Annika Tharp
04/28/2017
Professor Arbour
ENG-W 131
Swift Feminism
“Jim Farber, you are a narrow-minded, Philistine fogey,” is what I would retort to the New York Daily News columnist regarding his 2016 review of Taylor Swift’s 1989 album, and the song “Shake It Off” in particular. This review suggests that her latest hits are insubstantial, lack maturity, and uncreatively repetitive. The album, 1989, was released October 27, 2014 (Billboard) with “Shake It Off”, the lead single, being just about how Swift shakes off the haters and (unsuccessfully) her past, according to Farber. Despite this strong criticism, Taylor Swift’s now iconic and popular tune rose to become one of the 8th most popular song of 2014 (yahoo), has had over 2 billion youtube hits (youtube), and is her most popular song to date (billboard). “Shake It Off” is Swift’s most substantial and impactful work because it speaks to women’s empowerment, shows her development as an artist, and has a hopping beat.
Jim Farber seems to think that the phrase “Shake it Off” refers only to Taylor Swift trying to discard her old artistic style. Farber “suggests Swift didn’t dare try to grow…”, that she hasn’t developed at all since her older work. Swift rose to fame as a country singer, a music style that relies heavily on acoustic guitar, husky, melismatic lyrics, and themes such as relationships. Farber himself doesn’t think that her music is unchanged. Unlike country music, “the new wave sound – anchored on brisk claps, cracks and booms – gives Swift’s new songs a certain breezy appeal.”
Farber incorrectly finds similarity in “Shake It Off’s” lyrics and chorus. “Her choruses tend to rest on a songwriter’s laziest fall-back: the repetitive, arena-mongering chant.” (Farber) But as will be explained, Farber misses the complexity and multiple meanings to the chorus line, “Shake it Off”. With regard to lyrics, Farber thinks Swift just “doles out songs about loving bad boys, ignoring haters, stalking a guy, along with one about lost love.” While, indeed the subject of these songs remains about boys, it’s very apparent that she’s grown in her perspective on them. Swift’s old country music had themes surrounding longing over boys and what they thought of her. Her newer music communicates that she is still involved with boys, but now she is getting over them and is becoming empowered. As opposed to being dependent on a boyfriend, she is more free to reject them and shake them off.
This message is the primary meaning Swift wants to communicate through the chorus “Shake it Off.” She can move on without worry. Swift can shake off or get over anything, boyfriends in particular. In the first stanza, Swift worries, “I go on too many dates, but I can’t make them stay.” But then, she has “got this music in my mind saying it’s gonna be alright”. These lines in the song directly links the song itself to reassurance in the realm of dating. The music in her mind can only be this song itself. She’s not just shaking off her worry regarding finding boyfriends, but several real antagonists in the song. These adversaries include the people in the phrase, “That’s what people say,” those who judge women for being promiscuous. They also encompass “players” and “dirty cheats,” boys who go out with multiple without being faithful to each of them; “haters,” people who judge Swift and dislike her without reason; “heartbreakers,” boys who hurt girls’ feelings; and “fakers” and “liars,” people who pretend to be somebody greater than they are. All of these enemies should be brushed aside as easily as snow is from a coat because women are free to rid themselves of them, to simply shake them off.
To a modern audience, 3rd wave feminists, these ideas are ridiculously elementary. The debate among these progressives is whether to embrace the meaning of being a slut, in a positive way (cosmopolitan). But Swift’s audience is not college-attending, poetry-reading women, but rather the same young, rural, relatively uneducated girls that Taylor Swift rose to fame singing to. These “core fans” – “very young girls” look up to Swift as an empowering female role model (Farber). These are the women who are in the most need of even these simple ideas about dating equality, as rural communities are often culturally conservative. Therefore, in “Shake It Off”, Swift is effectively being an evangelist for feminism.
