Origin Project

Taylor Swift and Masking

The music industry is brutal, so how do well-known music artists like Taylor Swift survive? Taylor Swift hasn’t just succeeded within the industry; she’s thrived in it. Swift has pushed the stereotypical boundaries of a music artist and has triumphed over hardships that many could not. Barbara Walters once claimed that “Taylor Swift is the music industry.” While Swift is a successful artist and businesswoman, she has not had it easy. She has faced many obstacles throughout her career and has shifted herself to keep her role in the music industry and society. What is it that makes Taylor Swift the artist that everyone loves? Is it who she truly is? Or is it just a mask she wears? 

Who is Taylor Swift? 

Taylor Alison Swift is a music artist born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1989 (Perone). While Swift is quite well known now, she wasn’t when she first entered the music world. She started as a young teen with a dream to sing and write music. From a young age, Swift presented musical talent. At the age of eleven, she sang the Star Spangled Banner at a professional NBA basketball game. Around twelve, she started learning guitar and writing her own music (Perone). From her debut album to now, Swift has won various awards, including Grammy awards; AMA Artist of the Year awards; Billboard awards, and topped the Billboards 100 and 200 charts; CMA awards, and more. Since her debut in 2006, Swift has released a total of ten studio albums:  “Taylor Swift,” “Fearless,” “Speak Now,” “Red,” “1989,” “Reputation,” “Lover,” “Folklore,” “Evermore,” and “Midnights.” 

The Difficulties of the Music Industry

Since her debut, Swift has been known for her changes from era to era. Elle Magazine writes, “With each release, Swift morphed and evolved, retooling herself while wrestling to reveal more truth” (“From McGraw to Midnights”). With each new album release, Swift morphed into a new person, whether intentionally or not. In her documentary Miss Americana, Swift says, “I was so fulfilled by approval that… that was it. I became the person who everyone wanted me to be” . Swift explains throughout her documentary that she often acted the way she was taught. She says, “I’d been trained to be happy when I’d get a lot of praise. Those pats on the head were all I lived for”. 

However, eventually Swift learned that you can’t make everyone happy. Swift explains that she constantly strives to be better than her previous version. She says, “There’s so much pressure to putting new music out. If I don’t beat everything I’ve done prior, it’ll be dressed as, like, a colossal failure.”. Swift often talks about her fear and anxiety of not being good enough and her fear of losing everything she has. In Time Magazine, Jack Dickey writes, “Yet as financially secure as Swift may be, she worries a great deal about her industry’s future and her own, periodically falling into, as she puts it, ‘rabbit holes of self-doubt and fear.’ She says, ‘It’s a really important thing that I manage my anxiety when it comes to the future, because, you know, I have very few female role models. That scares me sometimes’” (Dickey). In her dissertation on Taylor Swift, Elaina K. M. Junes writes, “With restlessness, Swift indicates that she is often plagued by the idea of her career trajectory and longevity, and as a result, feels as though she could always be using her time to be more productive.” (Junes 39). Although it is challenging to see sometimes, it is essential to remember that Taylor Swift is just as human as the rest of us. 

Beauty Standards of Women in the Music Industry

Another difficulty that Swift has mentioned in her documentary Miss Americana is her body image struggle. She says, “I’ve learned over the years… it’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day ‘cause I have a tendency, and it’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it, but I get, I tend to get triggered by something, whether it’s a picture of me where I feel I looked like my tummy was too big or, like, someone said that I looked pregnant or something and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit, just stop eating”. Later, in Miss Americana, Swift says, “There’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting.” However, Swift is not the only woman in the music industry who struggles with their image. Swift says, “Everyone’s a shiny new toy for, like, two years,” she continues with, “Women are constantly having to reinvent, constantly finding new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny. Be new to us, be young to us, but only in a new way and only in the way we want. And reinvent yourself, but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting but also challenged for you.” Swift herself has been known to “reinvent” herself. This can be seen in the many style changes in clothing, persona, and music. In a way, this has become Swift’s form of masking. By conforming to the wants and interests of the public, Swift has been able to disguise herself; she has put on a mask. However, this has not completely stopped her from being herself.

While there have always been high and unfair expectations of female artists, Swift has not been afraid to fight back. In 2013, David Mueller was caught groping Swift by witnesses and a photo. In 2017, Swift sued Mueller for a single dollar, despite his attempt to defame and sue her for 3 million dollars. Swift explained that her goal was not to send Mueller into bankruptcy but to “set a precedent for other artists and women around the world to speak up and hold predators accountable for the irreparable damage they cause” (Khan). 

Taylor Swift and Her Mask

Although it might not be evident initially, Swift has developed a mask for herself. This mask allowed her to present a different version of herself rather than the full authentic version of who she is. While she might not use her mask as much now, she did in the past as a form of protection. Paul Théberge touches on this in his article, “Love and Business: Taylor Swift as a Celebrity, Businesswoman, and Advocate.” Théberge writes, 

Indeed, the subtext of these popular assessments of her constantly-evolving maturity stems from the dominant perception of Swift as a songwriter who speaks to adolescent concerns, whose lyrics often appear to have been ripped from the pages of a teen’s diary (her own diary). And this was a perception that Swift had cultivated, to a large degree, often to the detriment of her broader public persona: “I’m sick and tired of having to pretend like I don’t mastermind my own business … but I’ve also tried very hard—and this is one thing I regret—to convince people that I wasn’t the one holding the puppet strings of my marketing existence or the fact that I sit in a conference room several times a week and come up with these ideas. (Swift, in Hiatt 2019).”  

In her documentary Miss Americana, Swift addresses the difficulty she feels when putting her music out. Through the process of releasing her song “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift struggled against her team to release it. She says, “I’m saying right now that this is something I know is right, and, you guys, I need to be on the right side of history.” This is one of Swift's first and most significant steps to remove her mask. 

“You Need to Calm Down” was a big song because it addressed political issues that Swift had thoroughly avoided until then. In Miss Americana, Swift addresses the severity and importance of releasing this song. After the song's release, she said a heavy weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. Swift says, “I feel really good about not feeling muzzled anymore.” “You Need to Calm Down” was the first time Swift began to stand up for what she believed in openly. Although she received backlash, the gain from expressing herself was more significant. Swift exclaims, “After 13 years of constantly feeling like I was misunderstood, knowing that everything that happened was all gonna turn into this moment is f#cking awesome”. 

Conclusion

Taylor Swift is a remarkable artist who has accomplished many things throughout her career. While she has faced many difficulties, she has overcome each of them, some of them making her stronger than before. While it can be hard to see, Swift was an artist who used an invisible mask to earn her spot in the music industry. However, when she faced a choice between showing her true self and following someone else’s lead, Swift took her mask off. Swift has become a role model with which many women can connect through her music. Her bravery and courage have encouraged others to believe in themselves and take the necessary steps to fight for their lives. Swift might only seem like a stereotypical pop star on the outside, but to her fans, she is so much more.