From the Desk of Draco Malfoy: Taylor Swift is Ruining the Slytherin Rebrand
Not even a Remembrall can help Taylor remember the horrible things she’s done to this respectable house!
The “Old Taylor” is “dead” and the “New” Taylor (who recently acquired her snake Horcrux, one of 356) is ruining the Slytherin rebrand with her newfound affinity for snakes.
I worked on this rebrand — that Slytherin isn’t just for evil people: it’s for smart, ambitious dreamers who don’t give AF what ppl think about them! — all on my own for no reason or money for years, and I will not have that taken away from myself and from the millions of actual adults who still make the Hogwarts house they most identify with a defining part of their personality.
In the promotion for her new album, “Reputation” and in the music video for her single “Look What You Made Me Poo“ — excuse me, “Do” — Taylor Swift uses imagery of snakes, often in Slytherin colors, green and black. For Taylor Swift, snakes are a reference to the backlash she received when Kim Kardashian proved she’s a LIAR on Snapchat! She could’ve used any emoji.
By perpetuating the stereotype that snakes (aka: Slytherins!) are associated with petty, evil, rich white Pure-Blood snobs out for revenge against people who did nothing wrong, Taylor Swift is ruining the Slytherin rebrand I worked so hard on since I graduated from Hogwarts, where I honestly learned nothing!!!!!
Thanks to my hard work and truly flawed education, I made Slytherin cool. Slytherin is for the dreamers. For the people who would rather take pictures of their dog sleeping than go to their best friend’s birthday party at a bar 10 minutes away from their apartment! For the people who want to make it in comedy, but hate the kind of people who do improv so they spend all the money they saved up for a class at UCB on a pair of Frye boots.
But Taylor Swift has completely erased the idea that these are fun, honorable quirks, and has quickly (can I say, SWIFTLY, omg lol) reinserted Slytherin into the evil narrative. And let me tell you, it’s not easy to bounce back.
Cunning and ambitious people are not evil. What makes you evil is when you’re a fucking mass murdering racist, like Voldemort. Or if you’re a tall white blond privileged pop star who pretends she grew up poor because there was a Christmas tree farm on her estate who also pretends that her feelings are hurt and that her reputation is destroyed but in reality you’re the one hurting people’s feelings and you have time to make an album but don’t have the time to denounce white supremacy! That’s obviously NOT equal to the racist mass murder, obviously, but still not good! Slytherins shame Voldemort, and we would shame Taylor Swift as well, but, like, a lot less than we shame Voldemort.
Over the past ten years, thanks to my hard work rebranding, IRL Slytherins stopped hiding behind their Gryffindor and Ravenclaw posters! They’re proud, and they will change the world. They might not be kind, but they’re not little bitches either. Most of them are comedians and journalists or journalists who want to be comedians! It’s honestly really beautiful. A Slytherin’s success does not rely on putting down others. It relies on working your ass off, and wiping it yourself instead of paying someone to wipe it for you.
If Taylor Swift cares about people — specifically, the kind of people who she probably bullied on MySpace in 2005 — she will stop using snakes, and maybe in its place use, like, a honey badger or a hyena? Just stay the fuck away from snakes Taylor! I am so sad.
Carrie Wittmer is a co-founder and editor of The Belladonna. One of her horcruxes is a 1998 Delia*s catalog.
