i can't stop thinking about taylor swift's alleged msg wedding

on july 3

I thought we might go back to our pop culture roots for a second today. Believe it or not, my brain does have the capacity for semi-complex thoughts beyond the World Cup of it all this summer. Not too many, to be clear, but still. A few neurons are, miraculously, still reaching out and finding their way to each other—there but for the grace of God go my tired synapses.

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Impossible, I think, to start with anything but the alleged and rumored venue of Taylor Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce, whose name, cross my heart and hope to die, I just had to look up, and to what deity can I pray to keep me this offline forever, my God. Anyway, the venue. Actually, no, let’s talk about the date first, shall we, because we never did do that, and July 3? To be so relentless in one’s pursuit of Americana and red-white-and-blue in this day and age, when your name is Taylor Alison Swift and your husband-to-be looks like a Walker, Texas Ranger extra?¹

Remember how Taylor’s Instagram caption for this back in August was “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married?” It mainly made me think of how in my Florida public high school, the football coach was also my economics teacher and my history teacher. It is a miracle I know what the Gini coefficient is. (Photo: Taylor Swift’s Instagram)

July 3 … It would be like Dick Clark getting married on December 30 … Mariah Carey on December 24 … Billie Joe Armstrong on September 30 … babe, what are we doing? And I do write “we” intentionally, because it is quite clear to me that this wedding is as much for the public as it is for Taylor and Travis.

I realize the 1989 era and the summers with the Haim sisters and that brief trimester (?) when she and Tom Hiddleston dated loom large for a lot of people, what with the heyday of Instagram’s valencia filter and the time before people realized just how annoying Ryan Reynolds is, the sweet Halcyon days just before the arrival of November 2016 forced people to take a hard look in the mirror. One gets the idea that Taylor Swift is always trying to call us back to then—remember, she seems to be saying with her outfits and her fiancé and her gaggles of friends, remember when things were just fun and we all feigned obliviousness at the rising tide of fascism and I was bravely saying abortion should be legal in Tennessee?

But I fear we can’t be snatched back into 2014 by a mere invocation of curated vibes. It doesn’t work like that! If only it did!

That being said, Miss Lipa is single-handedly inspiring all of us to post like it’s 2014 again, so how can we not support? (Photo: Dua Lipa’s Instagram)

The thing is it’s not that hard to tell when someone is posturing fun versus actually experiencing it. See, e.g., Dua Lipa, who also just got married—in Sicily, natch, because this girl genuinely cares about food and vibes more than anything in this world, more than any battery-operated neon sign at any matcha bar in New York or Los Angeles has ever cared about food and vibes—and is currently sharing snaps of beaches, ruins, pizzas, sunsets, bikinis, Callum Turners, churches, scenic drives, books, pasta-making classes, outfits … all hot, all enviable, but you can’t help but think ok this is a person who is living her best life for herself and good for her!

(Maybe this is all a roundabout way of me telling you that I myself posted a silly-adjacent 17-photo vacation carousel the other day and it made me feel free as a bird.)

When it comes to Swift, the sharing of her life sometimes feels less like a narrative and more a matter of persuasion. And that occasionally feels silly because grown people with oodles and oodles of resources at their disposal should not need to convince anyone of anything, much less that they’re having fun and are in love. Something-something about how living such a life is its own reward etcetc.

Like. There’s a marked lack of affectation and I think that’s beautiful!!! (Photo: Dua Lipa’s Instagram)

Sorry, I am well aware that some of you are gonna tell me I’m being unfair. That I’m comparing where I should be simply celebrating girlhood or whatever. Why are you pitting two successful women against each other, Clara—are you not a feminist? And I’ll take the criticism, sure, because honestly who asked me to write about this? Nobody. Except that, you know, arguably, by choosing to get married on July 3, and potentially at Madison Square Garden, Swift et al are, in a way, begging us to pay attention and write about it. Beyond the security aspect of it all.

So here I am. Following subliminal cues from Miss Americana herself. A classic case of the messenger begging not to be shot because frankly, look at the material. My hands are too heavy to bear this weight on their own.