Feminist Camille Paglia ripped Taylor Swift and the female celebrities who cluster around the pop singer in an editorial for The Hollywood Reporter this week. She specifically criticized Swift for trotting out her pack of female friends as an accessory–Swift’s “squad”–calling it “silly.”
“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,” Pagila writes. “Swift herself should retire that obnoxious Nazi Barbie routine of wheeling out friends and celebrities as performance props.”
Swift has long been criticized for the way that she uses her famous friends in order to promote her own self-image. Her “Bad Blood” music video is probably the most notable example of her squad in action:
Men aren’t to blame for the rise of the squad and the degradation of female friendships, Paglia said. Instead, it’s women who have lost the ability to hold solidarity with one another.
Pagila isn’t the only one who thinks men are better at friendship than women. This clip from the show Family Guy captures Paglia’s sentiments pretty well:
Camille Paglia even suggested that women ought to behave more like men in their interactions with one another.
“Women need to study the immensely productive dynamic of male bonding in history,” she wrote. “With their results-oriented teamwork, men largely have escaped the sexual jealousy, emotionalism and spiteful turf wars that sometimes dog women.”
