{"id":286213,"date":"2026-07-03T21:01:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/286213\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T21:01:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:01:38","slug":"opinion-taylor-swift-what-are-you-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/286213\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Taylor Swift, What Are You Doing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It certainly looks like<\/a> Taylor Swift, the biggest pop star on planet Earth, is going to marry Travis Kelce, her three-time Super Bowl champion beau, at Madison Square Garden on Friday.<\/p>\n

While neither Ms. Swift nor Mr. Kelce has directly confirmed<\/a> that their nuptials will take place there, over the past week, my imagination has been reeling with the potential for matrimonial stagecraft that only Ms. Swift could pull off. How many dresses will she wear, and what will they look like? Will Jack Antonoff be a bridesman? Will she perform? Who else will get up onstage? Paul McCartney? James Taylor? MGMT<\/a>?<\/p>\n

And yet, as I consider the expected event, I feel \u2026 well \u2026 \u201cdepressed\u201d is the word.<\/p>\n

In part it\u2019s because Madison Square Garden \u2014 the modern coliseum where the New York Knicks play \u2014 seems like the least romantic possible place to marry. Certainly the least intimate. Why not Paris<\/a>, Portofino<\/a>, the Lake District<\/a>?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the Trumpish miasma hanging over this Independence Day. Many writers have invoked the Roman writer Juvenal\u2019s phrase \u201cbread and circuses\u201d when discussing the White House\u2019s recent U.F.C. fight on the South Lawn,<\/a> depicting it as a gladiatorial spectacle meant to distract the masses from the increasingly bleak circumstances of their lives. An American royal wedding unfortunately has the same vibe, a big-budget display of status that will, in the best-case scenario, serve as escapist entertainment for us proles. (One thinks of Ms. Swift\u2019s invocation of the movie \u201cGladiator\u201d<\/a> in her Time Person of the Year interview: \u201cAre you not entertained?\u201d)<\/p>\n

In the worst case, class resentment will balloon into anger at Ms. Swift herself, and her wedding will become a social media feeding frenzy, as happened to Jeff Bezos last year<\/a>. Maybe that\u2019s unfair \u2014 renting out M.S.G. is, arguably, more reasonable than swarming the city of Venice \u2014 but Ms. Swift and Mr. Kelce, as the image of the good-looking, wholesome, all-American couple, are harder than ever to relate to. No one roots for the overdog.<\/p>\n

True, Ms. Swift has been a winner for over a decade \u2014 her first Album of the Year Grammy came at age 20 \u2014 but she used to do a good job of pretending she didn\u2019t see herself that way, often channeling her inner awkward geek. \u201cShe\u2019s cheer captain,\u201d she famously sang<\/a> of her crush\u2019s girlfriend in \u201cYou Belong With Me,\u201d \u201cand I\u2019m on the bleachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

I admit I\u2019m one of those Swifties who have always been partial to Taylor the tempestuous artiste, ever since I heard those excellent sad-sack anthems from her self-titled first album, some of which she wrote<\/a> as an overwrought tween.<\/p>\n

I cheered when Ms. Swift declared herself a feminist<\/a>, and my favorite Swift eras took place in the early 2020s, when she wrote delicate electro-folk albums with the leading lights of 2000s indie rock and her British boyfriend. In 2022, she sang<\/a>, \u201cThe only kind of girl they see \/ Is a one-night or a wife.\u201d And then continued: \u201cNo deal \/ the 1950s [expletive] they want from me.\u201d Now it seems this defiance is nowhere to be seen. What\u2019s more normie than becoming a football WAG in Kansas City?<\/p>\n

Maybe Ms. Swift was just doing the thing where you say you\u2019re against marriage because you don\u2019t want to marry the person you\u2019re with. (Now that\u2019s relatable!) It\u2019s not like I\u2019m going to stage a \u201cSpeak Now\u201d stunt<\/a>, lying in wait in a corner of the arena for the officiant to ask if anyone objects. But I can\u2019t help but see her matrimonial about-face in the context of the sexual politics of this decade, as tradwives and men\u2019s rights activists have attempted to undo second-wave feminism altogether, encouraging young men to see themselves as domineering domestic leaders and young women to aspire only to marriage and motherhood.<\/p>\n

Perhaps my depression is simply because she caved to gendered expectations after bucking them for so long.<\/p>\n

In a documentary she released in 2020, Ms. Swift described the pressure she had always felt to be perceived as a \u201cgood girl\u201d and a role model. Refusing this good girl image has been the project of at least the past 10 years of her career, from her gleefully melodramatic album \u201cReputation\u201d to her horny, messy and miserable persona on \u201cThe Tortured Poets Department.\u201d Part of this subversive effort was a lyrical resistance to a domestic life of marriage and children, often juxtaposed with the scope of her career ambitions, her unfeminine longing<\/a> for fame, money and creative achievement. As she sang to her 15-year-old self<\/a> on her second album, \u201cFearless,\u201d \u201cIn your life, you\u2019ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I think there\u2019s something deeper that\u2019s been bugging me about a Swift-Kelce wedding. It\u2019s not just that she is finally settling down with the boy on the football team, but that such a highflying spectacle of \u201chaving it all\u201d appears to be the culmination of the singer\u2019s three-year career victory lap, ever since she pulled off the record-breaking Eras Tour, which helped make her a billionaire.<\/p>\n

Ms. Swift\u2019s music is best enjoyed on headphones in bedrooms, with intimate, evocative lyrics about childhood, breakups, complicated love and secret yearning. Now it seems she feels most at home in stadiums, judging from the broad pop schlock of her most recent album, \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl.\u201d Even for this momentous milestone in her private life, Ms. Swift apparently can\u2019t imagine a place to stage her next triumph other than a basketball arena.<\/p>\n

One of the few highlights on \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl\u201d is the Lana Del Rey-esque \u201cElizabeth Taylor<\/a>.\u201d While Ms. Swift has long been fascinated with Ms. Taylor, she is a strange role model for a bride-to-be, being perhaps best known \u2014 two Academy Awards notwithstanding \u2014 for getting married eight times. Ms. Taylor, like Ms. Swift, was known to be a serial monogamist whose public relationships with other celebrities and highly modern all-publicity-is-good-publicity attitude toward scandal helped build her legend.<\/p>\n

On \u201cElizabeth Taylor,\u201d Ms. Swift repeatedly sings, \u201cDo you think it\u2019s forever?\u201d reflecting an oddly pragmatic outlook on marriage. This self-conscious distance has long been a feature of her music, as she dramatizes the story of her life in real time for her fans to devour, letting it play out on the biggest possible stage. In this light, an epic New York wedding would be just another juicy scene in her real-life soap opera.<\/p>\n

Are you not entertained? I am, Taylor, I am.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Alice Bolin<\/p>\n

Opinion guest essayist<\/p>\n

Despite being a Swiftie to my core (I sustained what I fear is permanent hearing loss seeing the Eras Tour in Minneapolis\u2014 the night she sang “Dear John” for the first time in eleven years), I was feeling this unnamed dread about Taylor’s upcoming wedding. I had been thinking maybe she was capitulating to the “1950s s***” she said that society wanted from her in her song “Lavender Haze,” when she complained that people were obsessed with her marital status. But that got me thinking about her fascination with the icon of 1950s Hollywood Elizabeth Taylor, who was married eight times to seven different men. Despite this big, splashy wedding, it seems like her approach to marriage is still nontraditional, as she walks down the aisle for the first time at the age of 36 after having achieved career fulfillment.<\/p>\n

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