Am I In My Swiftie Era?

No, just my over-analyzing celebrity relationship gossip era.

Full disclaimer: In a venn-diagram of people who care about football and people who care about Taylor Swift, I am firmly on the outside of both circles, no overlap. My husband is a Chief’s fan in so much as every few years, he has a new player that he likes and a few years ago he decided he liked Pat Mahomes. I like a few Taylor songs, will occasionally throw on Style when I need to roll down my windows on a deserted road and have a ~moment~ but I don’t consider myself a fan. What I do love, however, is messy celebrity drama, conspiracies, and gossip. And for that, there is none greater than Miss Taylor Alison Swift. 

I think it’s safe to say that no one has been in as many highly publicized relationships as Swift. Neither “many” nor “highly publicized” are meant to be valuejudgments, so please don’t come for me. It’s simply a statement of fact, and one of my things about her that has been talked to death. That being said, I think a lot of the phenomenon surrounding her current relationship with Travis Kelce is worthy of some examination. And, trust me, I am also not oblivious to the discourse around Swift’s specific brand of feminism–the kind that tends to be very white and very self-serving. But that’s been talked about and written about by people much smarter than me, so you can google “taylor swift white feminism” and argue in the comments section of any of the 5,100,000 articles/results listed. That is another topic I’m not trudging right now.

I’m much more interested in the cultural reaction to Taylor and Travis than I am in any of her past relationships. Similarly, I’m more interested in looking at that reaction with feminism in mind than I am in discussing how Swift chooses to implement and practice feminism in her own life/art/image ect. I know I’m writing this a little late, as a lot of the inescapable uproar about this has died down, but it’s still something I think about a lot. And when I say I have been thinking about it, I mean the most I have ever talked about Taylor Swift in my life has been regarding this relationship and a very specific meme that popped up when they went public. 

You probably remember seeing it on your FYP. A woman tells a man, presumably her romantic partner, how cool it is that Taylor Swift is dating that Travis Kelce guy. A lot of them say something along the lines of “He’s going to be so famous now.” or “She’s really going to raise his profile, isn’t that cool?” Meanwhile the subject of the video watches in silent horror as his girlfriend dares to suggest that Taylor Swift is more famous than Travis Kelce before attempting to argue that a tight end on a football team is more famous than a record breaking pop star.

from tiktok user kennalovescisco...

This is one of so many examples I saw floating around TikTok. I am someone who believes deeply that everything on the internet is fake to the point where I am occasionally paranoid that all of my friends that I know online are all secretly the same person who is playing an elaborate prank on me and/or trying to catch me in a lie (don’t worry, I’ve talked about it with my therapist). So if you tell me this is a bit that both people are involved in and not a girlfriend trolling her indignant boyfriend, I won’t argue with you. But I think my point still stands either way. 

The design of the joke still highlights an undercurrent of misogyny within a lot of heterosexual couples. 

On one level, it relies on a man finding it absolutely unfathomable that a female pop-star could possibly be more famous than a football player. Which is a thought that breaks my brain every time I try to dig into that logic. Taylor Swift, who, like it or not, has been famous for roughly 15 years, has won multiple Grammys, is in the middle of a record breaking tour, released (and rereleased) a dozen albums, and has a following of dedicated stans that genuinely terrify me. Travis Kelce is a 33 year old tight end who’s career started in 2013. He has been to three Super Bowls and has won two. He has a podcast with his brother that my husband listens to and I imagine it is quite popular with 1.2 million subscribers on their YouTube channel. For more context, Taylor Swift’s instagram has 276 million followers while Travis Kelce has 4.8 million. All of that to say, we can’t sit here and act like these are two people on the same level. 

And let me also add, I had to do some googling to find those stats and halfway through writing this, I realized his name is spelled Kelce and not Kelse. You can take from that what you will and if you see any misspellings of his name before this point, no you don’t.

On another level, the joke is that the man thinks his girlfriend is stupid, unfunny, and incapable of trolling him, despite the obvious tone of her voice and the fact that she’s filming him. That one only works if I assume both parties aren’t in on it. 

There is even another layer to this in the form of a second, follow up Swift/Kelce meme that has really solidified this nagging thought for me. A few weeks after Swift hard launched her relationship in the VIP box at a Chief’s game, I started seeing another rash of videos on TikTok. Unfortunately, TikTok’s search function has not been kind to me in trying to find an example, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. In the video, the Swiftie is geared up for gametime. She is decked out in her Travis Kelce jersey, probably with her Folklore cardigan on top. She is seated and ready to watch football with her boyfriend. And all her boyfriend can do is roll his eyes at her.

Here is an article, since I can’t find an actual TikTok to back up my point.

With this one, I am more inclined to believe that both parties are in on the bit. But taken at face value, I find it the reaction to a Taylor Swift fan’s new found interest in football worthy of consideration. I am just assuming that this girl has probably been forced to spend every Sunday with her significant other hogging the TV to watch football. And now that she has found a way in with his hobby, it is still worthy of an eye-roll because she is interested for the “wrong reason.” 

Is this a stupid trivial thing that I have allowed to occupy my mind for three months? Yes, it absolutely is. Am I well aware that this is probably a joke that everyone is in on? Also yes. And yet there is something about the “joke” that doesn’t sit right with me. What this all says to me is that men believe themselves, their time and interests, and their celebrity idols to be more valuable than those of their significant others. And the reverse of that inherently states that women, their hobbies, their celebrities, are frivolous. And when they take an interest in “man hobbies” because they find themselves at a point where their hobbies intersect with it, that too is now considered frivolous. I don’t have any grand conclusions to draw from this except that I hadn’t really seen anyone else pointing this out and that it kinds sucks. I guess what I’m saying is Swifties of the world, dump your boyfriends. 

I’m so sorry for making you all read this—I just needed to get it out of my system. Thankfully, the only people currently subscribing to this are my friends and you all knew this is who I am before you got into this. That’s really on you.