Taylor Swift's Eras Tour will take over Carnegie Science Center, hopefully without Matty Healy | Pittsburgh City Paper

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour will take over Carnegie Science Center, hopefully without Matty Healy

click to enlarge Taylor Swift's Eras Tour will take over Carnegie Science Center, hopefully without Matty Healy
Photo: Courtesy of Carnegie Science Center
Taylor Swift figurines to be featured in the Carnegie Science Center's Miniature Railroad & Village exhibit

Taylor Swift is known for hiding little Easter eggs for her fans to find. In her own words, she gets a thrill from embedding cryptic messages about album drop dates, single titles, or collaborations into clothing, jewelry, music videos, Instagram captions, or whatever else. (There's even a whole faction of her fandom that believes she is intentionally communicating her own queerness through coding and flagging in her lyrics, videos, and performances shoutout to the Gaylors.)

It's on brand, then, that the Carnegie Science Center has created its own Easter eggs in 10 teeny-tiny Taylors that will be hidden throughout its Miniature Railroad & Village exhibit on June 16 and 17, when Taylor Swift's Eras Tour stops at Pittsburgh's Acrisure Stadium.

Carrying the tour's theme, each mini Taylor will be dressed to reflect one of the pop icon's famous "eras." Visitors can hunt through the exhibit in search of little Fearless Taylor or little Reputation Taylor, or whichever aesthetic is their fave.

We can only hope, though, there won't be any mini Matty Healys tagging along, hanging out in the tiny VIP tent, looking shaggy and unbothered as fuck, crooning along to "Lover" like it was written just for him.

Taylor Swift has come under fire in recent weeks for being romantically linked to Healy, the lead singer of The 1975 who has said racist and bigoted things, as well as professed to getting off on Black women being humiliated, degraded, and abused. While Healy's actions are his own fault, and certainly not Swift's, she has knowingly chosen to link herself to him, fan the flames of dating rumors, and invite him to perform on her stage, tacitly approving, or at least dismissing, his offensive actions.

This has amplified criticism she was already receiving for not speaking out against anti-trans and anti-drag legislation, especially as her tour hit Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, where some of the most Draconian anti-LGBTQ laws have been proposed or passed. After promising during her Lover era to always stand up for the community, many fans feel, to quote Swift directly, that they've "never heard silence quite this loud."
click to enlarge Taylor Swift's Eras Tour will take over Carnegie Science Center, hopefully without Matty Healy
Photo: Courtesy of Carnegie Science Center
As if that weren't enough, this controversy is coming to a head as Swift is promoting the re-recording of her Speak Now album, the original marketing of which was centered around speaking up at the right time. In response, fans have started a #SpeakUpNow campaign on Twitter that invites both Swift and Healy to take accountability for their actions (or inactions) and do the work to change course.

So, if you see some mini Ratty Matty hanging out around the choo-choos, kick him out of our beloved Science Center, please! And if you spot tiny Lover Taylor decked out in her get-up from the "You Need to Calm Down" video, please remind her it's not cool to invite drag queens and other queer folks to prop up her art and then do nothing when their rights are under attack.
The Miniature Railroad & Village exhibit is included with general admission to Carnegie Science Center (One Allegheny Ave., North Side). More info at carnegiesciencecenter.org.

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