Taylor Swift and Acceptable Misogyny
In one of her notable hits, Taylor Swift sings of a former lover who finds comfort in some indie record that’s MUCH cooler than hers.
This can be seen as a euphemism for Swift’s career. At the age of 28, Swift has become one of the most successful and influential artists in music history. She’s the youngest artist to win Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards and the first woman to do it twice as a solo artist. Each of her last four albums sold over one million copies in their first week. She has the most Top 40 hits of any female artist in the history of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. So why can’t she just be?
Taylor Swift is a both household name and a mainstream music artist, so it’s natural — expected even — that she’d have a considerable number of people who just don’t ‘get’ her appeal, or dislike her altogether. There’s a different kind of aversion that’s arisen in the last couple of years, primarily on platforms such as Twitter, where you can go viral for making snarky and quick-witted remarks. It’s like high school all over again, where the meanest is the most cool. Fans become obsessive devotees, commonly known as ‘stans,’ and dedicate their accounts to their ‘fave,’ even going so far as to make their avatar a photo of their favorite artist. They sing their praises as to why they love whomever they adore, but there’s a dark side where stans attack other artists and their fans for nothing more than laughs, the expectancy of going viral and a feeling of superiority.
Swift has always been popular, but with her foray into pop music with 2014’s 1989, she became so ubiquitous that she bordered on the line of overexposure. She was on nearly every major magazine cover, at every award show (in the front row dancing, probably) and singles from her album flooded radio airwaves for months. This was no doubt heaven for fans like me, but bothersome to anyone who just wanted a break from Swift and her ‘shocked’ face at award shows, seemingly inauthentic good girl image and whatever other reasons one could come up with. Many professional writers have critiqued Swift far beyond constructively analyzing her work and rather attacked her character or discarded her popularity simply because she’s a young woman who sings about love.
One of the hallmarks of Swift’s artistry is her confessional songwriting. I don’t personally know her, but she seems like a sensitive and attentive being who experiences emotions deeply and embraces her humanity, even the unpleasing parts. She’s a woman, though, so it’s viewed as ‘too emotional.’ As many young women in their twenties do, she dates here and there, and because she’s a songwriter, she’ll crank out a tune or two about the events of said romance whether they be good or bad. Swift has stated on multiple occasions that writing music is her solace and one that she’s had since childhood, so it’s baffling to me how anyone can accuse her of dating simply for song material if they just used Google or YouTube to peruse an interview of hers. Swift’s art is trivialized in a way that her contemporaries who similarly write about love, such as Adele or Ed Sheeran, are not.
It’s no secret that women are victims of double standards in our patriarchal world. Misogyny is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it can be hard to notice with the untrained eye. This no doubt extends to the way we view and critique art. Male artists are heralded for baring their souls in song and coming forth with their honesty. Just last month, The Weeknd released an EP, My Dear Melancholy, of which many songs are believed to be inspired by his pairing with singer and actress Selena Gomez. The night it was released, I remember scrolling down my timeline and seeing tweets about how awful Gomez must have been to break his heart and listeners quoting lyrics from selected songs. This is not an attack on The Weeknd, whom I believe to be a talent in his own right and consider myself a fan. I couldn’t help but notice, however, that Swift and other female artists don’t receive the same reception when their music is released. Sure, it sells millions of copies and wins awards, but it’s taboo to publicly embrace many female artists in the same way that male artists are. It reminds me of the toxic manner in which some children are raised, where it’s cool for a girl to aspire in something meant for boys, such as sports, but if a boy shows interest in an activity that’s traditionally feminine, he’s side-eyed and ostracized from social groups.
“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, because it’s OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading.” — Julie, The Secret Garden (1993 film)
I remember the week of October 2012 when Swift’s fourth album Red was released. I wore a red rubber bracelet with the album’s logo and Swift’s name on it to school. I was excited about the album’s release the way some people are when their favorite team has a big game coming up or so pumped about an election that they flood their yards with signs promoting their favored candidate. One of my male classmates looked over and saw my bracelet and said, “Dude, is that a Taylor Swift bracelet?” Two others looked over. “Yes,” I proclaimed proudly, preparing to be the victim of grade school-level taunting but so secure in myself that I didn’t care. The group of guys were the image that would enter your head when you heard the word ‘bro,’ and I expected them to be small-minded. Surprisingly, their reception was positive (to my relief) and we had a brief conversation about some of her music. The boys admitted to liking some of her music, after all. At one point in the conversation, I asked why was it so weird for me to wear a bracelet with Taylor Swift’s logo on it if I considered myself to be a fan. “Well, you know…. she’s a girl,” said my classmate. Now, he didn’t mean any harm with that statement, but it was a prime example of how women are viewed in society. It’s normal for men to find women attractive and pursue them for romantic or sensual reasons, but any interest beyond that is perplexing. It was weird to a group of boys that I’d be so interested in music about the feelings and experiences of a young woman. I’m not completely naive, though, an African-American male is probably not the type of person one would expect to be a ‘Swiftie,’ either. Let’s get that elephant out of the room.
Swift isn’t the only female artist I’ve noticed this with, either. Nicki Minaj has proved herself as one of the best rappers in the genre, yet she is constantly belittled even though she delivers more memorable verses than many of her male counterparts on multiple tracks. The implied notion is that if you’re a male fan of a song Minaj is featured on, you’re probably listening to the song because of the male artist on it and not Minaj herself (Minaj speaks of this standard at 9:10 of this interview). I‘ve sat in barber shops amidst countless conversations about sex symbols such as Beyoncé and Rihanna that bared little to no regard to their actual humanity or artistry, but demoted their existences to objects of affection and not engagement.
Misogyny finds its way into all of our lives and can’t be uprooted unless it’s acknowledged and challenged. When I asked my classmate why it was peculiar for me to sport my Swift paraphernalia as a male fan, he was at a loss for words, but he ultimately came to the conclusion that it was just the way things are.
Oh, how different would life be for all of us and future generations if we refuse to accept things as they are and instead push them to be the best version of themselves?
My masculinity is not threatened because I prefer to listen to pop music, but my integrity is threatened if I allow outside opinions to mold me into nothing more than a societal expectation and not the unique individual I am.
This isn’t a ploy for you to become a Swift fan, but rather a call for anyone who considers them self to be a believer in equality to take note of the unconscious prejudices and partialities in their own life. As for me, I’ll be somewhere shaking it off.
