Issue 39 ☞ Should Taylor Swift face more skepticism?
And - The welcome return of Sohla El-Waylly
Elevated News
Should Taylor Swift face more skepticism?
Is Taylor Swift the most popular woman in the world? She might be. Her tour, Eras, which began in March this year and is due to end in December, is a cultural and financial mega-force. (It will earn $780 million at the box office, according to Forbes.) In a recent New York Times Magazine piece, the writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner described Swift as teenage dreams manifested, someone possessing a unique kind of magic that resonates with audiences across generations. (When Eras hit Santa Clara, in the US, the town briefly assigned Swift its honorary major, Brodesser-Akner wrote.) The tour, which recently landed in South America, has left a lasting impact everywhere it’s been. At least one fan quit their job to attend a Swift gig in Buenos Aires. Many more waited hours or days or longer in line for tickets. The Buenos Aires gig, incidentally, was rearranged due to bad weather, and forced Argentina’s World Cup-winning football team, including Lionel Messi, to move out of their home stadium for an evening – which gives some idea of Swift’s massive clout.
But when the tour moved on to Rio, in Brazil, this past Friday, disaster struck: a 23-year-old fan, Benavides Machado, fainted during the show and suffered a cardiac arrest. Despite being rushed to the hospital, she died an hour later. In response, Swift published a handwritten letter on Instagram. “This is the last thing I ever thought would happen when we decided to bring this tour to Brazil,” she wrote, before announcing that Saturday’s show was to be postponed amid safety concerns.
Causes of the tragedy are multifaceted. One factor was the record-breaking heat waves in Brazil – the daytime high in Rio on November 17 reached 39.1°C. Another contributing factor was the lack of emergency plans to cope with the extreme weather conditions. Posts about audiences being prohibited from bringing water into Swift’s gigs have flooded social media. (Brazil’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flavio Dino, later enforced a rule that fans be allowed to take water bottles into shows.) The mismanagement evident at the Rio concert is not an isolated case. Brodesser-Akner wrote of spending two and a half hours in line just to buy a hoodie. Such disorganisation can easily “exhaust the concertgoer before the opening act,” she wrote – creating danger.
In the aftermath of Machado’s death, the journalist Sophie Culpepper wrote at Nieman Lab about the strange way Swift is covered by the media – that is, mostly with adoring glances, and often without deep skepticism. Culpepper is a Swift mega fan, but even she has been surprised by the lack of scrutiny journalist aim at the artist. “The last time I remember noticing a substantively critical story about Taylor dent the news cycle,” she wrote, “was last summer, when a sustainability marketing firm alleged that her private plane flights, and the environmental consequences of those flights, far exceeded those of other celebrities.” Swift is repeatedly attacked by the media at a weird, Daily Mail-type personal level. Culpepper points out that the artist was “number one on BuzzFeed’s 2021 list of women mistreated by the media". (She has been regularly, unfairly slut-shamed for and during past relationships.) The artist can’t and shouldn’t be blamed in any way for Machado’s death. And yet, why aren’t people asking more questions about her impact more broadly? “She’s a billionaire, her tour is taking over the world, she’s transforming the music industry in real time, and very few living celebrities have her scale of cultural influence,” Culpepper writes. “With all the love in the world, shouldn’t someone be, at least, attempting to look without fear or favour to see if she’s truly keeping her side of the street clean?”
Elevated News
The welcome return of Sohla El-Waylly
In June 2020, when most of the world was locked down, pandemic-style, a photo surfaced of Bon Appetit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport in brownface. The photo was quickly shared online, sparked widespread outrage, and prompted urgent conversations about a culture of racism at Bon Appetit. Several of the magazine's staff, including Sohla El-Waylly, a chef and restaurateur who had become wildly popular for her appearances in Bon Appetit's YouTube videos, highlighted how BIPOC employees weren't being compensated for that work. In a now-deleted Instagram story, she said she felt "...angry and disgusted by the photo of @rapoport in brown face. I have asked for his resignation. This is just a symptom of the systemic racism that runs within Condé Nast as a whole." Though others spoke out about a toxic environment experienced by BIPOC workers at the magazine, El-Waylly became the movement's figurehead. Both Rapoport and Matt Duckor, a Conde Nast employee involved in the production of video content, eventually resigned. And, later, so did El-Waylly (as well as two other POC employees, Priya Krishna and Rick Martinez), after failing to renegotiate satisfactory contracts. El-Waylly's husband, Ham El-Waylly, told Vulture, "She's not one to stay quiet and eat her words if she sees something wrong."
Thankfully, El-Waylly has gone from strength to strength since her Bon Apetit departure. She has made a YouTube series with the History Channel, enjoyed a stint as a judge on the HBO Max cooking competition show The Big Brunch, created another YouTube series titled Mystery Menu for the New York Times (with her husband), and maintains a prolific social media presence. And now El-Waylly has published her debut cookbook, Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook. “Think of this as a one-stop culinary school in a book (without years of inescapable debt!)” she writes in the book's opening pages. “I want to give people in-depth knowledge, so you’re not walking away with just a bunch of recipes, but with a deep understanding of these techniques that you can apply in different places so you can become smart.” Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook gives readers not just the “hows” but the “whys”, the chef Yotam Ottolenghi wrote recently, but is “the perfect companion to anyone starting out in the kitchen. In sharing so much experience and knowledge – not to mention so many recipes that I want to eat – Sohla has crafted a book to return to again and again and again.” We love you Sohla!
Certified Recs
What to see, keep up with and read this week
What to see
Sarah Lucas' exhibition Happy Gas at the Tate Britain is an exploration on what makes us human. Book your tickets here.
Where to keep up with:
The weird Sam Altman / OpenAI news. Altman was sacked by the company he fathered, then rehired when his staff kicked off. Almost every member of OpenAi's board then resigned. Here's an explainer: Sam Altman Is Reinstated as OpenAI’s Chief Executive.
What to read
An American take on the Russell Brand controversy, during a week when it is thought Brand has been interviewed by UK police on sexual assault allegations: Russell Brand’s Alternate Reality.
Listen to our Ultimate Picks Vol. 39
Thanks for reading—we appreciate you. Until next Thursday.