What, you thought Taylor Swift was through with snake imagery? Think again. In the intro to the “ME!” music video, a beige and brown snake slithers and hisses its way across rainbow-colored bricks. Just as the snake — a moniker bestowed on her after Kim Kardashian leaked Swift’s infamous phone call with Kanye West — rears its head to strike, the serpent turns into a fluttering smatter of iridescent butterflies, perhaps representing Swift’s metamorphosis from her somewhat darker Reputation era to the light, fluffy, aural cotton candy that is “ME!.”
That isn’t the only butterfly imagery in the “ME!” video. In fact, if you look closely, the entire video appears to take place in a chrysalis, which Scientific American describes as a “protective casing, [where] the caterpillar radically transforms its body, eventually emerging as a butterfly or moth.” Swift has used a lot of butterfly imagery leading up to the release of “ME!.”
(Coincidentally or not, depending on the perceived level of pettiness, Kardashian posted Instagrams about snake jewelry designs the same day “ME!” dropped. We look forward to these grown women — Kim, 38, and Taylor, 29 — both finally growing up.)
