When I heard that our lady of controversy Miley Cyrus was calling Taylor Swift out on her "Bad Blood" video being a poor example to set for younger fans, I'll admit I rolled my eyes a little. I'm not proud of it, but when you write about entertainment news all day every day, the minutiae of what these people fight about starts to get a little grating on you. From an outside perspective, it seems easy to solve these conflicts. "Hey Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj isn't talking to you." "Hey everybody, stop fighting over Chris Brown, he's not worth it." "Hey Ariana Grande, just as a rule, keep your tongue off of pastries." If I was in charge, I could solve all these issues in a second.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize that that isn't the point. Instead of trying to shut down the disagreement between Cyrus and Swift, dismissing it as unimportant, we should really take this opportunity to hear them both out. After all, they're both advocates for female empowerment, and have expressed that they're feminists, but each woman seems to have a different idea of what those things mean. So instead of trying to lump their viewpoints into the same category and mash them together until they're unrecognizable, I feel like we should explore each separately and celebrate the many ways they diverge.
And yeah, maybe that might involve some arguing and disagreement, but what's so bad about that? Dudes do it all the time, and they get some of their best work out of it. Ever heard of diss tracks? Someone having a big, emotional reaction to something doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, it means they care a lot about what they're discussing. It seems like Miley Cyrus rightfully feels like she's been targeted for her sexuality and she wants to have a conversation with Taylor Swift about that, and how overly-violent imagery is any different or better than overly-sexual imagery. But the only place they really have to talk to each other so far is through the media, so it's coming out in one-sided interviews.
Which is why we should fan these flames. These women are smart and capable and successful, and I want to know what they think about the world and themselves and each other. Women are allowed to think more than one way about the same thing, so hell yeah, let's get a "feud" going so people can start getting angry and honest up in here. Wouldn't that be a refreshing change to everyone being so polite all the time and not really moving the conversation forward?
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