Despite having over 82 million monthly listeners on Spotify, Taylor Swift has found herself needing to prove her talent over and over again as she struggles to be taken seriously as a female songwriter and musician. This is not just an issue faced by Swift. Women in the workplace are held to a different standard than men, with one study determining that one-third of women felt that they needed to produce more proof of their competence than their male counterparts (Netcheava et. al 2015).
Treatment of Women in the Music Industry
The music industry is an incredibly male-dominated place. Historically, women have been excluded from creating music since the early days of the art form (Kelly 2019). This continues today. The 2018 Grammys, viewed by some as the most prestigious music awards show, only gave one female artist an award during the show’s broadcast (McNutt 2020).
Female musicians are often thought of to be of lesser talent than their male counterparts, with production and songwriting to be typically considered male domains (Bridge 2020). Despite Swift’s undeniable success, many more established artists in the music industry had doubts about the legitimacy of Swift’s talent, accusing her of not writing her songs and relying on the work of others to fuel her music. In 2022, member of the band Gorillaz Damon Albarn stated “She doesn’t write her own songs” in an interview with the LA Times when asked about his opinion on Swift. Swift Tweeted in response, “I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging”.
In addition to constantly being questioned on the legitimacy of their talent, female artists are more sexually objectified and held to higher appearance standards than male artists (Aubrey & Frisby 2011). In one study, researchers found that female musicians on average receive more negative online attention than men, and are often referred to as “bitch” and “slut” instead of the focus being on their work (de Boise 2021). In the study, Taylor Swift was the second most negatively-mentioned artist of the online posts in the sample.
Taylor Swift was inappropriately touched on the butt (see below photo) by radio DJ David Mueller in 2013 during a photo op. Swift then sued Mueller in 2017 for $1, a symbolic amount with her intention of the lawsuit to call attention to how women are treated in the music industry.
Depiction of Women in Song Lyrics
Women are not only treated differently outwardly in the music industry, but also in the way that men write about them. In 2016, nearly a decade following West’s claim that Swift did not deserve to win a VMA in 2009, Swift and West came back into the spotlight when Kanye rapped in his song “Famous,” “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch Famous”. In the song’s music video, West even included himself in bed with a Taylor lookalike. West claimed to have asked Taylor Swift for permission to use this lyric, which is true, but Swift declined and called the song’s message “deeply misogynistic”.
This is a widespread issue, with one study finding that male-sung country songs released in the 2010s had more lyrics regarding women’s clothing and referring to women as objects than in past decades (Rasmussen 2016).
Double Standards Surrounding Taylor Swift
Since finding success, Swift has been a punching bag for comedians. Male and female comedians alike, from Tina Fey to SNL’s Michael Che, often make jabs at Swift’s dating history, citing her “long list of ex-lovers” and the hefty catalog of song lyrics surrounding her breakups. The Netflix original series Ginny & Georgia included a joke that stated, “What do you care? You go through men faster than Taylor Swift”. Though the show is not alone in making jokes of this nature, an older, empowered Taylor Swift responded:
While male artists have written about failed relationships and breakups for decades without raising any eyebrows, when a young woman does it, the music industry views it as a weakness. Swift has had nine confirmed boyfriends, a fairly normal amount considering this spans her life from age 16 to 33, her current age. Swift herself said in response to this, “I do not need some guy around in order to get inspiration, in order to make a great record, in order to live my life, in order to feel OK about myself”. This is not just about her past relationships, but also about long-term feuds with prominent men in the music industry, most notably, Kanye West.
Taylor’s Response
In 2019, after years of facing scrutiny for her feud with West, Swift released the song “The Man,” along with a music video that features Swift acting hyper-masculine and sporting prosthetics and makeup to make her unrecognizably manly. When interviewed about the single by Billboard, she said,
“It was a song that I wrote from my personal experience, but also from a general experience that I’ve heard from women in all parts of our industry. And I think that the more we can talk about it in a song like that, the better off we’ll be in a place to call it out when it’s happening. So many of these things are ingrained in even women, these perceptions, and it’s really about retraining your own brain to be less critical of women when we are not criticizing men for the same things.”
– Taylor Swift
Swift admirably takes the way she is treated and uses it to fuel her art, instead of letting it drag her down, setting an example for women in the music industry and how they can rise above misogyny.
Looking Ahead
Despite being fed up with the inequalities present in the music industry, Taylor Swift continues to churn out hit albums, be a political advocate, and a feminist role model for women and young girls everywhere. As a huge fan of Taylor Swift myself, I have seen firsthand not only how much Swift’s music is discredited, but how her fans are seen as less than for liking her music. I can only hope that the stigma changes and society as a whole can accept Swift for the musical genius she is.
References
Aubrey, Jennifer Stevens & Frisby, Cynthia M. (2011). Sexual Objectification in Music Videos: A Content Analysis Comparing Gender and Genre, Mass Communication and Society, 14:4, 475-501, (DOI: 10.1080/15205436.2010.513468)
Bridge, S. K. (2020). Gendering music in popular culture. The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication. New York: Wiley Blackwell.
De Boise, S. (2020). Music and misogyny: A content analysis of misogynistic, antifeminist forums. Popular Music, 39(3-4), 459-481, (doi:10.1017/S0261143020000410).
Kelly, T. F. (2019). Where Are The Women?, The Magazine of Historical Performance In Early Music America, Vol. 25, Issue 1, January 2019, Page 48. (https://doi.org/info:doi/)
Lipshutz, Jason. 2019. “Taylor Swift Discusses ‘The Man’ & ‘It’s Nice to Have a Friend’ in Cover Story Outtakes.” Billboard. Retrieved March 7, 2023 (https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/taylor-swift-cover-story-outtakes-the-man-8546109/).
Myles McNutt, From “Mine” to “Ours”: Gendered Hierarchies of Authorship and the Limits of Taylor Swift’s Paratextual Feminism, Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 13, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 72–91, (https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz042).
Netchaeva, E., Kouchaki, M., & Sheppard, L. D. (2015). A Man’s (Precarious) Place: Men’s Experienced Threat and Self-Assertive Reactions to Female Superiors. Personality & social psychology bulletin, 41(9), 1247–1259. (https://doi.org/10.1177/01461 67215593491).
Rasmussen, E.E., Densley, R.L. Girl in a Country Song: Gender Roles and Objectification of Women in Popular Country Music across 1990 to 2014. Sex Roles 76, 188–201 (2017). (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0670-6)
Taiyi Yan, T., Tangirala, S., Vadera, A. K., & Ekkirala, S. (2022). How employees learn to speak up from their leaders: Gender congruity effects in the development of voice self-efficacy. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(4), 650–667. (https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000892)
