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up. There's going to be some salty language.

0:23

Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch. I'm

0:26

B.A. Parker. Now,

0:28

did you know only four artists

0:30

have won the Grammy for album of

0:32

the year three times? Paul

0:35

Simon, Frank Sinatra, Stevie

0:38

Wonder, and Taylor Swift.

0:41

And she's up for the award again

0:43

in a few days with her newest

0:45

album, Midnight's, along with six other nominations.

0:48

Now I've got no dog in this fight. No

0:50

reason to compare Graceland to Songs in the Key of

0:52

Life to 1989. But

0:55

Taylor Swift is having a moment. I

0:58

mean, she's been having decades of moments, but having

1:01

recently been named Times Person of

1:03

the Year, her Eiress concert tour

1:05

grossed over a billion dollars, the

1:07

first concert tour to ever do

1:09

that. I mean, even

1:11

just the movie of the Eiress tour

1:13

attracted almost five million fans on opening

1:16

weekend. Heck, USA Today

1:18

even hired a Taylor Swift

1:20

reporter. Swift

1:22

is an American sweetheart. America

1:25

has watched Taylor Swift grow up

1:27

from the teenager with an acoustic

1:29

guitar to the 34 year old

1:31

pop behemoth. All

1:33

with her girlhood sort of enshrined.

1:37

Taylor Swift, whether she likes

1:39

it or not, represents a

1:41

type of white girlhood that

1:43

has become aspirational for many

1:46

people. So then it begs

1:48

the question, whose girlhood gets to be

1:50

cherished or valued?

1:54

I'm not here to answer these questions on my own.

1:57

Joining me on the mic today is our very own version of

1:59

the Eiress tour. of a dedicated Taylor

2:01

Swift reporter right here on the Code

2:03

Switch team. Our senior editor,

2:05

Leah Denella, has been writing about Swift since

2:07

2016, but

2:09

thinking about her for a lot longer. So welcome

2:12

back to the show, Leah. Thanks, Parker. Good to

2:14

be here. So

2:16

are you a Taylor Swift fan? I

2:20

never know quite how to answer that.

2:23

I definitely pay attention to her and there's

2:25

plenty of her music that I like. I've

2:27

seen all of her music videos, I think.

2:30

But is that because I'm a fan?

2:34

I'm not sure. It's hard to ignore

2:36

her cultural dominance and

2:39

she has the power to affect entire economies

2:41

by which cities she decides to go to

2:43

on her heiress tour. She

2:45

also has one of the most diehard fan bases

2:48

on the planet. We gotta go down

2:50

and say, do you know anybody who knows

2:52

us? Can I have a fight

2:54

in the state? That's a huge

2:56

crowd of Swift fans who didn't get tickets

2:58

to her concert just singing along outside of

3:01

the stadium. Good for

3:03

them. If you like it,

3:05

I love it. It's sweet, right?

3:07

And it feels like Swift has inspired this

3:09

really kind of wholesome community in a lot

3:11

of ways. But as with

3:13

any person who holds a lot of power

3:15

and influence, there are things about

3:18

her and her persona that I think are

3:20

in need of some serious dissection and critique,

3:23

which I found myself kind of nervously admitting

3:25

to a crowd of about 700 people, many

3:29

of them diehard Swifties, in

3:31

Bloomington, Indiana a few months ago. Leah,

3:34

uh, customized, um

3:40

and I start with

3:42

very loose titties, sort of they do

3:45

it, they do itetta fifthsmusic, uh,

3:48

in Bloomington for them, um, it's cool, a

3:51

real concept, a Accession, Tolle

3:53

mashgMichael, all of the

3:55

stuff out, um... Did

4:00

they say you need to leave? Hold

4:03

up, okay, you're going to have to go back a little

4:05

bit and set up the scene for us. What

4:07

exactly is going on there? Yeah, okay,

4:10

so in November 2023,

4:12

Indiana University hosted

4:14

an event that was unlike

4:16

anything I had ever been to before. I'm

4:19

a program recruiter at the EDU in the program

4:21

at the University of American School, and I'm

4:23

also a fellow student from the University of

4:26

Kansas-Tacahoe Barra. That

4:29

was Natalia Almanza, and she was one

4:31

of the people who organized this big,

4:33

multi-day academic conference all about Taylor Swift.

