When Women Rule

I get it now.  It’s not hype, it’s not hysteria.  It’s close to a cult, but without the malevolent undertones, and with one important distinction, its members are free to come and go as they please.  I suspect, however, that once they join, they’re never going to leave.  Not because they’re indoctrinated, but because they’re exercising their free will.  There’s a world of difference.

You may be forgiven for not knowing what I’m talking about.  I am referring to the absolutely massive sisterhood that is the Swifties.  They’re not all sisters of course, there are quite a few brothers and others, and for three and a half glorious hours last night, I included myself in their number.  Don’t believe me about the sisterhood?  The concert was at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, that bastion of Welsh Rugby and machismo.  The stewards converted every second gents toilet to a women’s loo in the gap between Paramore, the support act, and the main event, the incomparable Taylor Swift.  Women ruled.

It was hard to find anyone in Cardiff not going to the show, and it seemed everyone dressed for the occasion.  I may have been the exception (although as instructed, I did wear my salmon pink polo shirt to at least be passably present).  Sequins, glitter and glam abounded.  Any cowgirl seeking to buy boots in Cardiff will have found little remaining stock, but she could have picked up a pink Stetson from any one of dozens of hawkers selling knocked-off Taylor merch.

Across the city, fans dressed in their favourite Eras tour fashion.  Whether a tasselled dress, a sequined skirt, a flashy leotard, or a plain white t-shirt bearing slogans from Taylor’s canon, all of them wore an outfit to reflect their adoration for the woman they’d come to see.  Some of the boys wore costume too, the standard seeming to be the number 87 shirt of Travis Kelce, Taylor’s partner.  The marketers at Kansas City Chiefs probably can’t believe their luck.  I hope Taylor’s on their Christmas card list.

It was an astonishing, uninhibited display of girl power.  Total immersion in Taylor and complete ownership of every look.  It was glorious and mighty and perhaps summed up most fantastically on one of the white Ts reading, FUCK THE PATRIARCHY.   I couldn’t agree more.

What Taylor Swift has done through her music and actions, is to grant permission to young women to be themselves, to assert themselves, to challenge the opinions of others.  She is giving license to fans worldwide to redefine societal norms.  Her success, and the way she manages her career – by reclaiming her music from Scooter Braun, by using song to highlight chauvinism and egoism, by instructing women to challenge an invidious status quo, is a message that millions want to embrace.  It’s not a cult, it’s not a fad, I hope it’s not even a movement.  I hope that what Taylor Swift represents is a historic corrective, the moment when one woman told a generation of adoring followers that they are better than the male dominated world would still have them believe.

As the majority of the 67,000 crowd sang along word perfect to every song, I marvelled not only at the performance, but at the staging of an event that was breathtaking in scale, rehearsed to within an inch of perfection: band, backing vocalists, dancers, stage crew, audio-visual, even the audience played a part, like the man four rows behind us who proposed to his partner during ‘Love Story’ – the whole show choreographed to performative excellence, the only glitch, a microphone that didn’t cooperate for a beat during her acoustic set.  Leading it all, Taylor Swift, celebrating what she reminded us was her eighteen-year career, greater than half her life.

The show was phenomenal, a hyperbolic word that fails to do it justice.  As I’m writing this, my light bracelet is lying on my desk, still flashing blue, pink, yellow, its face resembling an alien life form.  Certainly, the thousands worn by fans at the show served to change the place into something other worldly.  As a geek Dad, I loved the technology on display, albeit it’s beyond my comprehension.  But even more so, I’m baffled by the phenomenon.  I’m finding it difficult to find the words to describe Taylor Swift.  As much as she is redefining music, performance, theatre, and what it means to be a woman, she needs to redefine the language of hyperbole, I don’t think strong enough words exist to describe her, but I’ll have a go using my limited vocabulary to express what I thought of last night’s show  and everything to do with it – WOW!

Craig Brown is an author living in Newbury.
Discover the first volume of his serialised novel,
'A Little Something To Hide' at craigbrownauthor.com

Twitter: @GOMinTraining
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2024
19 June 2024