Taylor Swift-- Gender Pollution | Teen Ink

Taylor Swift-- Gender Pollution

February 8, 2010
By Austenesque BRONZE, New Britain, Connecticut
Austenesque BRONZE, New Britain, Connecticut
3 articles 0 photos 3 comments

Taylor Swift is quickly becoming as omnipresent as Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers. I turn on the T.V. and see her sliding across a stage like Tom Cruise in Risky Business so that she can promote Guitar Hero. I turn on the radio and I hear her childlike voice serenading the world. I can foresee Taylor Swift Barbie dolls™ lining up store shelves in a year's time. Welcome to Taylor Mania.
Do you remember how everyone first fell in love with Taylor Swift? She won our hearts with the
Photo credit: Tabitha M.,
Kannapolis, NC
laid-back, country-feel of "Our Song," back in 2006. But, her following singles have a different feel to them. She moaned to us about Drew breaking her heart in "Teardrops on My Guitar." She then illustrated for us a fairytale romance between a modern day Romeo and Juliet in "Love Story," although Juliet spends 90% of the song waiting around for Romeo. Taylor pines away for a boy who obviously isn't interested in her in "You Belong with Me." In "Fifteen," Ms. Swift blabs about a poor freshman girl and "politely" tells the whole world that fifteen year-old Abigail was nothing but a booty call.
What do Taylor's songs suggest? Girls and young women generally are portrayed as objects used by guys and easily disposed of. We girls are supposed to sit down and cry on our guitars when the Drew's of the world (and boy are there quite a few of them) hurt us. We're supposed to "cry on the staircase begging [Romeo] 'please don't go'," and after getting "tired of waiting, wondering if [he was] ever coming around," we're supposed to forgive him two seconds after he returns because supposedly, he spent all of the time that he was away "talking to our dad" (... right). Instead of moving on with out lives when a guy doesn't like us, we have no option but to wait as long as it takes for him to realize that he "belongs with us." Oh, and "when we're fifteen and someone tells us they love us, we're gonna believe them." No ifs, ands, or buts.
Now, don't get me wrong; I truly believe that Taylor Swift is a talented songwriter. In fact, she writes more candidly than most musicians out there. But, her talent is wasted on songs that leave little room to encourage young, blossoming girls and women. Rather than showing us that we don't need the guys that will hurt and use us, her songs suggest that we are the victims of an inevitable fate: guys will continually break us down. Even if we often do find ourselves heart-broken because of a guy, we do not need to STAY heart-broken. I'm not here to bash Taylor, but how about some songs that prove how strong we young women really are? Let's not sit around crying forever because "it's too late for him and his white horse to come around." Let's stand proud as we filter the losers and duds out of our lives. Maybe his white horse isn't coming around, but we can wait for the stallions.



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 18 comments.


vazenitran98 said...
on Dec. 28 2011 at 11:48 am
vazenitran98, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
0 articles 0 photos 79 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street,I met a man who had no feet."

This article is beautifully written and doesn't show signs of negativity towards Taylor Swift. I wish other people's opinions would be as well written as this.

