Taylor Swift and the unbearable whiteness of girlhood

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Taylor Swift has become an American icon, (and she's got the awards, sales, and accolades to prove it.) With that status, she's often been celebrated as someone whose music is authentically representing the interior lives of young women and adolescent girls. On this episode, we're asking: Why? What is it about Swift's persona — and her fandom — that feels so deeply connected to girlhood? And, because this is Code Switch, what does all of that have to do with race?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from SAP Concur, a leading brand for integrated travel expense and invoice management solutions.
0:08.5	With SAP Concur solutions, you'll be ready to take on whatever the market throws at you next. Learn more at concur.com.
0:17.0	Heads up. There's going to be some salty language.
0:22.0	Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch. I'm B.A. Parker. Now did you know
0:27.8	only four artists have won the Grammy for album of the Year three times?
0:33.9	Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, and Taylor Swift.
0:40.1	And she's up for the award again in a few days with her newest album
0:43.6	Midnights along with six other nominations.
0:47.0	Now I've got no dog in this fight.
0:49.5	No reason to compare Graceland to songs in the key of life to 1989, but Taylor Swift is having a moment.
0:57.1	I mean she's been having decades of moments, but having recently been named Times
1:01.2	Person of the Year, her era's concert tour grossed over a billion dollars,
1:06.6	the first concert tour to ever do that.
1:09.3	I mean, even just the movie of the era's tour attracted almost 5 million fans on opening weekend.
1:15.9	Heck, USA Today even hired a Taylor Swift reporter.
1:21.0	Swift is an American sweetheart.
1:23.5	America has watched Taylor Swift grow up from the teenager with an acoustic guitar
1:29.0	to the 34-year-old pop behemoth, all with her girlhood sort of enshrined. Taylor Swift
1:37.2	whether she likes it or not represents a type of white girlhood that has become aspirational for many people.
1:45.9	So then it begs the question whose girlhood gets to be cherished or valued. I'm not here to answer these questions on my own.
1:55.0	Joining me on the mic today is our very own version of a dedicated Taylor
2:00.0	Swift reporter right here on the code switch team. Our senior editor
	...

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