Looking at Taylor Swift’s Music Through a Feminist Lens | AP Taylor Swift

“Why you gotta be so mean?” In this week’s episode of AP Taylor Swift, we put “Mean” (Speak Now), “nothing new” (Red, Taylor’s Version), and “mirrorball” (folklore) under the lens of feminist literary theory. We talk about the male gaze, the ingenue, gendered violence imagery, the punishment of “unlikeable” women, and why a song written over a decade ago can still feel like it was written yesterday.

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Mentioned in this episode

Middlemarch, George Eliot

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, Anna Bogutskaya

The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

Mean Girls (2004)

Grease (1978)