Cookies BRONZE said...
on May. 17 2011 at 3:30 pm
Cookies BRONZE, Willingboro, New Jersey
1 article 0 photos 6 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.&quot;<br /> Joseph Conrad<br /> &quot;All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.&quot;<br /> Ralph Waldo Emerson <br /> &quot;Try again, fail again. Fail better.&quot;<br /> Samuel Beckett<br /> &quot;Try not. Do or do not.&quot;<br /> Yoda<br /> &quot;The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you will see.&quot;<br /> Winston Churchill<br /> &quot;When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.&quot;<br /> Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> &quot;Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.&quot;<br /> Albert Einstein<br /> &quot;There are certain clues at a crime scene which by their very nature do not lend themselves to being collected or examined. How&#039;s one collect love, rage, hatred, fear...? These are things that we&#039;re trained to look for.&quot;<br /> James Reese<br /> &quot;Don&#039;t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.&quot;<br /> William Faulkner<br /> &quot;Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.&quot;<br /> Samuel Johnson<br /> &quot;Don&#039;t forget that I cannot see myself -- that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror.&quot;<br /> Jacques Rigaut<br /> &quot;Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn&#039;t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?&quot;<br /> Rose Kennedy<br /> &quot;When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him.&quot;<br /> Euripides<br /> &quot;When love is in excess, it brings a man no honor, nor worthiness.&quot;<br /> Euripides<br /> &quot;The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather, a condition of it.&quot;<br /> Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> &quot;Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable.&quot;<br /> (attributed to) William Shakespeare<br /> &quot;With foxes, we must play the fox.&quot;<br /> Thomas Fuller<br /> &quot;There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough, and liked it, never really care for anything else.&quot;<br /> Ernest Hemingway<br /> &quot;The healthy man does not torture others. Generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.&quot;<br /> Carl Jung<br /> &quot;A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses. It is an idea that possesses the mind.&quot;<br /> Robert Oxton Bolton<br /> &quot;The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?&quot;<br /> Albert Einstein<br /> &quot;Unfortunately, a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.&quot;<br /> Sir Peter Ustinov<br /> &quot;Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.&quot;<br /> Eugene Ionesco<br /> &quot;The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.&quot;<br /> Harriet Beecher Stowe<br /> &quot;Evil is always unspectacular and always human. And shares our bed...and eats at our table.&quot;<br /> W.H. Auden<br /> &quot;Measure not the work until the day&#039;s out and the labor done.&quot;<br /> Elizabeth Barrett Browning<br /> &quot;What is food to one is to others bitter poison.&quot;<br /> Lucretious<br /> &quot;Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.&quot;<br /> Confucius<br /> &quot;Who so sheddeth man&#039;s blood by man shall his blood be shed.&quot;<br /> Genesis 9:6<br /> &quot;What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world, remains and is immortal.&quot;<br /> Albert Pine - attributed to Pine, but actually by Mason Albert Pike, from his book &ldquo;Ex Corde Locutiones: Words from the Heart Spoken of His Dead Brethren&rdquo; (Google Books link)<br /> <br /> &quot;It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.&quot;<br /> Norman Maclean<br /> Who in his mind has not probe the dark water?<br /> &quot;East from Eden&quot; John Steinbeck (here used in a puzzle by the Keystone Killer)<br /> &quot;In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.&quot;<br /> Sir Francis Bacon (here used in a puzzle by The Keystone Killer and in Max Ryan&#039;s book on page 184).<br /> &quot;In the end, it&#039;s not the years in your life that count. It&#039;s the life in your years.&quot;<br /> Abraham Lincoln<br /> &quot;The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.&quot;<br /> Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> &quot;Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim, and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness.&quot;<br /> W.H. Auden<br /> &quot;It is better to be violent if there is violence in our hearts than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.&quot;<br /> Mahatma Ghandi<br /> &quot;I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent.&quot;<br /> Mahatma Ghandi<br /> &quot;A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.&quot;<br /> Diane Arbus<br /> &quot;An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.&quot;<br /> George Bernard Shaw<br /> &quot;Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.&quot;<br /> Anthony Brandt<br /> &quot;The house does not rest on the ground, but upon a woman.&quot;<br /> Mexican proverb<br /> &quot;There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.&quot;<br /> Voltaire<br /> &quot;We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.&quot;<br /> Fran&ccedil;ois de la Rochefoucauld<br /> &quot;Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.&quot;<br /> Albert Einstein<br /> &quot;In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.&quot;<br /> George Orwell<br /> &quot;No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one<br /> Elbert Hubbard<br /> <br /> <br /> &quot;The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body. After all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind.