5th
What’s her age again?
As ♥TT will vouch, I really love Taylor Swift. (The first time I can remember hearing a song of hers is when my tiny cousin, Kate, now six, played “Our Song” on my aunt’s iPhone.) For a few days a few weeks ago, I felt bad about this, because Molly Lambert had a point:
Meanwhile the not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman demographic is flooded with New Moon and Taylor Swift. Transgressive as their popularity alone may be, both Twilight and Taylor ascribe to a world view that too many fourteen year girls are already inoculated with. An entirely boy-centric romatic one, where nothing is interesting unless it involves crushes and the surrounding drama. Even fifth wave feminist Megan Fox admits there’s no such thing as Megan Fox.
Though her argument is somewhat similar to my noted objections to Twilight, Molly takes issue less with Bella’s attraction to a mean boy than with her focus on boys in general. It’s this same focus of Taylor Swift’s that Caramanica says the pop singer’s next album, likely released after her twenty-first birthday, must transcend. He’s arguing not only that it should, but also that it has to; albums by someone of age “can’t now, by definition, have the same emotional guideposts” as those of a teenager.
But that’s ridiculous! I’ve been out of my teens for four years, and, in those, I’ve learned that if the world has (to paraphrase Caramanica) crueler foes than teenage girls, they are these: twenty-something girls. I’ve been to a publishing party with leoncrawl, at which I think the average age was over thirty, and I bet you all the change in my pockets against all the change in your pockets that those tricenarians felt the same way about their love interests. I’ve watched Sports Night, and I know that the reason Casey went on TV after the bomb threat and Dan overcame his writing block is the same reason men do anything: to impress women. I’ve hosted tortilla nights, and I know I did so mostly to further crushes and the surrounding drama. Everyone is always focused on that! Henry Fussy always wins out over Wilbur. People well out of their freshman year are worried about who to take out on Friday night. Teen love fantasies are not unique to women, don’t have much to do with any wave of feminism, and are, past a certain, rather early point, nothing to do with age. Contra The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, I don’t think that men and women are spectacularly distinct on this point; Taylor and I are different, emotionally, mostly because she’s smart enough to craft White Horse. Lambert again, right this time:
In another essay, Chabon admits his worst failing is an inability to write three dimensional female characters. Looking back, it’s kinda true. While I commend his honesty, I never understand this, even though it’s something I occasionally hear from men. I always say “write a male character, then give them a female name.”
As a girl you grow up seeing yourself in male characters, because (unfortunately) the cool ones are still mostly men. One of the reasons I picked Adventureland as my favorite movie of last year is that it had fully fleshed out and well written characters of both genders. Chabon recognizes that his tendency towards seeing women as mysterious is wrong, but finds it very hard to shake. There is no mystery to women. There is plenty of mystery to sex, but it’s equally mysterious to everyone.
Taylor can follow whatever guideposts she likes.
I’ve got a bone to pick with Jon Caramanica over his post-Grammys Taylor Swift piece, in which he argued that the 20-year-old singer is going to have to start acting like the grown woman she is now that she is a certified superstar. I realize he’s talking about her public persona— and it’s true, she has been playing a wide-eyed teenager at award shows— and he’s probably right that that needs to change. But it seems to me that any discussion of Taylor Swift’s age and whether she acts it must somehow address the incredible maturity and self-awareness demonstrated by the lyrics on Fearless. Because to me that’s one of the most amazing things about Fearless, and the first 30 times I listened to it I caught myself repeatedly marveling at how sensitive and perceptive she is about things in life that continue to bewilder me and everyone I know. And it’s not just that she describes certain feelings originally and precisely— it’s that she has those feelings in the first place that’s astonishing.
Start with “The Way I Loved You,” in which she compares the peaceful, happy relationship she enjoys with her current boyfriend (“he is sensible and so incredible”) to the tumultuous and painful one she had with her last one. The song swells at “He can’t see the smile I’m faking / and my heart’s not breaking / because I’m not feeling anything at all.” I dunno, are these thoughts you were thinking when you were 15, or however old Taylor Swift was when she wrote this song?
Also: “Here’s to everything coming down to nothing,” from “Forever and Always.” I dunno if I’ve ever heard a better articulation of the horror one feels staring down the barrel of a breakup.
Also again, from “Fifteen”: “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind / we both cried.” This might be a song about childhood, but I bet you anything that Abigail, when that happened to her, didn’t think of it in those terms.
Caramanica in his piece says that Taylor Swift’s next album, due to her success and her age, cannot have “the same emotional guideposts as the previous ones.” I for one hope it does!
