Taylor Swift urges fans to stand up for gender equality during Teen Choice Icon Award speech

Taylor Swift accepted the first-ever Icon Award at the 2019 Teen Choice Awards Sunday night, but first she honored Alex Morgan, the co-captain of the world-cup-winning U.S. Women's National soccer team, who presented Swift's award. "First I want to talk about Alex Morgan," said Swift. "The fact that she's here presenting this to me is such an honor. Not only winning the World Cup with her amazing teammates, right? But while they were winning the World Cup, they were also taking a historic stand in terms of gender equality, gender pay gaps. Please, please, please support her and her teammates because this isn't over yet. It's not resolved." On top of Swift's insanely successful and record-breaking career, which includes over 50 million album sales, over 150 million single downloads, over 400 major awards, and the #1 highest grossing U.S. tour in history, Swift has been using her platform to stand up for gender equality, including equal pay for men and women. During her acceptance speech Sunday, the icon continued to urge fans to speak up. "Get online, talk about it, let people know how you feel about it because what happened to them is unfair," Swift continued. "It's happening everywhere, and they are heroes and icons for standing up." Swift also took a moment to thank "whoever it was at the Teen Choice Awards who decided to put the itty bitty pretty kitty committee on this surfboard." If you're a fan of Swift, you know how much she adores her furry children, so the surfboard was kinda purr-fect, to say the least. In fact, Swift went as far as to say that it was her favorite award she's received, aesthetically speaking. Swift then addressed her fans and took a minute to thank them for their support, before she told her teen fans, "One thing I wish I would have known when I was a teen is that mistakes are inevitable," said Swift. "I think sometimes you think if you try hard enough to make every decision perfectly, you think you can possibly ace life and never make any mistakes but, it is normal to make mistakes. I just want you to know that if you are out there and you are being really hard on yourself right now for something that has happened, or messing up, or feeling embarrassed, it's normal. That's what's going to happen to you in life. No one gets through unscathed. We're all going to have a few scratches on us." Swift's speech was amazing, especially considering the fact that she was totally drunk the night before. Early Sunday morning, #DrunkTaylor was trending on Twitter, after a video of the pop star drunk-dancing went viral. In fact, Swift herself took to Instagram Sunday with the caption: "we had so much fun that ‘Drunk Taylor’ is trending on Twitter. CHEERS." Swift closed out her speech Sunday with some big news about her upcoming album, which drops August 23rd. "There's so much that I'm excited about coming up in the next 12 days until my album Lover comes out. The album comes out on August 23rd, but I wanted to tell you guys tonight that on the 16th, on Friday, I have a new song called 'Lover' that is coming out, and I'm so excited," said Swift.