&quot;<br /> Francois de la Roche Foucauld<br /> &quot;It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.&quot;<br /> Rose Kennedy<br /> &quot;The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.&quot;<br /> Dietrich Bonhoeffer<br /> &quot;Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one who inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.&quot;<br /> Mark Twain<br /> &quot;Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.&quot;<br /> Khalil Gibran<br /> &quot;Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.&quot;<br /> Oscar Wilde<br /> &quot;The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but that this humiliation is seen by everyone.&quot;<br /> Milan Kundera<br /> &quot;Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.&quot;<br /> Helen Keller<br /> &quot;We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.&quot;<br /> Plato<br /> &quot;It&#039;s not so important who starts the game, but who finishes it.&quot;<br /> John Wooden<br /> &quot;The ultimate choice for a man, in as much as he is given to transcend himself, is to create or destroy, to love or to hate.&quot;<br /> Erich Fromm<br /> &quot;Crime butchers innocents to secure a prize. And innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.&quot;<br /> Maximilien Robespierre<br /> &quot;If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.&quot;<br /> Elbert Hubbard<br /> &quot;Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.&quot;<br /> Mahatma Ghandi<br /> &quot;Some of the best lessons are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future.&quot;<br /> Dale Turner<br /> &quot;In order to learn the most important lessons of life, one must each day surmount a fear.&quot;<br /> Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /> &quot;Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.&quot;<br /> T.S. Eliot<br /> &quot;Between the desire and the spasm, between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent, falls the shadow. This is the way the world ends.&quot;<br /> T.S. Eliot<br /> &quot;All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That&#039;s in the nature of secrets.&quot;<br /> Cory Doctorow<br /> &quot;Evil brings men together.&quot;<br /> Aristotle<br /> &quot;I didn&#039;t have anything against them, and they never did anything wrong to me, the way other people have all my life. Maybe they&#039;re just the ones who have to pay for it.&quot;<br /> Perry Smith<br /> &quot;There is not a righteous man on Earth who does what is right and never sins.&quot;<br /> Ecclesiastes 7:20<br /> &quot;From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.&quot;<br /> Socrates<br /> &quot;The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.&quot;<br /> Cicero<br /> &quot;Our life is made by the death of others.&quot;<br /> Leonardo Da Vinci<br /> &quot;If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.&quot;<br /> Thomas Paine<br /> &quot;Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.&quot;<br /> Robert Kennedy<br /> &quot;The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.&quot;<br /> John Calvin<br /> &quot;Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.&quot;<br /> Mahatma Ghandi<br /> &quot;There can be no good without evil.&quot;<br /> Russian proverb<br /> &quot;Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.&quot;<br /> Leo Tolstoy<br /> &quot;One man&#039;s wilderness is another man&#039;s theme park.&quot;<br /> Unknown<br /> &quot;Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.&quot;<br /> James Anthony Froud<br /> &quot;Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.&quot;<br /> Herman Melville<br /> &quot;Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles.&quot;<br /> Charles Chaplin<br /> &quot;I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.&quot;<br /> Oscar Wilde<br /> <br /> Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone.&quot;<br /> George Washington<br /> &quot;He who controls others may be powerful but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.&quot;<br /> Philosopher Lao Tzu<br /> &quot;You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.&quot;<br /> Eleanor Roosevelt<br /> &quot;In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs though it&#039;s intimate and psychological; resistant to generalization; a mystery of the individual&#039;s soul.&quot;<br /> Barbara Ehrenreich<br /> &quot;Nothing is easier than to denounce the evil doer; Nothing more difficult than understanding him.&quot;<br /> Fyodor Dostoevsky<br /> &quot;Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.&quot;<br /> G.K. Chesterton<br /> &quot;Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?&quot;<br /> Erasmus<br /> &quot;An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.&quot; <br /> Martin Luther<br /> &quot;Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters.&quot;<br /> Francisco Goya<br /> &quot;God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.&quot;<br /> Thomas Deloney<br /> &quot;Love all. Trust a few. Do wrong to none.&quot;<br /> William Shakespeare<br /> &quot;Superman is, after all, an alien life form. He&#039;s simply the acceptable face of invading realities.&quot; <br /> Clive Barker<br /> &quot;The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He&#039;s dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he&#039;s a hero the whole time.&rdquo; <br /> Frank Miller<br /> &quot;It doesn&#039;t matter who my father was, it matters who I remember he was.&quot;<br /> Anne Sexton<br /> &quot;A simple child that lightly draws it&#039;s breath and feels its life in every limb. What should it know of death?&quot; <br /> Wordsworth<br /> &quot;No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies.&quot;<br /> Daisy Bates<br /> &quot;It is a wise father that knows his own child.