Paper #2

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Janet Nelson 03/02/12

EWRT2, Hearn Fearless or Fearful? Taylor Swift’s Surgeon General’s Warning

You’re a fifteen-year-old girl and today is your first day of high school. You look around

and you notice all the older boys, and all you can think is “I want one of them to want me.” No

one is there to tell you what they want from you will be different than what you expected; no one

is there to warn you your first experience with love might not be so fantastic. Enter Taylor Swift,

22-year-old pop-country singer, armed with not only the knowledge to advise young girls, but

the youth to easily relate to them and the experience prove she has been there before. Taylor

Swift creates a romantic fantasyland where innocence and perseverance overcome any obstacle,

while sexuality and lack of dedication lead to downfall; she then destroys that fantasyland by

making the girl the victim of a man’s cruelty and a devastating relationship0 in order warn young

girls of the hazards of love.

Most young American girls have been exposed to the pretty princess fantasy thrust at

them daily – be it Disney, Barbie, TV shows, or music. Taylor Swift is no exception to this; she

creates yet another fantasy world where being innocent and sticking with your goals rewards you

with a whirlwind romance. As far as appearance goes, Taylor Swift embodies the archetypical

angel – she often wears white, flowing dresses, sparkly silver jewelry, has long curly blonde hair,

blue eyes, and wears very natural makeup. All of these are light in color, and she shines like

beacon of innocence, created to guide young girls to path to her world.

This world often relies on famous romance stories and fairytales – in the case of her

music videos for her songs “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me”, Swift references

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and the fairytale “Cinderella”. In her music video for “Love

Story”, released September 12, 2008, from her second album, Fearless, Swift enters her new

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college campus and is struck by the sight of a handsome student. They lock eyes and in an

instant Swift is transported to the world of Romeo and Juliet. We see her standing in a white

stone tower, wearing a cream colored, corseted dress with gold jewelry, a tiara and her hair up in

a fancy bun. Again, her image is light in color and innocent in content – the dress she wears is

clearly made to be worn underneath another dress, yet it holds none of the sexuality that modern

day underwear would. Her shoulders are bare, but her bare skin invokes no sense of sensuality.

She has clearly become the innocent princess young girls daydream about; she even sings that,

“You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess”. One of the key traits of children’s fantasy fiction is

the ability to switch from our normal, boring world to the fantastical world of fantasy; in this

moment, Swift takes us along with her.

In Swift’s world, princesses do not win their prince based on innocence alone; they

require dedication to their love in order to have a “happily ever after”. The story between Romeo

and Swift’s Juliet progresses, and despite her father’s apparent disapproval, Swift perseveres.

Her father tells Romeo to “[S]tay away from Juliet” but Swift’s character disobeys him, begging

Romeo “[P]lease don’t go”. Swift’s Juliet chooses her lover over her family, showing that in this

fantasyland it is romantic love that is important, not familial love; it is lso more important to be

loyal to your lover than to your father. When she mourns that “I keep waiting for you but you

never come”, she is rewarded for her loyalty: her Romeo proposes marriage. Even her father is

convinced to approve. Swift tells us in this moment that if you stick with a man through

hardships, he will stay with you forever and everything will be alright. There is no hurdle true

love cannot overcome; she provides a template for young girls to follow.

After Swift’s Juliet wins her Romeo, her Cinderella character in her video “You Belong

With Me” takes the stage on April 21, 2009. In this video, Swift portrays a high school girl with

a crush on her next-door neighbor. Unluckily for her, he is already involved with a cheerleader

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(played by Swift in a brunet wig). However, this actually works in Swift’s favor; as Cinderella

defeats the popular, sexy girlfriend, she is able to portray that innocence trumps sexuality. In the

ending scene at prom, Swift wears a white ball gown while the (ex, at this point) girlfriend wears

a slinky red dress. However, the boy character barely glances at his ex-girlfriend; even when she

grabs his shoulders and starts to dance against him he is too occupied with gazing lovingly at

Swift to look at his ex-girlfriend as he brushes her off. In comparison to the girlfriend’s

provocative dress and demeanor, Swift’s modesty shows young girls that they shouldn’t have to

dress sexually to attract attention, and that staying innocent is the best way to get the boy. Swift

sighs that “[S]he wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts. She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers”;

however, when Swift is dancing alone in her bedroom in her pajamas we see the boy she loves

watching her and smiling. He is entranced by her simply for who she is (or, at least, this is what

the video portrays) and it is her innocence that wins out in the end; when his girlfriend cheats on

him he reveals that he was in love with Swift all along. The concept that a girl can be plain and

ordinary, yet win the attention of the boy she wants, is a fantasy all girls have. “I can just be me,”

they conclude, “I can dress like a slob and he’ll just think it’s endearing.” While this did happen

to Swift’s Cinderella character, other girls are not always so lucky. But Swift gives us the

opportunity to step into that Cinderella role – the stunning young girl disguised by superficial

ugliness, who is able to win the heart of whomever she wants.

Yet, just like her Juliet character, Swift’s Cinderella can’t win through innocence alone.

Her lyrics that “I'm the one who [has]…been here all along” beseech us to realize that all this

time she has been loyal and devoted to him, unlike his girlfriend. Throughout the song she asks

him why he can’t see that “[He belongs] with [her]” – why is he unable to realize that Swift is by

far the more dedicated, and therefore more deserving, girl? While the girlfriend strayed and

flirted with another boy, Swift stood by her love through thick and thin, and her dedication

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triumphs in the end; he chooses her over the flighty, unreliable girlfriend. Swift tells her

audience that staying true to who you are and avoiding sexualization rewards you: you win the

man.

