#5 My complicated relationship with Taylor Swift
Why we need to stop belittling emotional women
I had a big moment last Friday.
I was lying on the couch with my laptop and phone resting precariously on my legs. I’d Googled how to turn off sleep mode on both devices so the screens wouldn’t go dark. It was critical that the browsers didn’t refresh.
I missed out on the first round of pre-sale tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour two days earlier, so today was do or die. Sydney, Melbourne, it didn’t matter. I had a support crew – my sister, my dad, a few friends – all committed to sitting by their devices for however long it took. Dad said he was ok to wait in front of the computer while he listened to an audio book. He had six hours to go in A Gentleman in Moscow.
I started streaming Taylor Swift’s Reputation stadium tour on the television. I was hungover from a work event and feeling more vulnerable than usual about my Taylor Swift fandom.
It might seem funny that I use the word vulnerable in the context of Taylor Swift: the most popular artist in the world. I know I’m hardly alone in enjoying her music. I’ll never forget when my group of friends all collectively revealed our Spotify most played for 2022 as Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well’. The 10-minute version.
Ticketek announced that the pre-sale on Wednesday saw the highest-ever number of people trying to buy tickets for an artist in Australia. Four million people – almost a sixth of the country’s population – were in the line. Between Sydney and Melbourne, she sold out seven stadiums in the space of a few hours.
Nonetheless, my relationship with Taylor Swift is a complicated one.
I’ve often downplayed my love of her music and it’s usually around the men I’m dating. The stereotype of a Swiftie remains the image of a hysterical, white, teenage girl. Someone who doesn’t have true taste in music and should not be taken seriously.
This is despite the fact her fanbase spans across demographics – ages, races, religions and political affiliations. Even our Prime Minister is a Swiftie. And contrary to what the media headlines portray – diehard Swifties demanding their parents pay top dollar for a ticket – Millennials make up the biggest proportion of her fanbase.
Taylor is the first woman to win the Grammy’s Album of the Year three times, is the highest-earning female musician of the past decade, has the most streamed album in a single day in Spotify history, and is the only artist to ever claim all top ten entries on the Billboard Hot 100 in a single week.
Beyond breaking music records, her superstar career has been accompanied by a number of iconic power moves off stage.
In 2017 she successfully countersued a radio host for sexual assault to the value of $1, after he lost his job and claimed Swift’s allegations that he groped her at a PR event – as detailed within her song “Miss Americana” – were false.
In 2018, Taylor encouraged thousands of young Americans to vote in the midterm elections via her Instagram account. Voter registrations shot up nearly 65,000 among Americans aged 18-29 roughly 24 hours after her post and by noon the next day, that number had grown to more than 102,000.
In an industry fraught with complex contracts and rights issues, Taylor’s decision to rerecord her first six albums helped define a new model for creatives to wrestle compensation back from industry forces. When her first contract with Big Machine Records ended in 2018, Taylor was denied the opportunity to buy her own masters and instead, they were sold to a company that she accused of bullying her. She slammed the sale publicly and has since been rereleasing ‘Taylor’s Version’ of her archival works – to much commercial success – in a bid to make the original masters less valuable and protect her artistic legacy.
And yet, for many people, Taylor Swift’s character arc remains the story of a country singer turned pop star with a chaotic dating history, who likes to sing about her exes. The media has consistently framed her as a “boy-crazy crooner” and belittled the hyper-emotionality of her songwriting.
Cultural commentators and the public alike feel the need to dissect her success as a curious cultural phenomena. The outcome is that I’ve been left with conflicted feelings about being seen as someone who likes her music.
But back to my big moment.
An hour passed. At one point my sister called in a panic. She was in the booking system, but couldn’t navigate the limited seating options before the timer ran out. It’s ok, I said, not letting her hear the disappointment in my voice, we’ve still got a shot for the Melbourne show.