4:36

She said that Taylor Swift was the soundtrack

4:38

to her childhood and helped her

4:40

understand how to process young adult life. I

4:43

remember I was here in the middle of a

4:45

room, and I told you about the two row

4:47

clothes, and I was like, I'm serious, there's no

4:49

line. With me, I'm going

4:51

to tell you a quick song. And

5:00

Parker, I haven't been to a lot of

5:02

academic conferences, so I don't know what they're

5:04

usually like. Oh, I've been to a few. It's

5:06

usually in a hotel conference room. There

5:08

are groups of academics who present their papers

5:11

to about three other people who are in

5:13

their field. Okay, well, this

5:15

was not that. It was

5:17

in an old movie theater downtown with

5:19

a big marquee outside that said Taylor

5:21

Swift, the conference era, sold out. There

5:24

were people actually lined up with tickets waiting to

5:26

get in, like this was some sort of big

5:29

premiere. Almost all women, most of them pretty

5:31

young. And then as soon as

5:33

you walked in the doors were these life-size

5:35

cutouts of Taylor Swift from different stages of

5:37

her career, her different eras. There

5:40

were also snacks themed to the eras, like

5:42

a lavender-hazed donut and Taylor cocktails at the

5:44

bar next door. Well,

5:47

they were definitely committing to a theme. Yes,

5:49

and it wasn't just the people who were organizing

5:51

the conference, it was also the attendees. Almost

5:54

everyone there seemed to be dressed from a different

5:57

Swistian era, so you had your

5:59

bright colors. I sequenced people, your stripey

6:01

70s style halter top people, the autumn

6:04

core cardigan scarf cohort. I think I'm actually

6:06

combining a couple of errors there, sorry. And

6:10

then tons of people wearing these homemade beaded

6:13

friendship bracelets, which has become kind of a

6:15

symbol of Swift's era's tour. Okay,

6:17

Leah, I'm not going to make

6:20

any assumptions here, but what

6:22

were the racial demographics of this crowd?

6:25

It was mostly white. I

6:27

think I noticed like one or two other

6:30

black people, a handful

6:32

of Latinas and Asian Americans, but

6:34

just at a glance, I'd say like, predominantly white.

6:37

Okay, so in that way, it was a lot

6:39

like a typical academic conference. Very much so. And

6:42

side note, not unlike Taylor Swift's fan base more

6:44

broadly, a poll from Business Insider

6:46

found that about 75% of

6:49

self-proclaimed Taylor Swift fans are

6:51

white and a majority are women. So

6:54

what were all these people talking about? So

6:57

many things. About 30

6:59

people presented. So there was one woman

7:01

from Harvard Law School who gave an

7:03

amazing talk actually about whether Taylor Swift

7:05

can copyright the aesthetic choices from each

7:07

of her eras. Spoiler alert, no. Okay,

7:10

just put it in please. You

7:13

cannot copy any more of the flavor

7:15

about it. There was a talk about

7:17

queer temporality in Swift's folklore era, temporal

7:20

nostalgia in her re-recordings, the blending of

7:22

genres in Midnight's, how she wields her

7:24

cats on social media to extend her

7:26

reach in fan base. And

7:28

to ultimately engage with them.

