Our relationship with celebrities goes something like this: they present us with charismatic objects of focus, we decide what those objects mean. In some cases, a celebrity finds a trusted mediator who is their first interpreter to the wider world—a photographer, a director, a producer—but ultimately, most importantly, they are not really in control of their own meaning. They are a kind of compost that goes into the bigger culture. We grow meanings out of them, and then we grow meanings out of those meanings. In its most pernicious form, that is the Britney Spears cycle: Britney is jailbait; Britney is out of control; Britney is a person we feel bad about.
Celebrities mostly benefit from this exchange, though. It makes them famous and it makes them rich and maybe it makes some of them crazy, but, well, that’s the deal. But there are a few big exceptions. One, naturally, is Taylor Swift.1