In reading my stories this morning, I came across an article at Slate about Taylor Swift. Normally, I would just ignore it because I don’t care much about pop culture and the weird nitpicking Slate does with celebs. I don’t mean nitpicking at celebs is weird–but they choose to focus on weird things like the suit Obama wore in his inauguration photo. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible as they wasted thousands of words to say, either. It was just boring as fuck–which was the point, I would surmise.
Anyway, in this case, there was an article called, Why Does Taylor Swift Hold Her Pen Like That? It’s by Heather Schwedel, and her writing is…uh, incidental is the best way I can phrase it. That’s not entirely fair, but it’s like she’s dabbling at the fringes for the most part. Which is fine. Not everyone has to write about important and weighty issues, but it’s just strange how something like the way Taylor Swift holds a pen in her video spurs an article that includes interviews with occupational therapists.
First of all, the title of the article caused me to roll my eyes as the title of most Slate articles do. I know clickbait is the name of the game, but Slate is particularly egregious with this. Then, there is a question and an answer under the title and before the name of the author. Should we be concerned? We called up occupational therapists to find out.
The utter hubris of the question and the answer. Taylor Swift doesn’t need Heather Schwedel to be concerned about her health. Taylor Swift has access to the best doctors in the world. If there is an actual issue with the way she holds a pen, she is perfectly capable of fixing it on her own.
In addition, when I looked at the picture with the big arrow pointing to her hand, I had no idea what the problem was. I had to read the actual article and do some Googling to figure out the actual problem. Apparently, the ‘normal’ way to hold a pen is between the thumb and the middle finger with the first finger used as the stabilizer (or not).
This was an utter shock to me because that’s not how I hold a pen/pencil. I hold it between my thumb and ring finger with my middle finger as the stabilizer. I have been doing this all my life, and have never known this was the wrong way to hold a pen.
My mother, by the way, holds it like she does her chopsticks, in her fist. It’s oddly endearing and it does not impede her in any way.