In order to create a fantasy world that any young girl can relate to, Swift requires not only

a girl whose shoes the audience can step into, but also a man who acts as her romantic interest.

Her upbeat, romantic portrayal disguises the fact that the men she uses in these songs are vague,

uninteresting and ultimately unimportant other than the fact that they are loveable. The boy in

“You Belong With Me” is played by Lucas Till, while Romeo of “Love Story” is played by

Justin Gaston. By switching between the two male leads – a trend that continues in her other

music videos – Swift expresses the concept that despite what she says about true love, the man

she supposedly loves could be anyone; indeed, his identity is actually of little importance when it

comes to the message she wishes to spread. She needs a man, any man, to get through to her

audience, but the man does not matter to her. Swift uses her male lead to further the message she

wishes to tell her audience, rather than to establish any sort of pattern. In her songs, she often

simply refers to the romantic interest as “You”, and when she does give descriptive details

(“[S]enior [high school] boys” in “Fifteen”, for example) they are only in relation to the

protagonist of her songs – the girl. In these optimistic, idealistic songs, a relationship is based on

and aimed towards only the girl, rather than the man – after all, it is the girl’s world. The men

there have no consequence.

These men quickly gain importance in Swift’s downbeat songs in order to serve another

purpose: to destroy the fantasy world she has so painstakingly built. Now that Swift has created

her world, she uses her male characters to break the hearts of her female protagonists in order to

show her audience that, while they desire the fantasy world, the real world operates very

differently. The more depressing the song is, the more details from Swift’s personal life are

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integrated in the lyrics, and the failed love interest’s name is no exception. While Juliet had

simply Romeo, a 500-year old infamous name of English-speaking societies, Swift’s song

“Teardrops on My Guitar” from her first album very explicitly talk about a boy named Drew –

Swift credits her inspiration for the song to Drew Hardwick, a boy she knew in high school. In

“Teardrops on My Guitar” Swift is innocent and dedicated but she doesn’t get the boy; instead,

her heart is broken. Unlike her happier songs, “Teardrops on My Guitar” gives details, not

simply a vague impression of a love interest; Drew is much more important than Romeo could

ever be simply because he had a real name and details. The boy in Swift’s song who breaks her

heart is of more significance that the ideal boy who rides off with her into the sunset. This

importance serves as her warning: Prince Charming will only ever be charming, but a real boy

will hurt you.

Even boys who appear to be Prince Charming are not always what they seem. Swift’s

song “White Horse” (a title taken from the romantic theme of the knight riding in to save the

princess on his white horse) expresses extreme disappointment about the significant other she

has broken up with. In the line, “I was a dreamer before you went and let me down” she conveys

her regret that the man she trusted “[L]et [her] down” and didn’t meet her expectations. This

serves as a warning to her audience: if you expect too much and are a “[D]reamer”, then it is

likely that the person you have put too much trust in will not live up to your expectations. She

continues to say, “I honestly believed in you. Holding on, the days drag on”, showing that she

feels she has been betrayed and that, in this case, her perseverance is what led to her downfall.

Unlike her other music videos, “White Horse” begins and ends not with the song but with Swift

talking to the boy who has cheated on her; at the beginning, he asks, “Do you love me?” and she

hesitates before responding, “Yes”. The fact that she actually speaks to her romantic interest,

instead of simply gazing into his eyes and falling for him instantly, gives the watcher the sense

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that unlike her fantasyland videos, this one is about real people and a real situation. Swift

exposes her young audience to the pain that love can cause, and warns them that, unlike

Cinderella, something everyone wants but no one gets, real romance will never be a fairytale.

She states in this song, in complete contrast to “Love Story”, “I’m not a princess, this ain’t a

fairytale”; even the title, when it appears in the lyrics, refers to and denies her fantasyland: “Now

it's too late for you and your white horse to come around”. He wasn’t her Prince Charming; she

will not ride off into the sunset with him on his white horse. By instilling a reality not seen in her

upbeat songs, Swift tells her audience that this is what love is really like – it can be painful, and

it can be heartbreaking.

Swift herself has songs that are built on regret she feels about relationships from her past.

She uses her song “Fifteen” to tell us exactly what happens to girls who blindly rush into

relationships and even muses that she wishes someone had told her this when she was young –

this is exactly what she is trying to do for her audience now. In “Fifteen”, a young girl and her

friend Abigail (again, someone Swift knew in high school and therefore more real than a simple

“my friend”) are used and abused by “[S]enior boys”. However, the majority of the song is not

about the men who break their hearts, but the girls who have their hearts broken – in their teen

and preteen years girls don’t understand the cruelty of romantic relationships. Swift sings that

after a time “[W]hen all you wanted was to be wanted”, the girl was wronged by her older

boyfriend. It was because the girl’s only goal was “[T]o be wanted” that she was hurt. Now that

she has been dumped, Swift gives us the crux of the song: “Wish you could go back and tell

yourself what you know now”. The girl’s heart has been broken, as ours will inevitably be as

well, but not to fear: although you can’t go back and tell yourself what you know now, Swift is

there to do the job we cannot. She advises us that “When you're fifteen, don't forget to look

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before you fall”. The sad story and negative emotions Swift gives us in “Fifteen” serve to caution

her audience of what can happen if a girl gives herself blindly to the first man who wants her.

It is a mark of puberty for a girl to get her first crush on a cute boy and a mark of maturity

to have her first relationship. Yet because she is so young, this girl doesn’t realize what she is

getting herself into. Swift’s fantasyland may be something we all wish for, and for older women,

nostalgic, but it isn’t real. Swift knows this. Through her otherworld, and the destruction of her

otherworld, Swift strives to tell us all what really happens when you fall in love.