I started singing along with Taylor on the television. It had been a particularly tumultuous week in my dating life and as Taylor Swift belted out Blank Space, big emotion was stirring in me. The tears began to stream. But it wasn’t sadness I was feeling. I was smiling. These were tears of joy, of utter awe and gratitude for the woman singing on stage. Who, despite all the unfound criticism, the sexist commentary around her love life, her character, her body, and her music, continues to sing her truth.
And seven stadiums worth of people – the majority of who are women – clearly believe there’s something in it.
I think the relatability of Taylor’s music lies in the fact that she calls out the type of gendered mistreatment that sits in the grey zone. Not traumatic enough to be considered physical or verbal abuse, but actions that are more subtle and hard to pinpoint. Actions that can still leave a person feeling small and detached from their value as a human.
In ‘All Too Well’ Taylor calls out her ex-boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal for taking advantage of a woman 10 years his junior. In her words, he abruptly broke things off when she became more real than the “never-needy, ever-lovely jewel” he wanted. What makes Gyllenhaal’s behaviour unacceptable is not that he explicitly coerced or abused her, but that he disparaged the more vulnerable parts of her personality – he “laughed at [her] dreams, rolled [his] eyes at [her] jokes”.
There is another term for this phenomenon: negging. When a person uses emotional manipulation to play off the weakness and insecurities of another in order to make themselves feel better or more powerful. It happens all the time – in the workplace, in the family home and in romantic relationships with men.
Meanwhile on the television, Taylor Swift picks up her guitar and starts speaking candidly to the crowd.
“I get past or understand something I’m going through by writing about it”, she says.
It’s like she took the words from my mouth. My own writing practice is a similarly cathartic experience. I get passionate and write best when I’m putting down exactly what I’m feeling, not censoring it for fear of what people think.
When I wrote my first article about an early dating experience, the words came so easily.
As the months have gone by and my audience has grown, I have felt increasingly hesitant to engage in topics around dating, womanhood and relationships – even though these are often front of mind.
It makes me nervous to speak to experiences and patterns that highlight the poor behaviour of men and the pain I’ve been through. Partly because I don’t want to upset them or publicly shame them (although anything I write here I would say to their face), but mostly because I still want to remain attractive to them and other potential men in my future.
Theorist Akane Kanai defines the ‘feelings rules’ that are imposed on young women: “be beautiful, carefree and charismatic, but don’t let the burden of that get to you”. Under these rules, women need to be resilient and confident too, and prove that women aren’t hysterical.
Kenai argues that ‘feeling rules’ shape how young women may feel in relation to gendered regulation, limiting their articulation of managing this burden to humorous, upbeat quips in the genre of safe, funny, ‘girlfriendly’ material.
Cue any time I’ve poked self-aware fun – ‘It must just be my anxiety LOL’ – at my own feelings.
Three hours in, I get a Facetime call from my sister – she got the tickets.
I feel like I’ve been on an epic emotional journey without leaving the couch. The big moment wasn’t even getting the tickets, it was realising how instrumental Taylor Swift has been in helping me feel seen through my pain, loneliness and heartache.
I am a Swiftie and I’m not going to make a joke about it or pretend that I’m going to her show ironically. Her music isn’t going to be for everyone, but I do think we need to interrogate why we so often belittle a woman (and her fans) who has done nothing but speak her truth and inspire a generation of listeners to do the same.
I haven’t been planning my topics for Poochie Writes very far in advance. Instead, I’ve been letting whatever experiences, thoughts and feelings I’ve having in the moment guide me. A Swiftie awakening was more unexpected than most. Of course, I’m writing this piece with an awareness that I can only speak about my own experience as a cisgender woman in heterosexual relationships. I’m not in a position to comment on the dynamics of other types of relationships and identities, however, I think it’s clear that Taylor has touched the hearts of many. As always, interested to hear your thoughts, feelings and feedback.
Emma / Pooch x
Loving what you are writing Emma. A tad sobering when it mirrors my experiences over the years. Might be time for me to revisit the therapeutic benefits of writing. I am saying out loud and proud that I am a Swifty too but probably more of a Chicks (aka Dixie Chicks) gal.