Sunday evening on the social media platform X, pop-music megastar Taylor Swift posted an image of the cover for her upcoming album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Unsurprisingly, in light of Swift’s gargantuan cultural influence at the moment, her post had more than 85 million views as of early Tuesday afternoon, ET.
The album cover features a black-and-white photo of the singer lying on a bed, surrounded by white pillows. Swift has her head turned to the camera, right arm across her chest and camisole strap hanging from her shoulder. Her left arm is over her torso, her fingers curled provocatively above her waist.
She’s also wearing short shorts, which makes her bare legs, bent at the knees, a focal point of the photo.
Monday on Instagram — a social media platform even more focused on visual imagery than X — Christian mom and podcaster Haley Williams decided that she had seen enough of “this idolatry and wickedness.”
“Christian women everywhere, please hear me,” Williams wrote as part of a lengthy post.
“Please, for the sake of your daughters, rise up to the occasion this presents before you.”
Williams called Swift’s album cover “[a]n opportunity to FLEE sexual immorality, not embrace it and normalize it and call yourself a fangirl of it.”
By modern standards — admittedly rather low — Swift’s album-cover photo hardly qualifies as shocking. Readers may view that photo below:
All’s fair in love and poetry… New album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Out April 19 🤍https://t.co/WdrCmvLHyA
📷: Beth Garrabrant pic.twitter.com/CCPhmSZ2UD
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) February 5, 2024
Of course, modern standards have no bearing on timeless truth. And Williams implored Christian women to recognize the truth about Swift’s photo.
Williams’ full Instagram post featured 10 different slides, each with its own image. Most slides consisted of simple text that conveyed Williams’ message to her followers regarding Swift’s album cover.
Readers may view that post below. Arrows on the right and left allow for scrolling between slides.
The first slide featured side-by-side images: On the left, the wholesome-looking cover from the then-16-year-old Swift’s self-titled 2006 debut album, and on the right, a blurry version of the photo from her upcoming album cover. Between the two images, Williams added an “equal” sign with a slash through it.
On the post’s third slide, Williams explained.
“This is NOT the same Taylor of your youth, millenial mom. This is NOT the sweet little country star you fell in love with,” she wrote.
“The album cover is sexually suggestive and provocative. Everyone with eyes knows what it looks like and is meant to look like,” she added on the fourth slide.
Williams, a wife and mother of three, hosts the faith-focused Kindled Podcast.
On the ninth slide, Williams quoted New Testament passages on self-control and sexual immorality. For Christians, of course, those Scriptural passages outweigh contemporary fashion and transcend all other authority.
Still, to those who perhaps have not yet accepted the need to obey God’s Word, Williams made a different appeal.
“Riddle me this, Christian moms. If you found your daughter taking a photo of HERSELF like this on her phone or camera, whether it was to keep or send to someone else, would you be ok with that?” Williams wrote on the sixth slide.
Having never seen the world from a parent’s perspective, I can do perhaps no other service here than to briefly explain why, as I understand the faith, Christianity teaches believers to regard such photos as immoral — that is, a violation of God’s eternal moral law.
First, Christianity makes sense only in light of that moral law. We all know this law even if we try to suppress the knowledge when it conflicts with our physical desires.
On this point, the cognitive dissonance of my fellow men makes for a perfect illustration.
For instance, Williams’ question about being “ok with” a daughter taking provocative photos of herself would call forth from every honest father a resounding and probably violent “no.”
The same holds true even for brothers with respect to their sisters. And boys, of course, learn this early in life. Coarse jokes of a taunting nature, common to male adolescent years, would not exist otherwise.
Ask many of those same fathers or brothers about an attractive female stranger, however — someone like Swift, for instance — and the violent “no” generally gives way to a resounding “yes.”
How have so many men learned to suspend their natural objections when the question involves someone else’s daughter or sister?
And which of the two reactions most probably conforms to the moral law God instilled in us? The one that authorizes us to gratify our physical desires at a woman’s expense? Or the one that tells us, as fathers and brothers, to fight for her dignity?
This leads to the second reason Christianity teaches believers to regard such photos as immoral.
Put simply, such photos necessarily draw both their subjects and their viewers inward.
Do you listen to Taylor Swift music?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 100% (11 Votes)
Using the present case as an example, Swift struck a provocative pose and made herself an object of strangers’ desire. In so doing, she brought attention to herself. The sexual nature of that attention matters less than the explicit focus on self.
Likewise, men who respond as intended to her provocative pose turn inward to their own desires. They focus on themselves and what they crave.
For comparison’s sake, what might a non-inward-looking response to Swift’s photo look like? Well, it would focus not on any physical attraction the viewer might feel but instead on her beauty. But one could have that same reaction to her first album cover: A teenage girl whose beauty came from God.
Thus, we sin not when we look at her photo and certainly not when we acknowledge her beauty. Instead, we sin when we allow that beauty to draw us away from God and into ourselves.
As he often did, legendary Christian author C.S. Lewis explained the immense stakes involved in this kind of sin.
“Satan,” Lewis wrote in “Mere Christianity” (1952), tempted human beings by persuading them that they could “invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God.”
“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history — money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery — the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
The search for happiness in “something other than God” constitutes this fallen world’s greatest pitfall. It is this, above all else, that makes Christians want to teach young people the truth about morality.