&quot; <br /> William Shakespeare<br /> &quot;I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury...fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.&quot; <br /> Euripides <br /> &quot;For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won.&quot; <br /> Lucy Maud Montgomery <br /> &quot;...within the core of each of us is the child we once were. This child constitutes the foundation of what we have become, who we are, and what we will be.&quot;<br /> Neuroscientist, Dr. R. Joseph <br /> &quot;There is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.&quot;<br /> Arthur Rubinstein<br /> &quot;There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.&quot; <br /> Daniel Webster<br /> &quot;The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.&quot;<br /> Ben Okri<br /> &quot;A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.&quot;<br /> John Steinbeck<br /> &quot;We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.&quot;<br /> Tom Stoppard<br /> &quot;There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.&quot;<br /> George Bernard Shaw<br /> &quot;If we knew each other&#039;s secrets, what comforts we should find.&quot;<br /> John Churton Collins<br /> &quot;No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.&quot;<br /> Christian Nestell Bovee<br /> &quot;A woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself. &quot;<br /> Susan B. Anthony<br /> &quot;All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another.&quot;<br /> Anatole France<br /> &quot;What though the radiance that was once so bright, be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.&quot;<br /> William Wordsworth<br /> (This is not a quote but part of a poem.)<br /> &quot;The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic.&quot;<br /> Voltaire<br /> <br /> <br /> &quot;Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.&quot;<br /> Ernest Hemingway<br /> &ldquo;We all die. The goal isn&#039;t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.&rdquo;<br /> Chuck Palahniuk<br /> &ldquo;The past is our definition. we may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.&rdquo;<br /> Wendell Berry<br /> &quot;To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.&quot;<br /> Benjamin Franklin<br /> &quot;Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it.&quot;<br /> Ayn Rand<br /> &quot;A fool&#039;s paradise is a wise man&#039;s hell.&quot;<br /> Thomas Fuller<br /> &quot;Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.&quot;<br /> Phaedrus<br /> &quot;Plenty sit still. Hunger is a wanderer.&quot;<br /> Zulu proverb<br /> &quot;Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea, And the East and West the wander-thirst that will not let me be.&quot;<br /> Gerald Gould<br /> &quot;Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind and finds the readiest response.&quot;<br /> Amos Bronson Alcott<br /> &quot;I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can&#039;t touch with decay.&quot;<br /> Bob Dylan<br /> &ldquo;What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.&rdquo;<br /> Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> &ldquo;There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.&rdquo;<br /> Gilbert Parker <br /> &quot;Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles...&quot;<br /> Mark Twain<br /> &quot;Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.&quot;<br /> Martin Luther King, Jr.<br /> &quot;The minute people fall in love, they become liars.&quot; <br /> Harlan Ellison<br /> &quot;Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.&quot;<br /> P.J. O&#039;Rourke<br /> &quot;We are all brothers under the skin, and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.&quot;<br /> Ayn Rand<br /> &quot;...for he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.&quot;<br /> William Shakespeare<br /> &quot;Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.&quot; <br /> H.L. Mencken<br /> &quot;There&#039;s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.&quot;<br /> President Dwight Eisenhower<br /> &quot;No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.&quot;<br /> Sigmund Freud<br /> &quot;Delay is the deadliest form of denial.&quot;<br /> British Historian C. Northcote Parkinson<br /> &quot;There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.&quot;<br /> Winston Churchill<br /> &quot;The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.&quot;<br /> Mario Puzo<br /> &quot;And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side. Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride. In the sepulchre there by the sea. In her tomb by the sounding sea.&quot;<br /> Edgar Allan Poe (this is from his poem, &quot;Annabel<br /> Lee&quot;).<br /> &quot;For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don&#039;t believe, no proof is possible.&quot;<br /> Stuart Chase<br /> &quot;I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.&quot;<br /> Albert Einstein<br /> &quot;In youth we learn; in age we understand.&quot;<br /> Austrian novelist, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach<br /> &quot;The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.&quot;<br /> Camille Paglia<br /> &quot;He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.&quot;<br /> Leonardo Da Vinci<br /> There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.<br /> James Joyce<br /> &ldquo;Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.&rdquo;<br /> Roman author Publilius Syrus <br /> &ldquo;Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call destiny.&rdquo; <br /> John Hobbes<br /> &quot;We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out.&quot;<br /> Tennessee Williams<br /> &quot;I have loved to the point of madness; That which is called madness, That which to me, is the only sensible way to love.