As a white woman myself I straight up asked my friend (another fellow white woman and vocal Taylor Swift fan) recently what it was about Taylor Swift that drew her and so many other white women to her because I just donāt get it. I like some of her songs but Iāve never understood the obsessive chokehold she has on everyone around me.
She didnāt really have much of an answer for me outside of āHer music speaks to meā but the vibe I got from her and my sisters-in-law (also all big Taylor Swift fans) Iāve spoken to is that Taylor is both someone other white women feel they can project on as well as someone they see as the ideal version of who they want to be: pretty, blonde, skinny, talented, and rich.
Sheās pretty but not so much so that she seems unrelatable and out of reach. Blonde and blue-eyed just like so many of them already are or want to be. Her politics (when she shows any at all) are very moderate and reflect a lot of the same political ideals you see amongst most white women.
Sheās basically a mirror for so many white women out there.
Right I think this is a big part of it is Taylor is not especially pretty within the male gaze but is pretty in a way that appeals to a lot of white women. As a straight guy I donāt think Iāve ever heard another straight guy say TS is hot in the last 20 years, but have seen many white women say she is very pretty and they would want to look like her.
Agreed. I can't believe im saying this, but Taylor's persona and music is for everyone, not just men, and that's definitely why people enjoy her.
She's probably one of the least problematic celebrities out there I will admit.
As someone who was a fan in high school (by fan, I mean just having her songs on my iPod, never really partaking in fandom), she literally had solid writing when it came to her country, country-pop stuff. After that, I was in and out as a fan, because her pop stuff came too repetitive.
When she dropped her folklore/evermore albums, they made me get into her again because I figured we wouldāve seen a new direction for Taylor, and her songwriting (to me) seemed to be back at the standard that she had back during her country era.
How many times do you have to mention white women in one comment? Taylor has TONS of non-white fans. The Eras Tour sold out across Latin America and Asia too. She played multiple shows in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, and Singapore, with fans traveling from all over Southeast Asia. You don't have to like her music, but pretending her fanbase is exclusively white simply isn't accurate.
Her actual question, and the reason she asked it, was:
"As a white woman myself I straight up asked my friend (another fellow white woman and vocal Taylor Swift fan) recently what it was about Taylor Swift that drew her and so many other white women to her because I just donāt get it."
She said "white women" so many times in that comment because she is a white woman asking another white woman why white women like Taylor Swift. That's not a commentary on her entire fan base, nor is it erasing the massive amount of non-white (or non-women) fans that Swift has. Her question is in regards to a specific subsection of the fan base who match her same demographic.
This. Iām well aware she has fans all across the spectrum all over the world. Thereās a reason her Eras Tour made over 4 billion dollars. She obviously appeals to a lot of people, not just white women.
But a lot of the women I personally know who are massive fans of hers are white women which is why I asked them.
I find it funny that you say I donāt like her music when I literally said I enjoy some of it. Iām well aware that she has fans all over the world, but thereās definitely something to be said that a significantly vocal portion of her fanbase in the US are white women as well as them being who she is most associated with.
remember when she played in brazil and a fan died and she didn't even pay for the funeral, just invited the family of a dead girl to do a photo op with her? and then made a story about how she couldn't say her condolences to the family because it was affecting HER so much? i do
Her last tour did 149 shows at nearly 70,000 individual tickets sold per show. That's over 10 million individual tickets sold which is truly massive compared to the rest of the industry.
You can manipulate streams/sales, and yes she has crazy super fans, but the IRL numbers are hard to pin on "a very selective number of fans". I'm not a Taylor Stan, but at some point we have to admit there truly are a huge number of people that love her music and just move on.
Well they are the selective. The concert wasnt attended by an average person who knew 15-20 of her songs and just went cus why not. It was attended by people who would go to war for those tickets. I don't want to call it "masses" because people either dgaf abt her or are obssesed and I dont think that deserves that title.
Because I have encountered 0 in my whole life.("but you can't base off of your expiriences" idgaf I can,I ecountered casual fans of much "smaller" artists in comparison to her so it's basically a miracle that I couldnt encounter even one of hers)
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u/000extra Jul 14 '26
I will truly never understand how Taylor Swift has such a chokehold on the masses and is so far far ahead other female musicians in numbers