I remember when Taylor Swift’s 1989 album came out. After a couple of years of liking Swift’s music in secret, almost overnight, she became the new celebrity of the moment—it was now officially cool to listen to Taylor Swift. Many fans still ardently uphold 1989 as her best album—undoubtedly, it was the album with the most cultural influence, launching Swift from a country singer to a mainstream pop star. I would never have guessed that ten years later, her career only would have gotten even bigger.
When the Eras Tour was announced, my Instagram was flooded with stories of people lamenting how they hadn’t been selected from TicketMaster’s lottery system to be given the chance to purchase tickets. Those who managed to do so were later able to scalp them for thousands of dollars each—people were talking about literally selling kidneys in exchange for tickets. Billy Joel famously quoted that the only thing comparable was the Beatlemania of the 60s.
Then also came her new relationship with the Chiefs tight-end, Travis Kelce—a couple straight out of a rom-com, the blonde pop star singer with the American football player. Kelce became a household name, and at games, a separate camera was devoted to capturing Swift’s reactions in the stands. Even the sports world wasn’t untouched by Swiftmania.
But after months of being unable to go a day without scrolling past Swift-related news that ranged from positive to overwhelmingly positive, I’ve noticed that my social media feeds have started to take on a different light. Twitter (or X) and TikTok were flooded with videos of both Swift and Kelce that gave users the “ick”—clips of Swift at the latest Grammys awards show not hugging Celine Dion, or overexcitedly grabbing her friend after he won an award; Kelce yelling at his coach, or chanting “Viva Las Vegas” into a mic at the Superbowl. Swift’s newest album was announced onstage at the 2024 Grammys, titled The Tortured Poets Department, out April 2024. Social media had another field day with the album and its concept—posts on X criticizing her for being generic and pandering to the masses garnered thousands of likes. TikToks were made with captions like “So is everyone just snapping out of their Taylor Swift phase now?” with users staring into the camera with exaggeratedly bored expressions. All of this suggests that Swift has had her moment, and it’s passed.
In actuality, outside of the cacophonous bubble of social media, Swift is nowhere near a downfall by any measure. Her tenth album has just won Swift her thirteenth Grammy, her world tour will continue to play in sold-out stadiums until 2025, and Tortured Poets has generated huge excitement. So what explains all these posts? I’ve noticed that social media has become an irritatingly predictable landscape for which the same trend unfolds: a young woman in entertainment reaches a new level of fame and success, the world loves it, and then just as suddenly, it doesn’t.
We saw it with Anya Taylor-Joy—following the release of The Queen’s Gambit, the media was enraptured, as if we all knew we were watching the heightening of Hollywood’s next A-lister. The online hate began soon after, almost as if on cue. The pattern of the Damned Female Artist has been seen with celebrities new and old, including Anne Hathaway, Megan Fox, Keke Palmer, Millie Bobbie Brown, Sadie Sink, and Jenna Ortega.
I had wondered if the problem was overexposure—the public turned on Selena Gomez right after flocking to her side in “mean girl beef” with Hailey Bieber, and most lately, social media is grumbling about seeing Sydney Sweeney everywhere. But on the other hand, rising male stars in similar boats—Jacob Elordi, Timothee Chalamet, Pedro Pascal, Adam Driver, and Barry Keoghan—face nowhere near the same scrutiny. Their popularity doesn’t seem to lessen the more success or fame they achieve; they don’t seem to be turned against following a sharp spike of success, usually after the release of a big project. This rollercoaster pattern doesn’t play out for men, who typically shoot to fame and then either stay there, immortalized (Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise), or their careers peacefully taper out.
Swift’s documentary discusses the pressure she feels to constantly change her style and sound in order to stay relevant, something that male artists seldom need to do. One quick glance at her discography reflects this; 1989 was followed by Reputation, a dark, electronic-heavy album with themes of anger and vengeance. Lover was then next, mixing country and bubblegum pop to create a “love letter to love”—all three of these albums were released back-to-back within a five-year timespan.
Still, I hadn’t been sure if I agreed with Swift’s point, then—I naively thought that good music would always prevail, and don’t we love our favourite artists for their particular style? But less than two years after her rise to fame and the record-breaking debut of her first album, the same kind of noise is now being made about Olivia Rodrigo. Despite being twenty-one and having what anyone else would have assumed would be a long, lucrative music career ahead, the media criticized Rodrigo for sounding and appearing “the same,” still singing about heartbreak and making purple album covers.
Public opinion loves to bring famous young women down as quickly as they brought them up. Of course, there’s misogyny in entertainment; it exists everywhere, and it feels even redundant to write that. But in today’s era, with a public that prides itself in being dedicated to achieving and protecting equality more than ever, I wonder how it’s become so quietly mainstream to take down female performers immediately after they experience a major success. I wonder how this pattern has gone on for as long as entertainment has existed, with not nearly enough acknowledgement or conscious effort to rectify the problem. I can’t wait for Tortured Poets to be released in April—but my excitement is taken away a little bit by the awareness that if the album finds any widespread acclaim or success, the same fatigued cycle is bound to repeat. If it does, I hope it will at least bring more recognition and conversation about the ways we view a woman’s success.