Taylor Swift is not ruining football or swinging the election. So why the hate? | Opinion
As Taylor Swift left the AFC Championship game Sunday night, hand in hand with hunky Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, some fans didn’t appreciate her crossover from global pop star icon to madly-in-love football fan.
“You’re ruining football!”one person yelled at the singer in a video posted on Instagram. Another fan is heard screaming, “You did that [expletive],” while another fan yells, “[Expletive] you.”
This isn’t the first time Swift’s been on the receiving end of smears and jeers since she started dating Kelce. Last month, she was booed at a game. After attending one of Kelce’s games earlier in the season with good friend actor Blake Lively, the internet, including hosts of the popular “Pardon My Take” podcast, exploded with misogynist smears and sexist “jokes.”
Even politicos from both sides have entered the chat, not necessarily smearing Swift in a lewd way but interpreting her presence at games as evidence of a conspiracy theory. On Monday, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy claimed that the Super Bowl will be rigged for the Chiefs to set the stage for Swift endorsing Joe Biden endorsement.
What? She endorsed Biden in 2020. Her liberal views are well known. Overreact much?
People smearing Swift for attending her boyfriend’s football games — even if he is a massive NFL star — or concocting conspiracy theories that she must be trying to sway an election are couching their misogyny and jealousy by calling it criticism or observation.
The facts are that Swift is an enormously successful crossover musician, singer-songwriter and businesswoman. She’s one of the most well-known women in the world, and she’s the epitome of complexity: She’s hot without being too sexual; she’s ambitious without abandoning her values; she’s talented without being arrogant.
She started in country music, so it seems like she should be a conservative, but she’s not. She’s attractive and 34 years old, so it may seem like she should be married with kids, but she’s not. She’s enjoying dating and she’s been linked to several high-profile men. And when they break up, she just writes songs about them and makes millions.
Sometimes people who are too polarized politically or culturally don’t know what to make of a person who possesses nuance. So, people get angry and disappointed as if Swift owes them something. Sure, I wish she would use her platform to promote more conservative political views or lawmakers, but she doesn’t and she likely won’t.
However, I do appreciate, as a woman and mother of daughters (and sons), that she encourages women to stand up for themselves, be bold, take risks and treat people with respect. There aren’t a lot of entertainers at her level coming out of Nashville or Hollywood that would espouse that message.
Some people seemed to struggle when they saw that her Eras Tour grossed more than $1 billion. But her haters didn’t really get loud until she showed up at football games to cheer on a handsome football player who hadn’t yet found love, despite obvious, public efforts. This is either old-fashioned envy at someone else’s success in arguably the two most important areas of life — love and career — or it’s even worse: old-fashioned misogyny that a beautiful woman sometimes draws cameras away from the football field and onto her cheering, red lipstick-stained smile.
It’s as if some men actually think that they have sacred spaces where women can’t go and be happy and steal a quick camera shot and even the bro you wish you could have a beer with. As the kids are fond of saying: Football was never that serious.
It’s unfortunate that, in a country where we claim to embrace equality and equity, so many still show blatant sexism and jealousy toward women who actually do break the glass ceilings men built.
As for Swift, she predicted this would happen and even wrote a song about it once. Thankfully for the rest of us, she doesn’t need to be a man to prove she’s the woman, she can be a successful artist, an adoring girlfriend and a football fan all at once.
This story was originally published January 31, 2024 at 5:28 AM.