&quot;<br /> Francoise Sagan<br /> &quot;Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.&quot;<br /> Terry Pratchett<br /> &quot;Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.&quot;<br /> Stephen King<br /> &quot;To lose a child is to lose a piece of yourself.&quot;<br /> Dr. Burton Grebin<br /> &quot;Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.&quot;<br /> Andre Maurois<br /> &quot;In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.&quot; <br /> Francis Bacon<br /> &quot;No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.&quot; <br /> George Chakiris<br /> &ldquo;I&#039;m not sure about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization.&rdquo;<br /> Booth Tarkington<br /> &ldquo;The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.&rdquo;<br /> Mahatma Ghandi<br /> &quot;It will become fine dust over all the land of Egypt and it will become boils breaking out with sores on man and beast through all the land of Egypt.&quot;<br /> Exodus 9:9<br /> &quot;Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.&quot;<br /> Helen Keller<br /> &quot;If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity.&quot;<br /> Flannery O&#039;Connor<br /> &quot;Sometimes there are no words. No clever quotes to neatly sum up what&#039;s happened that day... sometimes the day... just... ends.&quot;<br /> Aaron Hotchner (Note: This is the first time that a quote used in the beginning or end of the episode had one of the main characters as its author.)<br /> <br /> &quot;A weak man has doubts before a decision. A strong man has them afterwards.&quot;<br /> Carl Kraus<br /> &quot;One need not be a chamber to be haunted, one need not to be a house. The brain has corridors surpassing material place.&quot;<br /> Emily Dickinson<br /> &quot;There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.&quot;<br /> Polybius<br /> &quot;Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical&quot;<br /> Blaise Pascal<br /> &quot;I have always found that mercy bears richer fruit than strict justice.&quot;<br /> Abraham Lincoln<br /> &quot;There is no lasting hope in violence, only temporary relief from hopelessness.&quot;<br /> Kingman Brewster, Jr.<br /> &quot;These violent delights have violent ends.&quot;<br /> William Shakespeare<br /> &quot;You don&#039;t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around -- and why his parents will always wave back.&quot;<br /> Journalist William D. Tammeus<br /> &quot;And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee...&quot; <br /> Matthew 5:29<br /> &quot;Dwell in peace in the home of your own being, and the Messenger of Death will not be able to touch you.&quot;<br /> Guru Nanak<br /> &quot;In all the darkest pages in the malign supernatural, there is no more terrible tradition than that of a vampire - a pariah even among demons.&quot;<br /> Writer Montague Summers<br /> &quot;Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.&quot;<br /> Writer Cyril Connolly<br /> &quot;Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else unless it&#039;s an enemy.&quot;<br /> Albert Einstein<br /> &quot;He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.&quot;<br /> Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> &quot;So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty.&quot;<br /> Haniel Long <br /> &quot;It&#039;s love that makes the world go round. If that is true, then this world must have spun a little bit faster with Haley in it.&quot;<br /> W. S. Gilbert<br /> &quot;Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.&quot; <br /> Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /> &quot;What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.&quot;<br /> Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /> &quot;Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.&quot;<br /> Tacitus<br /> &quot;There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness but of power. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and of unspeakable love.&quot;<br /> Washington Irving<br /> &quot;Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness, possesses you. And in this materialistic age, a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.&quot;<br /> Mildred Lisette Norman<br /> &quot;In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.&quot;<br /> Isaac Asimov<br /> &quot;Life is a game, play it....Life is too precious, do not destroy it.&quot;<br /> Mother Teresa <br /> &quot;Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.&quot; <br /> C.S. Lewis<br /> &quot;If I am what I have, and if I lose what I have, who then am I?&quot;<br /> German Psychologist Erich Fromm<br /> &quot;Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.<br /> Sir Walter Scott<br /> &quot;Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.&quot;<br /> F. Scott Fitzgerald<br /> &quot;When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when his son gives to his father, both cry.&quot;<br /> William Shakespeare<br /> &quot;Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.&quot;<br /> Friedrich Nietzsche<br /> &quot;Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.&quot;<br /> Emily Dickinson<br /> &quot;We&#039;re all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.&quot; <br /> Tennessee Williams<br /> &quot;The family is a haven in a heartless world.&quot;<br /> Christopher Lasch<br /> &quot;I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.&quot;<br /> Mother Teresa<br /> &quot;A lions work hours are only when he&#039;s hungry; once he&#039;s satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together.&quot;<br /> Chuck Jones<br /> &quot;Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness...is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.