7:40

Alright, so people were going

7:42

deep into the mechanics of

7:45

the Swift-um. Really deep,

7:47

yeah. Okay, so Leah, why were

7:49

you there? What

7:52

is your extremely deep and nuanced

7:54

Taylor expertise? Well, thank

7:56

you for asking, Parker, and I will have you know

7:58

that I was there because was the closing

8:00

keynote speaker, Hold Her Class. I

8:03

know that's right. And

8:07

my talk was called Taylor Swift and the Politics of

8:09

Growing Up. And it was kind of

8:11

funny because I came in thinking I was going to say one set

8:13

of things, but I wound up having

8:16

to change my speech every 10 minutes because

8:18

this theme, Taylor's treatment of

8:20

adolescence and girlhood, kept coming up

8:22

over and over again. And so

8:24

I really felt like I was learning on the spot. And

8:27

one thing that I kept hearing people talk about is

8:30

how Taylor Swift has really managed to tap into

8:32

this kind of heartfelt,

8:34

lyrical, nostalgic, sometimes

8:37

cringy, but like totally familiar depiction of what

8:39

it's like to be a teenage

8:41

girl. Authentic and relatable

8:43

are two words that came up a

8:46

lot. Well, it doesn't totally surprise me. I

8:48

feel like for her entire

8:51

career, Swift has been celebrated

8:53

and at times also criticized for

8:56

her focus on trying to capture

8:58

the emotions of teens and young

9:00

women. Oh, absolutely. The conference

9:02

was no anomaly in that way. New

9:04

York Times Magazine wrote this big magazine

9:06

article recently where the author suggested that

9:08

you could understand the phenomenon of Taylor

9:10

Swift through the eyes of

9:12

the idea that Taylor Swift frees

9:15

women to celebrate their girlhood. That's

9:19

a lot to put on Taylor Swift.

9:22

But okay, first for people who somehow

9:24

haven't gotten sucked into the whole

9:27

Swift universe, can we do

9:29

like the quick backstory on Taylor

9:31

Swift's actual girlhood? Let's

9:34

do it. So Swift is from

9:36

a small town called Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, about an

9:38

hour and a half northwest of Philadelphia. It's

9:41

about 85% white, pretty wealthy. And

9:43

Swift has talked a bunch in interviews about

9:46

how she didn't feel popular or cool growing

9:48

up. Here's her in a CBS interview

9:50

from 2014. My

9:53

life doesn't gravitate towards being edgy,

9:56

sexy, or cool. I just

9:58

naturally am not any of those things. She

10:01

said she did think of herself as hardworking

10:03

and creative. She was really into

10:05

music and obviously really wanted to be a

10:07

songwriter. So when Swift was 14, she and

10:10

her family moved to Nashville so she could

10:12

pursue that passion. And it was just

10:14

a couple years after that that her first album came out in

10:16

2006. Okay, so

10:18

that's around the time that I first encountered her

10:20

because I think teardrops

10:22

on my guitar was one of the first

10:25

songs of hers I remember listening to. And

10:32

she was talking about this guy she had a crush

10:34

on in high school and I've totally been

10:36

there. Yeah, and then just

10:38

a couple years later she came out with Fearless, which

10:41

was when she started being even more well known

10:43

with these two really, really big

10:46

hits and music videos. Love Story.

10:53

And you belong with me. So

11:28

Parker, the voice you just heard was Addie

11:30

Mahmasani. She was the speaker at

11:33

the Taylor Swift conference. She gave her talk

11:35

wearing black and silver Paisley sequined pants. And

11:37

she told the crowd that from the very first

11:40

time she heard Taylor Swift at 17 years old,

11:42

she was hooked. Largely for the

11:44

same reason so many others were. Taylor

11:46

Swift felt relatable. I

11:48

called her up after the conference to dig into that a little

11:51

more. The women in pop were

11:53

they were so sexy, to

11:55

be honest, like I wouldn't have used that

11:57

word when I was. The

12:01

women in popular music were

12:04

not accessible

12:06

models to me in

12:09

that moment of my life. But Swift was

12:11

different in a way that shy, awkward teenage

12:13

Addie could relate to. It

12:15

was her look, you know, so at first you

12:17

hear the sound and her voice

12:19

is so sweet and she's singing

12:21

these sort of like fairy tale stories

12:23

where she always starts as that really

12:27

accessible. That

12:29

dorky girl that you see yourself in.

12:31

She's a shark. I'll

12:33

go to sleep. I'll

12:36

be there. I'll

12:38

be there. And then, usually,

12:41

especially in those early songs, it was

12:43

like, she goes on a journey. The

12:45

journey involves like getting

12:48

the sort of like the

12:50

man of her fantasies and

12:52

sort of like this evolution into

12:55

this like beautiful princess

12:58

fairy tale girl. And

13:05

I mean, I can't believe I didn't see

13:07

it when I was 17. How

13:11

much like Cinderella and how

13:13

much it was like that. I

13:16

mean, but it just got me.

