Actress Rachel Zegler has come to the defense of Taylor Swift after watching a podcast clip that sexualized the “Anti-Hero” singer. Zegler, who is set to play Snow White in an impending live-action film, took to X (formerly Twitter) to express her concern about the way “men feel entitled to speak about women.”
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The clip in question comes from a Barstool Sports podcast, Pardon My Take. One host, Dan Katz, talked about the budding relationship between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. According to the commentator, the relationship isn’t real to him until he sees something concrete.
[RELATED: The Taylor Swift Effect: The NFL Has a Lot to Thank the Popstar For]
“I’ll say this, if Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift release a sex video, I’ll consummate this relationship,” Katz said in the clip. “I’ll be like fine, ‘You guys can have sex–you can be boyfriend/girlfriend.’ P and V, otherwise it’s not real.
“Should we demand it?” he continued. “I wanna see some insertion…Until that happens, I think it’s fake. I think it’s for clicks. I think Taylor Swift is using the NFL to try and make her star bigger.”
Zegler replied to the clip of the podcast posted by Katz, defending Swift. “It’s not news that the media is particularly (and unwarrantedly) cruel to Taylor Swift but the way men feel entitled to speak about women, their bodies, and their sex lives needs to be seriously evaluated,” Zegler wrote.
“You will never see people speaking this way about a man,” she continued. “That goes for a lot of different scenarios. We do not pick apart men’s attitudes and relationships the way we do women’s and it’s not always just men who speak this way about us. Women can and do, too. It sucks.”
Zegler’s tweet received a lot of attention–both good and bad. She returned to the thread to address those calling Katz’s comments “Just a joke.”
“Seeing a lot of, ‘It’s a joke’ but you’ve got to understand that since the beginning of time, ‘You can’t take a joke’ has been synonymous with, ‘Let me say a horrible thing about women without suffering the consequences,'” Zegler added. “We’re sick and tired! It’s never been funny! Get a life!”
Check out Zegler’s Tweets and Katz’s comments, below.
(Photo by Jeremy Moeller/Getty Images)
