I hate that Taylor Swift annoys me
She's insanely talented. But a part of me can't stand her. Why?
I’m going to get this out first, because it’s scary to admit: I have issues with Taylor Swift.
When I hear her music, I cringe. It has to do with her voice, how she’s almost speaking rather than singing, enunciating “I’ll forget your name” and “devils roll the dice” and “are you ready for it?” I actually like her early-career songs best, back when you could tell she was trying to walk the well-worn path of a pop country singer. Give me “Love Story” over “You Need to Calm Down.” When I see her in the news, I roll my eyes. Again? I’m so tired of this person. When I hear about the gobs of money she makes, I get angry. Partly because I don’t think billionaires should exist (more on that in a minute), but also partly because I don’t think she deserves it. There are musicians and bands even more musically talented than her sleeping in cramped vans right now in random little towns across America on tours where only 100 diehard fans come to their shows. When I heard that Swift just won a Grammy award for album of the year, a part of me whispered inside: Does she really deserve it?
So, when men started freaking out about the attention she’s been getting at her partner Travis Kelce’s football games, I sort of got it. I love watching football—despite all the horrible things about the billionaire-owned National Football League. (I wrote about my complicated love of football in the first post of this newsletter.) I don’t tune in on Sundays to see celebrities cheering from their cozy box seats. I want to see my Dallas Cowboys play a violent but cerebral sport, what New York Times writer Jane Coaston perfectly described as a “logic game played at full speed, a chess match, a whirlwind, and sometimes it’s completely, wonderfully bonkers.”
But I want to slow down and investigate why I’m feeling this way about Swift in particular.
Why do I roll my eyes when I see her? Why do I think she doesn’t deserve Grammy awards? I don’t want to feel this way. She’s insanely talented. She’s a songwriting and marketing genius. She really does deserve all the success. I love Bob Dylan’s music, and he enunciates his words even more. (He’s also known to be rude and arrogant.) What is happening inside of me? Why am I like this?
I think most of it has to do with patriarchy, the ways I’ve been conditioned as a man to think about women. Some of it is envy. I used to want to be a rock star, strumming my guitar in my teenage bedroom dreaming of touring the world and playing sold-out stadiums. My college rock band actually did go on tour, and we slept in our van. But we fizzled out in my mid-20s, tired of playing nearly empty bars to a few friends. I wish I’d achieved even just 1 percent of what Swift has.
But mostly, I’m not used to seeing a woman have that much power. During almost every Cowboys game the camera zooms in on Jerry Jones, the team’s oil tycoon owner, sitting in his luxury box, often with a politician or celebrity, like former New Jersey governor Chris Christie or Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. I’m never surprised. (I probably would’ve been surprised to see Nelson Mandela with Jones, but that apparently happened in 1999 when I was a teenager and likely somewhere away from the TV.) It didn’t faze me when the cameras showed Donald Trump at football games when he was president. Seeing rich and powerful men with other rich and powerful men is normal.
But when it’s Taylor Swift, part of me is like, how is this person who has nothing to do with football other than she dates one of the players getting so much attention? I remember back when Cowboys star quarterback Tony Romo was dating then-popstar Jessica Simpson. When the camera showed her at games, it was clear she was seen more as Romo’s girlfriend than a celebrity in her own right. It didn’t seem to matter that she had sold millions of records. (Then-President George W. Bush still got in a misogynistic jab, blaming her for Romo’s poor play.) Swift is on a completely different dimension. Travis Kelce is on her arm, benefiting from her star power, not the other way around. The most valuable sports league in the world is benefitting from her, and they know it. That’s why they keep showing her. I hate that I feel this way. But I get annoyed seeing Swift be that powerful. She doesn’t deserve all that power, because I don’t get why her music is so special. I can’t relate to it. It’s not for me.
This is, of course, what feminists have been telling us for years.
Men tend to feel threatened by successful women. I’ve always nodded in agreement. It makes so much sense to me that women are (rightfully) pissed about what is clearly a double standard. But even though I intellectually understand and agree with that, there’s still an emotional, visceral part of me that feels some type of way about Swift. When my partner plays her music in the house, I automatically roll my eyes or mock Swift’s voice. I try to keep it in, because my partner loves her music—and I love my partner. But sometimes it slips out. Sometimes I send my partner memes making fun of Swift, trying to get her to join me in the hate. I don’t want to do that, but I sometimes do.
The reason I’m exposing these feelings—believe me, I’m scared to—is because I think it’s important for men to be honest. If we’re going to successfully convince other men to stop being sexist, we can’t pretend like we’re perfect all the time. We have to own up to the patriarchal thinking we’ve soaked up having been born and raised in this society. Feminism can’t be a mask we put on so that women like us or think we’re “good” men. That would mean that there are “bad” men. As I wrote a few weeks ago, while there are people who do and say bad things, there are no bad people. We’ve all absorbed ways of thinking about “traditional” gender roles. Even women—how else to explain all the (white) women who support Trump, other than internalized patriarchy (and white supremacy)?
Let me be clear: Judging Taylor Swift because she’s so powerful and successful is a bad thing to do. Especially when it’s part of a right-wing conspiracy theory contrived to help elect Trump. I also want to stress that only a part of me is annoyed by her. There’s another part of me that’s excited she’ll be at the Super Bowl, since I’ll be able to connect with my partner about it during the game. (Which reminds me of this awesome Instagram post about dads bonding with their daughters about football because of Swift.) There’s also another part of me that is in awe of her talent. Like I said, she’s a genius.
I’m going to try to get better at keeping that annoyed part to myself.
I wanted to share about it here, with you, in hopes that it will help me let go of my patriarchal thinking. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as a therapist is that talking openly about parts of ourselves we’re ashamed of helps us change and grow. We’re up against thousands of years of patriarchy. And then capitalism came along a few hundred years ago and “intensified gender division,” in the words of socialist feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser. When a woman breaks through the glass ceiling and beats rich and powerful men at their own rules, it can feel like the foundation of our society is shaking. A part of us feels threatened, and then another part of us wants to lash out. Fixing things is going to take being real with each other about all our feelings, and it’s going to take a long time.
If there is one quibble I have with Swift, it’s that she’s a billionaire, and billionaires shouldn’t exist, regardless of their gender identity. There are over 650,000 people without homes in the U.S. There are 41 million people on food stamps. No one should own eight houses. No one should own 13 cars. No one should own a private jet. Yet, if there was a list of billionaires whose wealth and power we should take and redistribute to the masses, Taylor Swift would not be close to the top. She doesn’t exploit over a million workers like Jeff Bezos or own a right-wing propaganda machine like Elon Musk. Those are the billionaires we should be holding accountable and organizing to take down. She’s not the one we should be going after.
Now, a question for the comments below (or email me: jeremy@jeremymohler.blog): How do you feel about Taylor Swift?
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