You Belong with Me?

In the land of fairies, princes and princesses, and knights in shining armor, there lives a musician by the name of Taylor Swift, who swiftly (pun intended), captures the hearts of ardent little girls, women, young and old, and little boys, whom are too young to know the difference, with her music of Love and Love lost, of boys, and of life; better yet, tales only true to fables. Taylor's approach to life is light, but hopeful, starry eyed, but earth bound, essentially it is willing to embrace the dreamer in all of us, but it constructs very rigid structures, who in their deconstruction, destroy the very fantasy she has created.

Miss Swift implies plenty about the roles of men and women in her music videos, often with males being the inferior of the two sexes. An example of this is in You Belong with Me, the gentleman, says [writes] at the beginning of the video, "I'm tired of Anna." This is his cheer-leading Captain, girlfriend who is apparently only with him because he is a status symbol for her. He continues to put up with her ridiculousness, up until the very end of the video where he finally realizes he loves Swift's character and they kiss and the rest is history. According to Taylor, men are not smart enough to realize when they are being abused. Another example of this is when, Anna is on the sideline at the game flirting with another one of the guys from the football team, the boyfriend walks up after catch the game winning pass- another subset of a fantasy- only to confront Anna about it then and she looks as though she snaps at him, he storms off the field. The most pronounced view is when the guy and Swift are sitting on the bench outside her house waiting for Anna to pull up, when Anna finally gets there he gets in the car and Anna makes out with him in front of Swift not to make out with him, but to send a message to Swift about talking to her ‘man’.

Basically the gist of the fantasy is men don’t know when to walk away from a situation which clearly makes them not an equal. Essentially this entire video is a slam to the male perception of life. Swift, attempts to create a cute love story, but what she really is creating is a complicated construction of the male structure. Men, only pay attention to cheerleaders, who drive red sports cars, and are the most sought after in the school. And although initially Swift opts out of the social construct of blond headed women being the object of men’s fascinations, she throws it back in at the end when presenting herself as the end all catch. She also makes a heavy assumption with going to what looks to be prom that night. She assumes he wants out of current relationship, she assumes, he wants to be more than friends, and she assumes, he is not just trying to make Anna jealous.

Swift creates all of these fantasized, story book scenarios, but loosely backs them up and places them all on the head of men to be the scapegoat. Her basic message is men are stupid, or at least not smart enough to know when to leave, all they are looking for is an ego stoke, not a legitimate relationship, and that men bounce from girl to girl to girl, based off what they have been treated like previously. Swift’s simple story becomes extremely complex in its attempt to create all of these fantasies. She does not give the option for men to opt out of any of these binaries, to cut across the grass instead of staying on the socially acceptable, sidewalk.

So, for all those little ones who do not quite understand the opposite sex and are still in the run and hide stage of having a boyfriend or girlfriend, I hope they don’t use Taylor Swift as a guide to telling them what is or is not acceptable, because most little boys will grow up and be very independent men and most little girls, will not actually being pompous and arrogant, so the fantasy of having the dependent boy leave the bossy girl, may just not happen.