13:18

I get that. And I mean,

13:21

obviously, at one point, Swift really was

13:23

a teenage girl writing about things she

13:26

was maybe more or less experiencing.

13:28

And I've been there. I'll admit,

13:30

teenage Parker was into the whole

13:32

acoustic guitars, sad girl music thing.

13:35

Were you? Not

13:37

the version that Swift was doing. I

13:40

should say I'm close to the same age as

13:42

Taylor Swift. I also grew up in suburban Pennsylvania

13:44

just about an hour away from where she did.

13:47

We actually shopped in the same mall on occasion,

13:50

fun fact. And I

13:52

think because our circumstances were so similar in

13:54

certain ways, our differences were what felt most

13:56

pronounced to me at that time. Like

13:58

her ability to imagine her. herself as this

14:00

Juliet type figure, you know, a Cinderella kind

14:02

of princess, overlooked but special,

14:05

beautiful, someone who could possibly be

14:07

the subject of romantic interest, that

14:10

felt utterly unrelatable to me

14:12

as a black girl in this very white setting. I

14:16

guess what I think is so fascinating is

14:18

that even now, 15 years later,

14:20

when Swift is arguably the most famous

14:23

person on the planet and a literal

14:25

billionaire, she still

14:27

talks about within this framework

14:29

of girl, not

14:31

the 34-year-old business tycoon that she

14:34

is. So what

14:36

is it about Taylor Swift that

14:38

lends itself to people thinking of

14:40

this adult woman as a

14:42

girl or at least

14:44

someone who can authentically represent

14:47

girlhood? Okay,

14:49

well, first of all, you know, credit where credit is

14:51

to, I think Taylor Swift

14:53

thinks a lot about girlhood and cares

14:55

about girls, and so a lot

14:57

of her aesthetic and her lyrics and her interaction

14:59

with her fandom is focused on her female listeners.

15:02

And at the end of the day, Swift is also

15:04

a very savvy business person, and she knows that it's

15:07

largely women and girls who consume herself. Also,

15:10

you know, she's in the midst right now of

15:12

rerecording a bunch of her old albums, so

15:14

she's literally singing the same songs that she wrote when

15:17

she was in her teens and early twenties. Right,

15:19

right. That's the concept

15:21

behind her eras tour. It's

15:24

all about her going back and revisiting

15:26

those previous phases of her life, because

15:28

we're now all old enough

15:31

to desire nostalgia. We are. But,

15:34

you know, the other part of the answer,

15:36

I think, about why she's still perceived as

15:38

this authentic representation of girlhood has

15:40

a lot to do with how girlhood is

15:42

constructed. So, Parker,

15:44

sorry to get a little existential for a

15:46

second. No, please do, Leah. Girlhood

15:51

is not a real thing. It's

15:53

an idea that we have created in our culture

15:56

that gets applied to different types of people at

15:58

different times, just like boyhood right now. You

16:00

know, you have Mark Zuckerberg as a boy pushing

16:02

40, whereas in some states you can try a

16:04

five-year-old child as an adult. So

16:07

the way girlhood is kind of classically

16:09

imagined in our society is

16:11

this time of real purity and goodness

16:13

and innocence, and it's very

16:16

much tied up in our ideas about

16:18

white femininity specifically. Actual

16:20

girlhood is a really messy, complicated, varied

16:22

time of life for a lot of

16:24

people. They don't feel or get

16:26

treated like princesses to be. So

16:28

often when people in the U.S. talk about girlhood,

16:31

they're using it as a shorthand for this

16:33

sliver of an experience that really only exists

16:35

for a minority of girls, usually

16:38

upper-middle class, thin, pretty

16:40

white girls. All things

16:42

that Taylor Swift is.

16:44

Right. And of course there's

16:46

nothing wrong with those things, and it's

16:48

not like she has any control over them. It

16:51

just means that it's no surprise when she

16:53

gets associated with girlhood more than other people

16:55

in her cohort. Okay,

16:58

full transparency. I

17:00

got chewed out by a large group of Swifties

17:02

online a few years ago for trying to make

17:05

this point, which,

17:07

eh, it's the internet. It

17:09

happens. I said that even though there's

17:11

only a year difference in age between

17:13

Taylor Swift and Adele, Adele

17:16

wasn't granted the same luxury of

17:18

white girlhood and pop culture because

17:21

of her thin plus size and

17:23

her soulful voice. And

17:25

people were demanding retribution for a

17:28

breakup Swift had ten years ago,

17:30

but were actively writing Adele out

17:33

of her own divorce narrative.

