Near the end of Taylor Swift’s gargantuan Eras Tour setlist, the concert — and now moviegoing experience — becomes a sultry burlesque show in the style of “Cell Block Tango.” I never thought that I would ever feel a chill of excitement witnessing a song that opens with the extremely 2014 Tumblr-era directive to “draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man,” yet there I was, packed into a stadium with thousands of other fans on a balmy July night, craning forward to catch a better view of a performance I had already seen filmed from a hundred angles: the “Vigilante Shit” chair dance, which includes a notorious bit of choreography that some call “the plop.”
For the less Swiftie-inclined, a brief overview: “Vigilante Shit” is performed midway through the Midnights set, which is itself the last of nine sets that each encompass a different album from the singer-songwriter’s discography. Having just shed the oversized sequin dress that she wears for Midnights, Swift struts down the stage’s catwalk in a shimmering deep blue bodysuit with high-heeled boots and (gasp!) garters to match.
As the revenge song’s focus shifts toward the villain’s ex-wife, she launches into her burlesque dance, planting a high-heeled boot on her chair and sensually dragging a hand straight down her torso while crooning, “Lately she’s been dressing for revenge.” Suddenly, Swift’s back is to the audience as she slowly squats onto the chair… almost.
Given that this woman can perform Killers of the Flower Moon-length concerts three days in a row, it’s clear she’s physically capable of easing herself down into a seated position. But no! Instead, at the last second, Swift — as the hosts of the Two Dykes and a Mic podcast memorably described it — “plops” right onto that seat like many of us could only hope to be plopped onto on a good day. As if that somehow weren’t enough to make a sensory-overloaded queer weak at the knees, she tops off the move by coyly arching her back during the dismount. It’s a moment that feels almost perfectly calculated to torture me, personally, with near Jigsaw-esque precision.
Taylor Swift has been a constant in pop culture ever since I could retain clear, elementary-school-age memories. And although dating other blondes goes against my specific code, I can vividly recall obsessing over her then-signature curls with the fervor of Villanelle regarding Eve’s perfect halo of hair in an episode of Killing Eve. I nearly broke my iPod Touch replaying scenes of Swift as an evil brunette cheerleader in the “You Belong With Me” music video over and over again.
But watching that plop this summer, I didn’t feel the same nostalgic fondness for an early crush that I felt, say, during the Fearless set. No, this was a horny thrill that I was delighted (and honestly surprised) to discover many of my fellow concertgoers shared, based on their excited shrieks. And while the “plop” has certainly captured the erotic imaginations of Swift’s growing cohort of queer fans, it’s clear to me that the fanaticism surrounding the Eras Tour has been … doing things to even her ostensibly heterosexual fans.
As much as this pop star has dominated our fleeting monoculture this year, there’s no denying that the archetypal Taylor Swift fan is a cis, straight white woman — an observation anyone could make by simply glancing at the crowd of an average U.S. Eras Tour stop. Those demographics make sense given that Swift first shot to stardom as a squeaky-clean teen country star who leaned into her “America’s sweetheart” reputation during the aughties while working with a mainstream label.
As she has gotten older, the singer has often been unfairly reduced to the men she’s rumored to be dating, both by misogynistic media cycles and sometimes by her own fans. Couple that with the fact that Swift didn’t make explicitly political statements until 2018 — speaking out in support of LGBTQ+ rights and the Violence Against Women Act, largely against the advice of her team, as the 2020 documentary Miss Americana revealed — and it’s easy to see why she is still tethered to a white, traditionalist fandom, no matter how much she continues to evolve as an artist.
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Yet even the Kinsey Zero Swifties don’t seem to have emerged from the plop unscathed. Since the “Vigilante Shit” chair dance debuted in March, I can’t tell you how many “straight” women I’ve seen fall under its spell. Sure, fans often filter their feelings through a heteronormative lens, making online comments along the lines of “I’m no better than a man” or “Can [insert rumored boyfriend here] fight?” It’s not always clear to me whether these women are a bit gay for their pop idol or they’re simply getting a kick out of her confident sexual self-expression, but I don’t mind either way — the more the merrier! Unfortunately, though, the white conservativism underpinning Swift’s legacy has brought plenty of lingering homophobia along with it, internalized and otherwise.
Speaking with affection, being a queer Taylor Swift fan can be a bit of a clusterfuck. Sure, pop icons from Madonna to Beyoncé have long attracted legions of LGBTQ+ fans. But being out within the Swiftie world can be particularly complicated, especially within the past few years. A growing, increasingly mainstream subsection of Swift’s fandom known as “Gaylors” believe that the pop star is a queer woman who has discreetly (and sometimes not-so-discreetly) shared her sexuality through her lyrics and instances of queer flagging.
Though it is sometimes strange to watch people become hyper-invested in the sexual orientation of a billionaire who emits a thousand times more carbon than the average, Gaylorism largely stems from something incredibly earnest: a desire to be seen, and to have your own feelings validated. Within all the passion and celebrity worship lies something particularly poignant: the permission Swift gives her fans, queer people like me included, to connect with her intimate musings about love and heartbreak. Despite being one of the most famous people on the planet, she has an almost preternatural ability to make her fans feel like she’s somehow speaking directly to them through her lyrics, social media presence, and performances. As a queer listener, her tales of yearning, hiding a love affair in plain sight, and fretting over whether anyone will love her once they see her in her entirety are easy to latch onto, whether she wrote these songs based on her alienating experiences as a world-famous star, or a queer person, or a bit of both.
But as queer interpretations of Swift and her music have garnered more attention online, the Gaylors have been targeted by other Swifties — dubbed “Hetlors” — who have gone so far as to doxx and out queer fans, many of whom are underage. Every fan community has its stan wars, but this one feels like a painfully inevitable collision of Swift’s roots and her increasingly diverse fandom.
All this discourse can cast a shadow over what should be a more direct experience of her music and persona. I want to stop worrying and love the plop. But despite having a legion of queer listeners, many of them recently acquired, it’s still more perilous to exist in Swift’s orbit compared to the seamlessness of “stanning” Britney Spears, Beyoncé, or Gaga. I wish there were more room for queer fans to speak about those feelings of connection in general without getting subsumed by a debate over whether Taylor Swift, the woman herself, is queer. In a different world, the chair dance could be a straightforward bit of thirst trap choreography that inspires no deeper discourse.
For now, though, I can only hope that whenever we emerge from the perfect storm that is the Swiftie community’s current state, we can put aside our grievances and enjoy the simple beauty of the plop heard round the world.
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