&quot;<br /> Helen Keller<br /> &quot;A sincere artist tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.&quot;<br /> Painter William Dobell<br /> &quot;I have seen children successfully surmount the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.&quot;<br /> Mohandas Gandhi<br /> &quot;Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theater of the tragedy of man.&quot;<br /> John Morley<br /> &quot;Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength.&quot;<br /> Ralph W. Sockman<br /> &quot;The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.&quot;<br /> George Bernard Shaw<br /> &quot;The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn&#039;t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.&quot;<br /> Eric Schmidt<br /> &quot;And out of darkness came the hands that reach thro&#039; nature, moulding men.&quot;<br /> Alfred Lord Tennyson<br /> <br /> &quot;A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another, the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one other it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden.&quot;<br /> The Buddha<br /> &quot;A tragedy need not have blood and death; it&#039;s enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.&quot;<br /> Jean Racine <br /> I&#039;m thankful for my years spent with this family; for everything we shared, every chance we had to grow. I&#039;ll take the best of them and lead by their example; where ever I go. A friend told me to be honest with you, so here it goes. This isn&#039;t what I want, but I&#039;ll take the high road. Maybe it&#039;s because I look at everything as a lesson, or I don&#039;t want to walk around angry. Or maybe it&#039;s because I finally understand. There are things we don&#039;t want to happen, but have to accept; things we don&#039;t want to know, but have to learn, and people we can&#039;t live without, but have to let go. <br /> AJ Cook<br /> &quot;Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.&quot;<br /> Marcel Proust<br /> &quot;When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it.&quot;<br /> Mark Twain<br /> &quot;Whatever you are, be a good one.&quot;<br /> Abraham Lincoln<br /> &quot;We all wear masks and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing our own skin.&quot;<br /> Andr&eacute; Berthiaume<br /> &quot;All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.&quot;<br /> Mahatma Ghandi<br /> &ldquo;But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.&rdquo;<br /> Robert Frost<br /> &quot;If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.&quot;<br /> Niccolo Machiavelli<br /> &ldquo;Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of its trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse for impossibility, for it thinks all things are lawful for itself and all things are possible.&rdquo; <br /> Thomas A. Kempis<br /> &quot;The herds seek out the great, not for their seed, but for their influence and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.&quot;<br /> Napoleon Bonaparte<br /> &quot;Without heroes we are all plain people and don&#039;t know how far we can go.&quot; <br /> Bernard Malamud<br /> &quot;Fame will go by and, so long, I&#039;ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I&#039;ve always known it was fickle. So at least it&#039;s something I experience, but that&#039;s not where I live.&quot;<br /> Marilyn Monroe <br /> &quot;I believe humanity<br /> was born from conflict. Maybe that&#039;s why in all<br /> of us lives a dark side. Some of us embrace it. Some have no choice. The rest of us fight it. And in the end, it&#039;s as natural as the air we breathe. Some point, we&#039;re forced to face the truth...ourselves.<br /> Penelope Garcia<br /> &quot;I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.&quot;<br /> Ralph Ellison<br /> &quot;Evil endures a moment&#039;s flush and then leaves but a burnt up shell.&quot;<br /> Elise Cabot<br /> &quot;When we were children, we used to think that when we grew up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability, to be alive is to be vulnerable.&quot;<br /> Madeleine L&#039;Engle<br /> &quot;Children begin by loving their parents. As they grow older they judge them, sometimes they forgive them.&quot;<br /> Oscar Wilde<br /> &quot;There is no such thing as part freedom.&quot;<br /> Nelson Mandela<br /> &quot;All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.&quot;<br /> Galileo Galilei<br /> &quot;No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.&quot;<br /> Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley<br /> &quot;The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.&quot;<br /> Helen Keller<br /> &quot;What really raises one&#039;s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.&quot;<br /> Frederich Nietzsche<br /> &quot;What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today.&quot;<br /> William Glasser<br /> &ldquo;Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they&#039;re in the game.&rdquo;<br /> Paul Rodriguez<br /> &quot;Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.&quot;<br /> Vladimir Nabokov <br /> &ldquo;It&#039;s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.&rdquo; <br /> Sally Kempton<br /> &ldquo;There&#039;s no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.&rdquo;<br /> Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /> &quot;Tomorrow, you promise yourself, will be different, yet, tomorrow is too often a repetition of today.&quot;<br /> James T. Mccay<br /> &quot;Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most people of thought believe in providence.&quot; <br /> Honore de Balzac <br /> &quot;When I Let go of what I am, I become what I might be.&quot;<br /> Lao Tzu<br /> &quot;Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.&quot; <br /> Dorothy Dix

