Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Emma Chance | Celebrity | December 6, 2023
Yesterday we found out that the word of the year is "rizz," and Taylor Swift, TIME's Person of the Year, definitely has rizz.
It's a controversial choice for many, but I'm not sure why. 2023 has been the year of the Girl, and I say that as someone who identifies as a Big Time Girl. It's been Barbie, Beyoncé, and Swift; culture and media have been overrun by feminine power and joy. Last week we saw Beyoncé and Swift together at Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour film premiere just a few short months after they were together at Swift's Eras Tour film premiere, two events that made headlines. These are two powerful women who know they're more powerful together, and their combined power, ultimately, does more good than harm.
But the anti-Swift hatred has always raised alarm bells for me. I just don't understand why people love to hate her so much. I write to you as a fan of her music, but even I don't always love her as a person. I find her public appearances and performances to be a little cringy; she reminds me of that one awkward girl in the 7th grade, not popular but not unpopular either, just saying whatever pops into her head to get attention. I saw the Eras Tour movie, and I felt there was a disconnect between Swift's performance and the sentiment of most of her music (read: heartbreak). There was an earnest cheesiness there, but it felt like that earnest cheesiness replaced sincerity. Maybe that was just because it was a stadium tour and she was playing to the cheap seats, but when the camera was close-up on her face, it felt forced.
Swift reflected on the Eras tour in her TIME interview:
"It's not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me. The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity," she said, referring to her public conflict with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, "The second was having my life's work taken away from me by someone who hates me," referring to her former manager, Scooter Braun. This is what I was missing from the performance: an acknowledgment of the very high-stakes stuff that led her to write most of her songs in the first place.
But that was me--a writer in her late twenties, seeing the movie with her adult friends--who felt that way. Do you know who didn't give a sh** about Swift's sincerity, or lack thereof? Everyone else in the theater, and by that I mean the hordes of thirteen-year-olds who stomped and screamed their way through the nearly three-hour movie.
Those thirteen-year-olds are the reason Taylor Swift is Person of the Year. Like it or not, so much of our cultural taste trickles down from them. Don't forget that Swift was a teenager when she became famous, and as an adult, she is nothing if not a self-aware, shrewd businesswoman.
"By the time an artist is mature enough to psychologically deal with the job, they throw you out at 29," Swift told TIME. "In the '90s and '00s, it seems like the music industry just said: 'OK, let's take a bunch of teenagers, throw them into the fire, and watch what happens. By the time they've accumulated enough wisdom to do their job effectively, we'll find new teenagers."
Swift found new teenagers: her fans. Don't like the power of teenage girls? Sorry, it doesn't matter, they're going to keep screaming and stomping and making friendship bracelets regardless, and the economy will follow.
"If we have to speak stereotypically about the feminine and the masculine, women have been fed the message that what we naturally gravitate toward--Girlhood, feelings, love breakups, analyzing those feelings, talking about them nonstop, glitter, sequins! We've been taught that those things are more frivolous than the things that stereotypically gendered men gravitate toward, right? And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we're going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It's extremely heartening," Swift said.
She's playing the game, and she's being rewarded. If playing the game means more Girly culture, I'm all for it. And if Girly culture makes you uncomfortable, you might be the problem.
