for question five, and for question six, it says, do you think Taylor Swift's journey in the music industry reflects a broader societal changes regarding sexism and gender discrimination? So, for that one, we have four out of six that said yes, and the four out of six that said yes were female, and the two out of six that said no were male. All right, and then on the next slide, we have, that was the analysis of the people that were asked to elaborate for their answer for number three. And then, lastly, I just have my conclusion slide, so, is all of this evidence that disliking Taylor Swift may correlate to sexism? In my opinion, yes, but I can definitely see the other side of a lot of people are just like, well, just because I don't like her doesn't mean blah, blah, blah, so, I mean, I can definitely see the other side, but I do definitely think that it's evident that she is treated unfairly just because she's a woman, especially from my first example of like how she was, how she's treated just by going to football games, and sexism is something that's really powerful in the music industry, even for people that are powerful just like Taylor Swift, it's evident that women aren't treated like men in the music industry, they aren't treated with the same respect, they aren't seen as seriously as men are, and, I mean, there's always that question of, for like the question of number five, that said, the one about do you think that Taylor Swift frequent attendance at the NFL games overshadows the aspect of the game? I think that question really showed a lot, because this is what we're seeing most in social media right now, especially like if I go on TikTok, like this is a prevalent thing that's being shown of men making videos being like she doesn't need to be there, she's ruining the game, but it's just the cameras like flashing over to her a couple times in the game, so I'm not really sure how that's her ruining the game, but, hey, there's no problem when other male celebrities go to NFL games and NBA games, but, I mean, hey, but, but that was my project, I hope you enjoyed, and have a great rest of your day, thank you for listening.