I would have to disagree with you. Yes I am a fan of Taylor Swift, but I honestly believe that her songs are made to tell us what is awaiting in our lives. She explains how so many things can happen in our lives and how we must be able to overcome them not matter how much pain. She also writes how we all wish we can have a fairytale life, and that one day we will. I LOVE Taylor Swift songs and she is a great role model

normgrl GOLD said...
on Apr. 3 2011 at 6:05 pm
normgrl GOLD, Jacksonville, Florida
13 articles 11 photos 105 comments

Favorite Quote:
Do we eat to live or live to eat?

It was a nicely written article, I have to say. But I also have to admit with NicoleS with the fact that Taylor's songs allow a girl to be able to relate to them with their very own problems that they may be going through in terms of guys. Aside from their friends support and encouragement at tough times(and sometimes people think that their friends may be saying that just because, well...because they're your friends), I guess it's safe to say that the song's make them feel even better - like NicoleS suggested.

on Feb. 9 2011 at 8:40 pm
NicoleS PLATINUM, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
21 articles 0 photos 46 comments

Favorite Quote:
If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that&#039;s his problem. Love and peace are eternal. <br /> - John Lennon

im going to have to disagree on this one, and not just because im 16 and every 16 year old girl loves taylor swift

i dont think that her songs give negative impressions to girls- at all. hearing her songs, i have never felt the way you do, that her songs are saying that we are supposed to submit ourselves to boys, like "cry on the staircase begging [Romeo].."

her  songs have never made me feel badly about myself the way the article implied- if anything, they act as something relate to in tough situations and can, in turn, make a girl feel better

however, i DO agree with you that she is getting a little overdone, in the same way miley and the jonas brothers are...i can totally see those barbies! hahaha...youre right, taylor mania is a little much!

either way, great article!:)


Keilah GOLD said...
on Dec. 16 2010 at 12:24 pm
Keilah GOLD, Eureka, Missouri
18 articles 10 photos 14 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;I used to have an open mind, but my brains kept falling out.&quot;

Looooove Superchick!  Great recommendations! :)

MMAGirl said...
on Nov. 22 2010 at 9:26 am
Taylor Swift is NOT all about love. For every one love song, she has about ten break-up "I hate you" songs. Austenesque, I completely agree with you! There are so many other female singers (like Superchic[k], Barlow Girl, Carrie Underwood, Demi Lovato even) that are better role models for girls. At least they sing about more than just love and when they do sing about love, they sing two-sided songs.

