Ice Spice presents the Song of the Year award to Taylor Swift onstage during the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California on March 27, 2023.
Getty Images for iHeartRadio
*Taylor Swift’s dating life is suddenly news in Black publications because her rumored new man is an alleged racist.
The pop superstar is rumored to be dating Matt Healy, the frontman of the band 1975. During an appearance on a podcast in January, Healy joked about masturbating to Black women being brutalized, and laughed along with hosts of the show as they made fun of rapper Ice Spice, who is of Nigerian and Dominican heritage. They called her an “Inuit spice girl,” “a f**king Eskimo or something,” and “chubby Chinese lady.”
Now, publications like The Huffington Post and The Guardian have published articles that question Swift for dating Healy, and side-eye her decision to feature Ice Spice on the remix of her single, “Karma.”
“It’s leading a lot of people to ask: is the Swift/Ice Spice collaboration a calculated attempt at damage control? Is this a cynical PR move? Or is the convenient timing just a fluke?,” reported the Guardian.
HuffPo’s Cambria Roth wrote:
“Swift is essentially using the woman who her supposed boyfriend mocked to say, “See? If Ice Spice doesn’t think I’m bad and still wants to work with me, then it’s all OK. Right?” I had a lot of questions: Did Ice Spice know Swift was dating Healy when they recorded? Would Ice drag Healy in a verse? What about the suspicious timing of the release amid all the backlash? No fault to Ice for agreeing to a collaboration with a mainstream artist and boosting her profile, either. Plus, as laymen, we don’t know how record labels or individual artists broach these conversations. Though it is worth noting that this is a stark difference from her past collaborators Nicki Minaj, Pink Pantheress and Lil Tjay. (Swift said later, after this story was published, that Ice Spice had reached out to her to collaborate.) But this collaboration also gives Swift’s predominantly white female fandom an excuse to ignore all of her indiscretions and to continue to idolize her — despite the fact that a racist, deeply problematic man is still reportedly her boyfriend. Swift was no doubt pleased when Ice Spice retweeted the collaboration news and called her the ‘sweetest person ever.’”
Neither Swift nor Healy has confirmed the dating rumors, but both have been spotted together multiple times in Nashville and New York City.
The Guardian reported that the backlash against their rumored relationship is growing and fans are asking her to address it directly under the hashtag #SpeakUpNow.
“[Healy] has been involved in acts and controversies that deeply trouble us,” reads one viral open letter tweeted by a fan, per The Guardian. “While individuals have the right to make their own choices and form relationships, we believe that it is essential for those in the public eye to take a stand against discrimination and hold themselves and their associates accountable.”
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