The courtroom sketches of Taylor Swift giving testimony during a civil trial over an allegation that she was groped, are like fan art by someone who hates her. A sort of… face shape? You know, up, then round, then down. Then a bit of yellow, for the hair? A top! Let’s draw a top, a suggestion of a top. Arms? Mouth? Maybe, if we have time.
She stands in court at the end of a story that started in 2013, when Swift took part in a meet-and-greet, and posed for a photo with a Denver radio host called David Mueller. As the photo was taken, in front of a crowd of fans, Swift says, Mueller (51 to her 23) put his hand up the back of her skirt and grabbed “a handful of [her] ass”. The photo was later leaked, and, in it, smiling with her teeth, Swift is leaning away from him as if blown by a strong wind. After her management team reported the incident to his employer, for whom he’d been working backstage that night, he was fired.
Two years later, Mueller sued her for $3 million in damages, alleging her accusation was false and unfairly cost him his job. He maintains it was a simple jostle, that his hand may have been on her ribs. So Swift, who had until then kept quiet about the incident (her mother said they didn’t want to go to the police, or risk the photograph itself going viral, despite it having led to a decision to avoid fan interactions like that meet-and-greet in future), countersued for sexual assault, seeking a total of $1.
His lawyer asked Swift if she had any feelings about Mueller losing his job. And she said, “I’m not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault. Here we are years later, and I’m being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisions – not mine.” I mean, that’s the kind of mantra girls should be taught at school, right? That is proper punch-the-air, write-it-on-your-homework-diary, pull-your-shoulders-back-and-feel- what-it’s-like-to-hear-the-words-come-out- of-your-mouth stuff. That is the lesson to teach girls and women across the world: that sexual assault, whether a hand up her skirt or the time she was too drunk to say no, is not the victim’s fault.
With each of Swift’s responses to Mueller’s lawyer, there was the curious dissonance of a victim refusing to behave like one. Was she critical of her bodyguard for not stepping in? Nope, “I’m critical of your client sticking his hand under my skirt and grabbing my ass.” Could Swift see the incident happening? Well, no, she couldn’t see exactly because her “ass is in the back of my body”.
There’s something of the pop song in this trial. You find yourself sort of singing along. Like her break-up hits, she’s putting lyrics to the sometimes banal, sometimes crushing experiences her audiences have shared. Swift, whose net worth is $280 million, has a fanbase made up largely of teenage girls. She has said she is pursuing this $1 case for them. So we are watching her use her immense privilege, fluency and confidence to give them the words to understand and to fight against the inevitable crap they have faced, or will do.
She’s telling them – this generation coming of age at a time when men in power laugh off “pussy grabs” – not to feel guilty about a guilty man being punished for his actions, for “ruining his life”. She has given them a framework for how to think about boundaries, how to contextualise the everyday micro-assaults they may have become deaf to, and how to take the stage with the confidence of an international pop star, albeit one badly drawn in crayon.
But for all the online outrage about the courtroom sketches (“Were these portraits drawn by Katy Perry?” asked one fan), this has been a rare example of a sexual assault trial where women needn’t wait for the outcome through their fingers. I’m filing this after the judge threw out Mueller’s defamation- of-character claim against Swift, and before the jury considers her counter-claim, but however this battle ends, with her testimony a generational war has been won.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
