| TAYLOR SWIFT - The Daily Mail, November 2010. |
| Written by Shahlin Graves |
| Monday, 08 November 2010 15:12 |
 Accompanying The Daily Mail's latest interview with TAYLOR SWIFT, are snaps from a brand new photoshoot with photographer Joseph Anthony Baker, who also took photos for the artwork of Swift's 'Fearless' and 'Speak Now' album booklets. "In person, Taylor has the striking otherness of a supermodel: 5ft 11in, thin as a filament, with feline eyes which she has a bit of a complex about, thinking them too small, although in practice their imperfection saves her from mere prettiness. Already she is an old hand at interviews and has a few standard answers she rattles off, though she lacks the guile to disguise what she is doing. She is diligent and polite and bears the unmistakable reserve of the bullied child, wearing courtesy like an elegant armour. At least that’s how it seems to me, as the mother of a bullied daughter. When I mention this, Taylor’s guard drops like a curtain and there’s a sudden flash of raw affinity. She is the sheltered product of doting parents, Scott, a stockbroker, and Andrea, who gave up her own high-flying career in financial marketing to raise Taylor and her younger brother Austin at their 15-acre hobby farm in Pennsylvania. Taylor remembers her early childhood as running free with tangled hair, riding horses. There were no close neighbours so theirs was a pretty self-contained family unit, with Andrea’s opera-singer mother providing the thrill of showiness. It was this grandmother who got Taylor hooked on singing and performing, so that she became a regular in children’s musical theatre shows and competitions. But when the family moved to a suburban neighbourhood, life changed from idyllic to ‘trying to fit in’. Aged 12, her efforts came crashing down. She thinks her peers found her ‘weird’. I suspect that they were jealous of her growing success at local festivals when they had her patronisingly tagged as the tall, thin, pale kid who was no good at sports. One night, soon after she’d sung the national anthem at a professional basketball game, she rang round her friends to see if anyone wanted to hang out with her at the local mall. ‘That memory is one of those painful ones you’ll never fully get over,’ she says, emotionally. ‘At that point I’d been shunned from the group for whatever reason and I was still trying desperately to be included. That evening, I called them up and they each said no and Mom said, “You know what? You want to go to the mall, let’s go together.” And we ran into this entire group of girls who had told me they were busy that night. In situations like that my mum has known exactly the right time to run away. There are situations where you have to encourage someone to be tough and there are times when you should just run. So we got in the car and we drove to the mall that’s an hour and a half away but is a better mall.’" Read The Daily Mail's full interview HERE. Check out more photos from Baker's new photoshoot with Swift below... P.S. WANNA WIN YOUR VERY OWN $3000 TAYLOR-MADE PROM? 'Course you do... All you need to do to enter is design and plan your dream prom - everything is up to you - and we will pick our favourite as the winner. Click HERE for further details.    |
