IS TAYLOR SWIFT A FALSE FEMINIST?

Taylor’s feminism is hard to decipher – and The Life of a Showgirl doesn’t make it any easier. 

Fans of Taylor Swift have known her as a proud feminist throughout her career, so it’s no surprise they’re feeling let down by the lyrics on her newest album: The Life of a Showgirl.  

The 12-track, upbeat record comes from a time when the 35-year-old is happily engaged to NFL star Travis Kelce. Swifties – myself included – were looking forward to hearing tracks from her new era since before the album was even announced. Understandably, seeing that her pen might not be reflective of the feminist views we believed she had, has been startling to long-time listeners. 

In the 11th track Honey, Taylor sings, “And the bitch was telling me to back off ‘cause her man had looked at me wrong”. The use of the misogynistic pejorative ‘bitch’ was shocking to listeners who remember Taylor’s 2020 documentary film, Miss Americana. A scene in this film saw her explaining how she was actively trying to ‘deprogram’ the misogyny in her brain: “There is no such thing as a slut, there is no such thing as a bitch, there is no such thing as someone who’s bossy. There’s just a boss.” 

Arguably, her awareness of this misogynistic language makes its inclusion within her recent songs even more questionable. Wasn’t this the mindset she was criticising in ‘mad woman’, a 2020 track from Folklore, which focused on how the anger and pain of misogyny can leave a mark on women?  She wrote about internalised misogyny, and how women are pitted against each other by men: “and women like hunting witches too, doing your dirtiest work for you”.  It is disappointing to then see her pit other women against herself in this record.  

Her vicious diss-track, speculated to be directed at Charli XCX, also made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In this song, she scathingly compares the singer to ‘a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse’. It is reasonable to assume that ‘Actually Romantic’ was in response to Charli’s ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ (2024) – a candid track about the anxiety and insecurity she faces when seeing other female artists succeed. The lyrics were rumoured to be about Taylor, as they were both dating members of The 1975 at the time, so the singers often crossed paths.

Swift’s song is purposefully mocking, revolving around the narrative that Charli is in love with her. The whole track leans in the direction of cheugy, especially when you consider that ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ came from feelings of insecurity towards successful peers. The lyrics do seem as though they belittle Charli’s honesty and vulnerability. 

It feels as if Swift has gone backwards. What was the point in her changing the anti-feminist lyrics in ‘Better Than Revenge’ if she was only going to replicate the sentiment further down the line?

It is frustrating seeing a prominent feminist casually spewing loaded language towards women in her music, especially considering her large, impressionable audience.  

Swift has always been recognised and loved for her songwriting, so I’m hoping we see more of that in the future, instead of tainting her legacy with questionable lyricism.

Editor: Tillie Bowness-Furmedge

• actually romantic
• celebrity
• Charli XCX
• entertainment
• feminist
• Miss Americana
• music
• sympathy is a knife
• Taylor Swift
• the life of a showgirl
• tloas