Ever since Taylor Swift vowed to stay out of the public eye, she’s largely kept that promise. Well, her exact words were, “As far as I know I'm only doing one show in 2017, and as far as I know, this is that show,” spoken during a pre-Super Bowl concert in February. So that’s maybe less of a vow and more of a calendar update. Regardless. In October 2015 she ventured this thought: "I think I should take some time off. I think people might need a break from me.” And then, off-the-record, she told Kanye West in the infamous call tapes, “I’m like this close to overexposure.”
Like many celebrities before her, Taylor recognized that it was possible to be too famous. But unlike many of them, she took action to fix it, and then actually kept her word.
Fourth of July came and went without her annual Rhode Island celebration, known colloquially as Taymerica. The only photos of the star released publicly since the February concert have been taken with new boyfriend Joe Alwyn, and they’re grainy, as if taken with an incredibly long lens. (Unlike, say, the remarkably sharp paparazzi photos that first introduced Taylor and Tom Hiddleston to the world.) There’s the one on a Nashville balcony and the one supposedly boarding her jet in the U.K. The only social media we’ve seen from her is in service of her friends’ music releases—one Instagram for each, Selena Gomez, the sisters Haim, and Lorde, plus a small video shout-out to Russell Westbrook, this past N.B.A. season’s M.V.P., and a word of support tweeted after the Manchester bombing.
So enamored were we with the idea that Swift has been acing the laying low directive that when a Splash News paparazzi claimed the singer was carried out of her Tribeca apartment in a big box, it didn’t feel completely beyond the realm of possibility (the photo service since retracted the claim). And now, for further proof that Taylor Swift is still committed to giving the world a breather from Taylor Swift, compare what going to the gym in 2016 looks like to what going to the gym in 2017 looks like:
Swift is known for her creative paparazzi-avoidance tactics, like walking backward so they can’t train their lens on her face. But all these hoodies and grainy photos just go to show that if the most famous people in the world don’t wish to be seen, they won’t be seen. Swift is no exception, and it’s unlikely we’ll see her until she ready for us to see her—with an album in tow.
