Taylor Swift is one of the most famous women in the world but there’s a wild reason she hasn’t always been liked.
Taylor Swift has become cool again, but if Taylor Swift was a man, she never would have become uncool in the first place.
It has finally become socially acceptable to drop into conversation that you are a fan of Taylor Swift’s work.
She’s currently on her Eras tour, doing three-hour-long shows to sold-out crowds in America’s biggest stadiums and going viral for diving into a vat of water during her show.
The singer-songwriter has also become an adored internet girlie. Finally, there’s justice for the women that grew up listening to Taylor Swift’s lyrics put words to our very complicated feelings.
Taylor Swift has been playing to sold-out shows. Picture: John Shearer/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
Taylor Swift looking gorgeous in 2022. Photo by Gotham/GC Images
TikTok is now peppered with fans sharing their outfits for the tour, their favourite moments live, and their reactions after seeing her perform. In all the excitement and glitter, it is easy to forget that Taylor Swift’s popularity hasn’t been a straight line.
Her entire career has been a success, but her social perception has often been a failure. I’ve always been fascinated by how one of the world’s most famous and successful women could simultaneously be considered cringe and treated like a joke.
In 2013 when Tina Fey was hosting the Golden Globes, she joked that Taylor Swift needed some “me time.”
This was a reference to Taylor Swift’s public dating life, where she’d been linked to everyone from Joe Jonas to Harry Styles.
Fey’s jab basically summed up the internet’s feelings about Swift.
She was seen as a desperately in-love relationship hopper who could not convince a single man to stay with her.
Meanwhile, her male peers like John Mayer, Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran escaped the same scrutiny and were seen as playboys – not sad simps that couldn’t keep a women’s attention.
While Sheeran’s autobiographical lyrics were praised, Swift was consistently asked in every interview if men were scared to date her because she might write a song about them.
It was a constant cultural minimisation of her music, talent and status.
She was seen as a bitter ex-girlfriend not a bona fide superstar.
Taylor Swift poses with her six trophies during the 50th Annual American Music Awards. Picture: Valerie Macon/AFP
Taylor Swift with her ex Harry Styles. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
The treatment of Swift, in retrospect, seems so obviously steeped in sexism it feels outrageous we were all so accepting of it.
She became the most famous woman in the world, and she was punished for it.
Bieber peed in a bucket at a restaurant and within less than six months he was back to being beloved.
It took Swift years to recover from pissing off rapper Kanye West.
When you look back on Swift’s career and the PR disasters that come with it there are few clear standouts.
Her infamous feud with Kanye West and the backlash she received when she started attending events with a model squad of leggy friends. Still, I found the overarching temperature in the room most interesting.
It was simply uncool to like someone like Taylor Swift.
Did she make mistakes? Yes.
Did she make more than her male contemporaries? No.
Were the men forgiven quickly? Yes.
Was Taylor Swift forgiven quickly? No.
Taylor Swift with her old girl squad. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
The infamous Kanye incident at the 2009 MTV Awards. Picture: Christopher Polk/Getty Images
Swift was roasted for calling out Kanye West for calling her a “bitch” in his song Famous.
He didn’t get the same backlash when he made a music video for that song and used a naked model that looked eerily similar to Taylor Swift.
Some of the venoms towards Swift can simply be explained by our entrenched misogyny.
She was unapologetically girly, known for making heart shapes with her hands in Instagram photos, wearing feminine dresses and singing about boys with beautiful eyes.
She wasn’t pretending to be edgy or alternate, and she was a young woman that leant into all the emotions of being one, yet she was ridiculed on mass for it.
In our culture ‘girly’ things generally tend to be dismissed or laughed off. It is frivolous to like shopping but fair enough to love golf.
I find her uprising healing because it proves to a certain extent the needle is moving, and we are finally prepared to admit that Taylor Swift didn’t need to change to earn our approval we all needed to change.
