At the Billboard Awards on Sunday night, Taylor Swift released the new music video for “Bad Blood” from the 1989 soundtrack. This video featured an amazing amount of famous women as characters, including…
Lily Aldridge as Frostbyte,
Zendaya as Cut-Throat,
Haley Williams as The Crimson Curse,
Gigi Hadid as Slay-Z,
Ellie Goulding as Destructa X,
Hailee Steinfeld as The Trinity,
Lena Dunham as Lucky Fiori,
Karlie Kloss as Knockout,
Serayah as Dilemma,
Jessica Alba as Domino,
Martha Hunt as Homeslice,
Ellen Pompeo as Luna,
Mariska Hargitay as Justice,
Cara Delevigne as Mother Chucker,
Cindy Crawford as Headmistress,
Selena Gomez as Arsyn,
And Taylor Swift as Catastrophe,
With an appearance—and additional rap verse—by Kendrick Lamar as Welvin Da Great.
By the end of the video, I was begging for a full-length feature film. I loved seeing such a widespread group of inspiring women armed with deadly weapons and killer combat skills. The music video made me feel empowered and almost feisty.
I felt empowered and “almost feisty,” because I wanted to be one of those characters. I wanted to be “Foxglove” or “The Clover” or “Cleaver” or something else equally as undeniably awesome.
But, then I remembered that I was wearing glasses and pajamas, with my hair tied back into a ponytail with an old scrunchie circa 1998, which brings me to how this topic could possibly relate to body positivity.
At the end of the day, all of those amazing women go home and get in their pajamas. Maybe even they take out their contacts and put on glasses. Maybe they even pull back their hair into ponytails with an old scrunchie, too.
Because, behind the leather and the weapons and the spot on winged eyeliner, they’re women just like we are. They go to bed in pajamas. They don’t wear makeup all the time. They might set three alarms, so they know they’ll wake up the next morning, too.
The only real difference between us, that I can pinpoint, is their outright, irrefutable badass-ness.
So, how can we become just as outright and irrefutably badass as they are? I’ve come up with a few starting steps:
1. Don’t doubt yourself. Too often, we spend countless hours reviewing risky text messages we may have sent to people we’re interested in, or experience brief moments of panic after telling a joke that didn’t land as well as we’d hoped. This doubtfulness is holds us down and prevents us from being as badass as we can be. Do you think Cut-Throat or Destructa X ever succeeded while doubting themselves? I don’t. Trust your instincts. Trust what you believe is right. Trust what you believe is true. Trust you.
2. Be the best that you can be. Whether that’s through building a daily workout regime, carving out time to devote to your art, or making sure you learn something new everyday, become the best that you can be. From my experience, when you feel your best, everything else starts to fall into place. When everything starts to fall into place, badass-ness will follow.
3. Be passionate. Without passion, who are we? Passion is what drives us to setting, keeping, and fulfilling our goals. Passion is what makes us unique. Passion is what makes us happy. Discover what you’re most passionate about and exploit that. For instance, I am passionate about writing. What do I do about that? Well, I write for Her Campus, I make sure to write for fun everyday, and I read other people’s writing in order to refine my own. Find your passion and grow it from there.
And, just for fun:
4. Make up your own “Bad Blood” music video persona. For example, maybe I’ll be Foxglove, a sickeningly sweet miss with an arsenal of poison at her side—a “nightmare dressed like a daydream,” if you will. Maybe I’ll be The Clover, a fiery lass wielding an axe reminiscent of the medieval era. Maybe I’ll be Cleaver, a temptress dressed in a black dress and apron, hiding a sharp cleaver behind her skirt and a secret behind her classic red-lipped smirk.
But, when it comes down to it, you don’t need to be a leather-clad superheroine to be a badass. You only need to be, and believe in, yourself. And, believing in yourself is what body positivity is really all about, isn’t it?
(All “Bad Blood” images found on the Taylor Swift Facebook fan page. And, “Bad Blood” poster generator found on Buzzfeed here.)