MMAGirl said...
on Nov. 22 2010 at 9:23 am
Because you can think someone's talented without liking what they sing about. Think about it: Have you ever listened to a song, thought the singer was talented but hated the song? Um, I'm sure you have. Don't get all uptight when someone says something you don't like about one of your favorite singers when they have a legitimate reason for not liking them. Seriously.

on Nov. 11 2010 at 10:46 am
chocolatechip BRONZE, Mississgaua, Other
2 articles 0 photos 11 comments
wow!!! you are right (you must get that alot) about the white horse and all and guys that will hurt us but now a days the musicans in society tend to write about finding love the never write about the truth wat happens after you find love , how to deal with it all, how hard  it will be and all.They write about the good times .But non e the less you are right you stole the word right out of my omuth.hahahahahahahah( you must have heard that one before )

on Sep. 16 2010 at 7:35 pm
pencilsFORhands SILVER, Boston, Massachusetts
8 articles 10 photos 86 comments
stole the words right otu of my mouth.. tagged this in my faves :) ur officially my hero

on Jun. 1 2010 at 8:26 am
ReflectionsofYou GOLD, Mason, Tennessee
10 articles 0 photos 107 comments

Good points. I like Taylor, but she does limit herself to writing about boys.... She has a reason, I know, but I'd like to hear about something else...

 A few songs for you to look up on youtube--

 "Anthem", "bowlingball", and "wishes"-- by superchick

 :]


TheJust ELITE said...
on Mar. 8 2010 at 12:45 pm
TheJust ELITE, Ellenton, Florida
254 articles 202 photos 945 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;I feel that a hero is somebody who will stand up for their values and what they believe in and that can take any form. People that have values and have thought them through rather than those who just do what they&rsquo;re told.&quot;-Skandar Keynes<br /> <br /> &quot;When it&rsquo;

Wow. You said that better than I ever could have. I feel the exact same way. I love her songs, but she ttly wasted her career on guys.

on Mar. 5 2010 at 5:10 pm
amazingkp. BRONZE, Lemars, Iowa
4 articles 0 photos 59 comments
If you think she is talented and good then why are you complaining about every little thing she writes about in her songs??? I like Taylor Swift. But the way you look at a song maybe different of her purpose and meaning of the song she wrote. I know you said you are not trying to talk bad about her but that is how it sounds a little bit.

on Feb. 18 2010 at 5:00 pm
Austenesque BRONZE, New Britain, Connecticut
3 articles 0 photos 3 comments
I never said that Taylor Swift wasn't amazing. Lots of artists sing about love; I just think she's encouraging a negative image for girls. Her songs are rarely, if ever, empowering and I'm arguing merely that it would not hurt if she sang a song or two that showed us girls that it's not the end of the world if a guy doesn't love us or that we're beautiful with or without a guy.

on Feb. 18 2010 at 9:35 am
AngelForeverBleedingLove DIAMOND, Frederic, Wisconsin
65 articles 3 photos 248 comments

Favorite Quote:
You say you don&#039;t remember,<br /> But I will never forget

I dissagree with you. I think Taylor Swift is amazing. Taylor is all about love, and just because she writes about what she feels... Give her and Miley a break.

-Angel

on Feb. 14 2010 at 8:53 pm
This was very well written and I totally agree with you :)

Haha that's ironic, As soon as I finished reading your article an ad came on the side of the web page advertising a trip to see Taylor Swift performing in LA lol

esist SILVER said...
on Feb. 10 2010 at 5:52 pm
esist SILVER, North Richland Hills, Texas
6 articles 0 photos 24 comments
Haha, yeah I do have to agree with you. She could write books about love songs and have sequels after sequels of them.

!~Totally agree with you~!

on Feb. 10 2010 at 6:12 am
Austenesque BRONZE, New Britain, Connecticut
3 articles 0 photos 3 comments
Maybe not all ages, haha, but yes they are a great band :D

on Feb. 9 2010 at 8:44 pm
slightlymad BRONZE, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
1 article 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
&ldquo;I can&#039;t dislike you, but I will say this to you: you haven&#039;t got long before you are all going to kill yourselves, because you are all crazy. And you can project it back at me ... but I am only what lives inside each and every one of you.&rdquo;

SOAD is great. They're a band for all genders and (almost) all ages.