Those powerful, liberating, gateway feminism ideas are what Faber calls “her flightiest and least substantial work to date.” Perhaps he means simply the language she uses to communicate them. For a case study, take Swift’s final (and sole individual) foe: “my ex-man”. She could’ve called this individual an “ex-boyfriend”, but she instead used “ex-man”. The way she says it in the song has a sound of sass and punchiness. “Boyfriend” has a sound of both less maturity and more attachment – like this person is a kid she would still be friends even if they were not dating. The word “man” carries no attachment to her and a more direct depiction of his actual purpose: to be of sexual interest for a woman (her). Of these two choices, ex-boyfriend is the more flighty, prefabricated, and hackneyed than the concrete and evocative ex-man.
Beyond telling her audience of women to move on from their last “ex-man”, Swift further unshackles them by instructing them to making out with a new one. Here the meaning of “shake” takes on it’s third meaning: “And to the fella over there with the hella good hair / won’t you come on over, baby, we can shake, shake, shake.” In other words, she’s going to go make out with that hot guy. Having the empowerment and the feeling of being free and in charge of her relationships, she can date whoever she wants, whenever she wants, and as many boys as she wants. This attitude embraces the meaning of what some feminists call “being a slut” (Cosmopolitan). If it’s socially acceptable for boys to be “players”, girls can be what’s referred to as, “being a slut”, as this was what was historically used to describe the same promiscuous behavior. Such an idea is “willfully naive and candy coated,” in the words of Jim Farber. Taylor Swift is, in his eyes, “someone who has yet to figure out how to act her age,” implying that she lacks maturity and the ability to act like she’s in her 20s. One would be hard-pressed to find anything further from innocence and immaturity than advocating for more empowering sexual contact.
One could find many activities that are the next closest thing (in terms of fun) to empowering sexual contact. In particular, if no one is interested in being a girl’s partner at the moment, Taylor Swift suggests that the next best thing is dancing solo. Her song encapsulates that belief through the “grooving” rhythm and hoppy, repetitive, ear-catching melody. In several places, she describes dancing to the very song she is singing: “can’t stop, won’t stop moving,” “I’m dancing on my own, I make the moves up as I go,” and “I never miss a beat, I’m lightning on my feet.” The danceability of this song only expounds its artistic value, as a catchy song that is fun to move to will be listened to many times and spread through a population of listeners. Rather than a song that “left her looking stunted and scared,” “Shake It Off” was a song that gave Taylor Swift command over the ears of billions of people.
What she gave those continents of listeners in “Shake It Off” was incredibly important. This song contains a central message that seeks to empower women in their dating endeavors, a kind of primer on modern feminism. Feminism is important because it pushes society closer to achieving equality between sexes (Odyssey), and the world today is an incredibly uneven playing field. Swift has a theme of feminism throughout “Shake It Off”. Her goal with this song is to empower people, especially young girls, to be strong and shake off the heartbreakers and haters.
Bibliography
● Farber, Jim. “Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’: Album Review.” New York Daily News, October 23, 2014, nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/taylor-swift-1989-album-review-article-1.1984691. Accessed 27 April 2017.
● Grein, Paul. “It’s Official: Pharrell has 2014’s Best Selling Song.” Yahoo, 27 April 2017. yahoo.com/music/its-official-pharrell-has-2014s-best-selling-106748836876.html
● Devon, Natasha. “Why Women Should Embrace the Word ‘Slut’.” Cosmopolitan, 20 October 2014, cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a30371/why-women-should-embrace-the-word-slut/
● Swift, Taylor. By Max Martin, Karl Johan Schuster, and Taylor Swift. Shake It Off (1989). Big Machine Records, LLC, 2014. MIDI.
● Swift, Taylor. “Shake It Off” YouTube, uploaded by TaylorSwiftVEVO, 18 August 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM
● Yelton, Gabriela. “Why is Feminism Important?” Odyssey, 3 August 2015, theodysseyonline.com/why-is-feminism-important. Accessed 27 April 2017.
● Billboard Staff. “Taylor Swift’s 40 Biggest Hits.” Billboard, 1 July 2016, billboard.com/photos/7423130/taylor-swift-biggest-billboard-hits. Accessed 27 April 2017.