17:36

And that was me defending a white woman. I'm

17:38

not even going to get into Beyonce and whether

17:40

or not she was ever allowed to be

17:42

considered a quote-unquote girl. Right.

17:45

And of course, we're talking about celebrities now who

17:48

are real people, but they're

17:50

also symbols that are marketed to

17:52

represent certain ideas or archetypes. And

17:55

ideals that are drummed up by powerful

17:57

male industry leaders. But that

17:59

also trickled. down to affect the way

18:01

girlhood is constructed for normal, everyday people.

18:04

Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Equality did

18:06

a study of how girls of different ages

18:09

are perceived by adults. And

18:11

Parker, you probably won't be shocked to

18:13

hear it found that, quote, adults

18:16

view black girls as less innocent and

18:18

more adult-like than their white peers, especially

18:21

in the age range of 5 to 14. I

18:25

wish I was more surprised

18:27

by that. It also

18:29

found that compared to white girls of

18:31

the same age, survey participants

18:33

perceive that black girls need

18:36

less nurturing. Black girls need

18:38

less protection. Black girls need

18:40

to be supported less. Black girls

18:42

need to be comforted less. Black

18:44

girls are more independent. Black girls

18:46

know more about adult topics. And

18:49

black girls know more about sex. And

18:52

that brings us back to how Taylor

18:54

Swift is perceived. When

18:57

Taylor Swift appeared on the scene in the

18:59

early us, there was so much

19:01

time for that group to be relatable. I

19:04

hope that's the goal of this group. I

19:06

hope that's the goal of this group. I hope that's

19:08

the goal of this group. I hope that's the goal

19:10

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21:10

Leah. Cotswitch. So

21:14

we're back. We've been getting

21:16

into Taylor Swift and her girlhood

21:18

despite her adulthood. Now

21:21

Leah, before the break, you were

21:23

telling me about research that shows

21:25

Black girls are perceived as, quote,

21:27

less innocent and more adult-like than

21:29

their white peers. Right. And

21:32

that study was focusing pretty narrowly

21:34

on race, particularly distinctions between Black

21:36

and white girls. But

21:38

we've seen that there are also so many

21:40

other categories for which this is true. Class,

21:43

ethnicity, size, and weight. So it's definitely

21:45

not all white girls or white women

21:47

who get to be treated as part

21:49

of this special protected group, and

21:51

certainly not all of them all the time. Sure.

21:54

But I guess the question is

21:56

whether a Black girl or a

21:58

Latina girl could perform just

22:00

like Taylor Swift and be

22:03

received as just an

22:05

innocent girl next door. Right,

22:07

and on the national stage for most

22:09

people, even if they wanted to,

22:11

that's rarely seen as a viable choice. And

22:14

that matters partly because of what you raised earlier with

22:17

the comparison between Taylor Swift and Adele.

22:19

For everyone who's perceived as a sweet,

22:22

innocent, girl-like person worthy of

22:24

protection, there are people on the flip side

22:26

of that who are considered not worth protecting,

22:28

not legitimate, not trustworthy, inherently

22:31

sexual. And that includes

22:33

both white women and often women of color.

22:36

Right, like I think about

22:39

Taylor Swift and St. Megan

22:41

Thee Stallion, who was 28. They were both in assault

22:45

court cases and they were treated so

22:48

differently. Like Taylor

22:50

was highlighted on the cover of Time

22:52

magazine that year, referred to as one

22:55

of the silence breakers who was

22:57

responsible for helping launch a movement.

23:00

But with Megan, a lot of coverage

23:02

of her almost framed it as if she

23:04

was the one on trial, not

23:06

the man who shot her. Exactly,

23:09

and I think that all this matters

23:11

because watching famous people is one of

23:13

the ways that we learn how different

23:15

types of people should be treated, who

23:17

matters and who doesn't and why. And

23:19

Taylor Swift is someone people are definitely

23:21

taking notes from. Like the time she

23:23

told young people to get out the

23:25

vote and tens of thousands of people

23:28

registered as new voters in just

23:30

one day. Mm-hmm, that was a great

23:32

example, another example, maybe

23:34

that's great. When Taylor Swift started showing

23:37

up and cheering at NFL games, enormous

23:39

numbers of young women started watching football.

