Why Taylor Swift’s engagement is a huge moment for millennials (and it’s not because they’re vapid) | Canada Voices

If you listened very closely on Tuesday afternoon, at around 1 p.m. E.T., you could hear an audible “Oh my God” reverberate from various corners all around the world: from women who still have skinny jeans buried in their closets; from a college professor who teased about cancelling class so his students could study her ring; from a police dispatcher who accidentally shared the news on a hot mic. It was like this century’s Krakatoa eruption, but with more heat, and higher-pitched sounds: Taylor Swift and her NFL player boyfriend, Travis Kelce, were engaged. Stop everything.

It’s easy to dismiss the news as frivolous, and compared to everything else going on, of course it is. Famous pop star gets engaged to famous athlete. Yawn. Next you’re going to tell me about the movie star who throws a fit at a restaurant because someone put parsley on her prawns. Big deal.

But cultural observers would note that whether it ought to be or not, this news is a big deal. It has swallowed group chats, taken over social media, and some brands have even started offering promotions and freebies to celebrate the news. If you parse TikTok, you’ll see reaction videos from people acting as if they themselves have just gotten engaged.

What will Taylor Swift wear to her wedding with Travis Kelce? Three early predictions

Much of the response is in line with typical celebrity fandom. Girls sobbed when they saw Frank Sinatra and fainted at Elvis concerts, and one fan famously scaled a crane to try to get to Michael Jackson.

But there’s something about Ms. Swift’s relationship to her fans – and them to her − that feels different: more personal. It’s not simply that Ms. Swift’s fans adore her, but that they actually see themselves in her. Indeed, this billionaire, world-famous pop star who leads a life that most could only imagine, somehow also embodies much of the millennial struggle. And now that she’s getting her happily ever after, millennials are too.

Many millennials cut their musical teeth with overprocessed pop stars: Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, NSync – manufactured boy and girl groups singing derivative songs about relationships and performing choreographed dance routines. Dressing up like Ginger Spice was a Halloween costume, not a reflection of self. Their tween and teen years coincided with the rise of the megawatt female soloists: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Rihanna, and so on; impossibly beautiful, hyper-sexualized stars who were dancing Barbie dolls with chaotic personal lives.

But then came Taylor Swift, who started as a country singer with a mane of curly blonde hair and a guitar as her main accessory (in contrast to the python Britney Spears wore while performing at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2001). Ms. Swift’s music gradually became more mainstream, more pop, but it was always personal: about her relationships, her friends, about navigating young adulthood and a life in the spotlight. It was the type of narrative songwriting that, to many fans, echoed their own stories of love, loss and heartbreak.

It was more than just her music, however. In 2009, Ms. Swift’s acceptance speech for best female video at the VMAs was interrupted by Kanye West, who grabbed her mic and declared that Beyoncé had one of the “best videos of all time.” It was an extreme manifestation of what so many young women in the workplace for the first time would simultaneously experience: more powerful men taking their mics, playing down their achievements, humiliating them in front of their peers.

Like them, Ms. Swift would cycle through a series of failed relationships with men who would, according to her interviews and music, bring her down, manipulate her, behave insecurely about her fame and, in the case of former partner Joe Jonas, break up with her over the phone.

In 2019, Ms. Swift lost out on ownership of her music masters when the record label she signed with when she was 15 was sold to former Justin Bieber manager Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings. Ms. Swift was publicly devastated, and she started re-recording her music so that she could own the masters of her remakes. It’s not the same as an intern at an ad agency having to do twice the work because someone else took credit for her market research, but it feels like the same thing.

Photo Essay: Vancouver fans embrace the end of the Eras Tour

But now, at 35, it’s all falling into place for Ms. Swift. Last year, she completed the most successful tour of all time. She finally had the opportunity to buy back the rights to her original masters. She found the right man, and got engaged. She has become one of the most powerful people in the world, and yet she still looks and acts like a normal person. Like many millennials, it’s taken Ms. Swift until her mid-30s to find the right partner, and until her mid-30s to get the mainstream recognition she deserves. Women who wore skinny jeans in high school understand what that’s all about. And they feel like her joy is now theirs, too.