Taylor Swift's Belly Button

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Part of a series on Taylor Swift. [View Related Entries]

About

Taylor Swift's Belly Button is a popular topic of online discussions and obsession among the fans of the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, mainly due to the celebrity's long-standing reluctance towards wearing clothes that expose her navel.

Origin

On August 1st, 2014, the news site NY Mag^[2] published an article titled "There's No Proof Taylor Swift Has a Belly Button," which highlighted several photographs of Swift wearing clothing exposing her stomach slightly above her navel (shown below).

Spread

On October 19th, 2014, the entertainment news blog Perez Hilton highlighted several additional photographs of Swift concealing her navel in a post titled "The Mystery of Taylor Swift's Belly Button" (shown below).

On November 20th, the fashion blog Lucky Shops^[1] published an interview with Swift, in which she revealed she does not like to wear clothing that completely exposes her midriff.

“I don’t like showing my belly button. When you start showing your belly button then you’re really committing to the midriff thing. I only partially commit to the midriff thing--you’re only seeing lower rib cage. I don’t want people to know if I have one or not.” She laughs. “I want that to be a mystery. As far as anyone knows based on my public appearances, they haven’t seen evidence of a belly button. It could be pierced. They have no idea. If I’m going to get some sort of massive tattoo, it’s going to be right next to my belly button because no one’s ever going to see that.”

On November 24th, the fashion blog Refinery29^[8] published an article titled "The Reason You'll Never See Taylor Swift's Belly Button." On August 20th, the novelty Twitter account @TaysBellybutton^[3] was launched.

Instagram Photograph

On January 23rd, 2015, Swift posted a photograph of herself on Instagram^[4] in which she is shown posing in a bikini on a boat with three sisters from the indie rock band Haim (shown below). The photograph widely circulated online, with many pointing out that it marked the first occasion Swift had publicly shared a photograph of her exposed navel.^[5]^[6]

Photoshop Battle

On June 14th, 2015, Redditor thats_not_me submitted a photograph of Swift pulling down a pair of shorts to reveal her belly button to the /r/photoshopbattles^[7] subreddit, inviting viewers to digitally alter the picture. In the first 72 hours, the post gained over 4,700 votes (87% upvoted) and 870 comments, many of which contained links to photoshopped versions of the photo (shown below). In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the photoshop meme, including UpRoxx,^[9] People^[10] and Mashable.^[11]