23:42

For that, she didn't even have to say

23:44

explicitly, the NFL is great, you should support

23:46

it. It's not like she was doing an

23:49

ad, but it affected people's behavior anyway. Which

23:51

brings me back to Adi Mahmasani, who you

23:53

heard from earlier. I mean, I'm 33, like I'm

23:57

her age basically, and I just

23:59

think like... People who really

24:01

identify with her. It.

24:03

They have followed her to the point

24:05

that they've kind of model their lives

24:07

after her like she has that kind

24:09

of power today. I don't add a

24:12

studies women and popular music. She's also

24:14

a cultural historian. At her understanding of

24:16

Kill Us I have gotten a lot

24:18

more complicated. And as actually caused

24:20

an interesting tension in some of her relationships.

24:23

My good friends. I'm.

24:26

The ones who love her like the ones who

24:28

went to the air as tour and. It's

24:31

kind of like we're all on the same

24:33

page about a lot of political questions,

24:35

but then when they start to criticize to

24:38

live through sort of. My own

24:40

opinions about some is like what I see as.

24:42

Problematic. The same.

24:45

It's very easy to alienate them

24:47

in a way that is like

24:49

this: Weird. There's not a lot

24:51

of conflict in my social circles

24:53

politically, except when kills. That sums

24:56

up. Will watch shifted at

24:58

ease of thing and of taylor. Pope.

25:01

One of the things she brought up was

25:03

this idea that Taylor Swift's public persona hasn't

25:05

really changed all that much. You. Know

25:08

at He says that as she herself has

25:10

gotten older, she's made her way through

25:12

these different areas of her own life. Some

25:14

guy had some painful. Humorous friend

25:16

sense. really clearly the first break up

25:18

she had that. She. Hadn't been wronged.

25:21

He was kind of maybe the one

25:23

in the wrong. And along the way

25:25

she's learned. A lot of different

25:27

lessons about who she is, how she relates

25:29

other people, what matters and what doesn't. And

25:32

she feels like Taylor Swift's public persona

25:34

has transformed in these really safe kind

25:37

of superficial ways. To the idea

25:39

of intense. He.

25:41

Needed to sustain she says he said

25:43

in. A Nice

25:45

to see him. And.

25:50

He. he

25:52

he Look

26:00

at you, they areopic, that's not

26:02

yet the answer but

26:07

G Ok, ok, bye So the baby who

26:11

raised him above

26:13

the In

26:17

theough And the Of

26:28

course Addie's question isn't just about the

26:30

language that Swift is using, it's

26:32

really about the scope of what she's willing

26:34

to talk about and the diversity of perspectives

26:36

she's willing to inhabit in her persona. And

26:39

that question isn't new. You know, all

26:41

the way back in 2014, Taylor

26:43

Swift talked with our NPR colleague Melissa

26:45

Block about how she speaks to young

26:48

girls. And I want to play

26:50

you a piece of that exchange because I think it's

26:52

really interesting. Here's Melissa. By

26:54

the way, this is from a radio piece so

26:56

you'll hear some of Swift's song Wildest Dreams underneath

26:58

it. You

27:02

know, I've been thinking about this a lot because I am the mother

27:04

of a 12 year old girl and she

27:07

loves your music, her friends love your music. You

27:10

have a huge platform among a

27:12

very vulnerable, impressionable

27:14

set of the population.

27:16

And I wonder if you think

27:19

about turning your lens outward, turning

27:21

it away from the diary page

27:24

and sending a broader

27:26

message to girls who would be really

27:28

receptive to hearing about big ideas and

27:30

the big world that's outside. Like

27:34

what kind of messages? Well, other characters.

