LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country pop singer Taylor Swift hit back at comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler for mocking her love life at Hollywood’s Golden Globe Awards this year, calling the jab sexist in an interview with magazine Vanity Fair on Tuesday.
During the awards broadcast, hosts Fey and Poehler threw a barb at the singer, telling her to “stay away” from actor Michael J. Fox’s 23-year-old son.
The Grammy-winning singer is well known for documenting her personal relationships in her songs, often leaving little clues in the lyrics that hint at the subject.
She has been linked to high profile celebrities such as John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor Lautner, Joe Jonas and more recently, Conor Kennedy and One Direction’s Harry Styles.
In the Vanity Fair interview, Swift, 23, responded to the Golden Globes incident by citing a saying told to her by talk show host Katie Couric that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
“For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that’s taking something that potentially should be celebrated – a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way – that’s taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist,” Swift said.
Swift’s latest hit “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” was presumed to be about Gyllenhaal while “I Knew You Were Trouble” is said to be about Mayer.
Swift, who notably refuses to reveal details of her personal life, didn’t name any names herself in the interview, but said “since 2010 I have dated exactly two people,” referring to Kennedy and Styles.
According to Vanity Fair, Swift gave permission for an unnamed source to speak about her relationships in more detail, revealing that Styles, 19, had “chased” Swift for a year and “wore her down” into dating him.
The relationship ended after Styles was photographed kissing another woman, but he “pursued her for the better part of a year until she finally took him back,” the source said.
Swift, who became a teenage darling within the country-pop scene for her raw, honest and catchy songs, has seen her music slowly becoming overshadowed by the spotlight cast on her private life.
“I’m dealing with a little bit of a chaotic media circus right now … But there’s also a lesson in all this … In knowing that you can live your life in a way that you’re proud of and people are still gonna take shots,” Swift said.
The full interview will appear in Vanity Fair’s April issue, out in New York and Los Angles on Thursday and nationally on March 12.