27:36

I mean, I don't mean to minimize

27:39

the effect of a love song or a pop song,

27:41

but do you ever think about writing

27:43

in the voice of other characters,

27:46

other experiences, things that might turn

27:48

girls away from themselves in a

27:50

different way? There's

27:52

nothing that's going to turn girls away from themselves at

27:54

age 12. I just try to tell

27:56

girls that this

27:58

is what my life looks like. like I love

28:01

my life. I've never ever

28:03

felt edgy, cool or sexy not

28:05

one time and that

28:08

it's not important for them to be those

28:10

things. It's important for them to be imaginative,

28:12

intelligent, hard-working, strong,

28:15

smart, charming. I think

28:18

that there are bigger themes I can be

28:20

explaining to them and I think I'm trying as

28:22

hard as I possibly can to do that. Okay,

28:25

respectfully to Swift, I'm

28:27

not edgy, cool or sexy. Feels

28:29

like a company line. Yeah, definitely

28:32

part of her brand. And Addie

28:36

brought up that same idea when I spoke

28:38

to her that you just turned

28:40

that tape that maybe Swift is not

28:42

actually working as hard as she

28:44

possibly can to explain bigger

28:47

themes to the people who adore her. You

28:50

at least have a responsibility, I

28:52

think, to model a

28:54

kind of womanhood or

28:56

honestly just humanity that

28:58

is aware of other

29:01

people's struggles. That's

29:04

all. I think that's all I'm asking

29:06

of her at this point is

29:09

to really look at her

29:11

struggles in relationship

29:14

to other people's around the

29:16

world and to really

29:18

like think and then

29:20

show us like what

29:23

are you gonna do with that awareness? What

29:25

I see with Taylor Swift is someone who's looking

29:27

inward and her inner

29:29

universe is very fun and colorful

29:32

and but I mean

29:34

she has grown this, if

29:38

you want to look at it as a bubble of

29:40

herself of looking inward, she's grown it from within to

29:43

the point that now it's its own

29:45

reality. I mean it's it's almost like its own

29:47

planet and to go

29:49

on creating

29:51

this enormous

29:54

universe that's enormously

29:56

influential Without. Really

30:01

looking at that privilege? And

30:03

in. Some way. Talking

30:06

about it. Is

30:08

just. Unconscionable

30:10

at this point. You know? At

30:14

he brought up the rich tradition of

30:16

women musicians who have spoken out about

30:18

everything from segregation to the Vietnam War

30:20

to the L Am Joan Baez or

30:22

that a home. Is

30:32

also Whitney Houston. Joni Mitchell

30:34

has us. Janet

30:40

Jackson and Embassy made music videos in

30:43

the nineties. Oh a part as. An

30:53

endless you know some people say

30:55

it's a lot to ask someone

30:57

who that famous by writing very

30:59

personal have some bombing us an

31:02

know. Like. When you have

31:04

millions millions of followers like it

31:06

or not, is that a platform

31:08

you been chosen and will you

31:10

do is that platform. Is.

31:13

Important. Yet. And not

31:15

just for the fans, Parker.

31:17

I want to bring up one more thing

31:19

that I think is really important about how

31:22

these categories of girlhood and womanhood are constructed.

31:24

Fell. Last night I watched

31:27

Taylor Swift's Netflix documentary Miss America. Have

31:29

you seen it? I have

31:31

I saw when it came out. Okay,

31:33

so you might remember that in It's

31:35

Swiss. Talk about how growing up and

31:38

in the early part of her career,

31:40

all she cared about was being seen

31:42

as a good girl. I was so

31:44

obsessed with not getting in trouble I

31:46

was like I'm not gonna do anything

31:49

that anyone could say anything about. And

31:52

that's also what she was being told

31:54

constantly from different people on her team

31:56

and in her life. Don't say anything

31:58

controversial. makes her you look a certain

32:00

way, even if you have to starve yourself. Don't

32:03

get political. Always smile." And

32:06

she talks about the sense she had that stepping

32:08

out of line in any way would be bad

32:10

not just for her, but also for this enormous

32:12

group of people who were relying on her to

32:14

make money and sell products and all that. She

32:17

said people used the chicks speaking out about George

32:19

Bush as kind of a cautionary tale for her.

32:22

Right, but okay, the whole chicks

32:24

thing was in 2003. By 2016, Taylor Swift was

32:26

27. She'd won

32:32

Grammys and was wildly influential.

32:35

And I remember specifically when

32:38

Swift was being idolized by

32:40

white supremacists as their Aryan

32:42

goddess, literally praised

32:45

by neo-Nazis as an

32:47

ideal. And it

32:49

still took her three years after the

32:51

fact to say that white supremacy is

32:53

repulsive. Yeah, and you know, to be

32:55

fair, she says in the documentary that

32:57

she didn't know at the time that

32:59

that was being said about her. But

33:02

that also goes back to the whole privilege

33:04

thing, of course, of being someone who gets

33:07

to be protected from that sort of knowledge.

33:09

But in certain cases, she does feel compelled

33:11

by her principles. We see footage of her

33:13

getting really fired up about the 2020 Tennessee

33:15

election and getting to this point

33:18

where she feels like she can't stay silent on

33:20

that anymore. And her dad is like, please don't

33:22

say anything. Please don't rock the boat. But

33:25

she's like, I cannot live with myself

33:27

if I don't do this. It's really

33:30

basic human rights and it's right and wrong

33:32

at this point. I need you to just forgive

33:36

me for doing it. I remember

33:38

that scene because everyone was so proud

33:40

of Swift that she spoke up. And

33:43

she seems proud of herself. You know, after

33:45

she finally says her piece, she

33:47

says she feels like she's no longer wearing

33:49

a muzzle. She has this amazing sense of

33:51

freedom and that she's

33:53

finally getting to grow up. You

33:56

know, there's this thing people say about celebrities that

33:58

they're frozen at the age they got famous. And

34:02

that's kind of what happened to me. And

34:04

look, I know this movie was in a

34:06

lot of ways a propaganda piece, right? It

34:08

was made to make her look good. And

34:11

it was coming off a lot of criticism Swift had

34:13

faced for not speaking out in 2016 when Trump

34:17

was running for president. But

34:19

I think it also did a decent

34:21

job of showing the ways that this

34:23

category of pure, innocent, protected, good girl

34:25

is a trap for all women. There

34:28

are immense privileges to getting to be the

34:30

good woman or good girl, but

34:33

none of the categories are about actually

34:35

making the lives of women or girls

34:37

better. While I

34:39

sympathize with that, she's

34:41

clearly aware of this criticism. And

34:46

yet you look at what she's done in

34:48

the years since that documentary came out. And

34:51

it still feels very safe. And

34:56

she's still mostly gotten to

34:58

hold on to her spot

35:00

as again, America's sweetheart. No,

35:02

I agree. And

35:04

clearly, there was a time

35:06

in Taylor Swift's life and career where maybe

35:08

it would have been a lot riskier to

35:11

speak out and say something controversial or say

35:13

something political or anything like that.

35:15

Yeah, like rock the boat. But

35:17

she's not there anymore. And she says she doesn't

35:19

want to be. As

35:22

you know, Parker, I've spent a lot of time thinking

35:25

about Taylor Swift, and it's not because

35:27

I'm a superfan or a super hater,

35:29

but I see the power she holds. And

35:31

I think of that old theology truism

35:33

that the job of a clergy person is

35:35

to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

35:38

Taylor Swift is a religion to many

35:40

people. She's proven that she's

35:42

great at making people feel comfortable. And

35:45

what I think we've heard some people wondering

35:47

about throughout this episode is what it would

35:49

look like for her to use some of

35:51

her immense influence and resources to

35:53

make the world a little less comfortable for the powers

35:55

that be. And

36:09

that has shown. You can follow

36:12

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if you love our work, please consider

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signing up at plus.npr.org

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slash Code Switch. This

36:57

episode was produced by Xavier Lopez.

36:59

Our editor is Dalia Mortada. Our

37:01

engineer was Josephine Niennai. And

37:04

a big shout out to the rest of

37:06

the Code Switch Massive. Christina Kala, Jess Kong,

37:08

Virlin Williams, Steve Drummond, Loy

37:10

Lizeraga, and Jean Denby. Big

37:13

thanks to Indiana University and especially

37:15

Natalia Almamba. I'm B.A.

37:18

Parker. I'm Leah Danella. Hydrate.

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Romeo, save me, I've been

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37:52

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