Taylor Swift getting booed has revealed an uncomfortable truth
Taylor Swift might be one of the most famous and liked women in the world but there’s a wild reality even she can’t escape.
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Taylor Swift getting booed for supporting Travis Kelce at the Super Bowl is proof no woman is safe from society turning on her, even if it just momentarily.
Swift is not only more famous than she’s ever been but she’s never been more liked. She’s fresh off the success of the Eras tour, a three-hour extravaganza in which she played songs from her extensive 11-album catalogue, starting with her debut and ending with The Tortured Poets Society.
The tour ran from March 2023 to December 2024 and was so successful that it was credited with boosting the economies of the cities it visited.
It also found a whole other life online, where clips from the show filmed by fans were constantly going viral.
It was a cultural phenomenon and a celebration of girlhood. Fans would turn up in glittery outfits while Swift sang about everything from falling in love and the power of friendships to the heartbreak of breakups.
The success of the tour even managed to make Swift more famous.
This feels especially impressive considering she’s been doing this since she was a teenager, has won Grammys, dated fellow celebrities and even been interrupted by Kanye West.
The mammoth success of the tour was coupled with the fact that her six-year relationship with English actor Joe Alwyn ended.
The couple were always intensely private about their romance and it was announced they’d broken up in March. It is hard to get a proper timeline on when their romance fizzled because they were so rarely seen together.
After the break-up was announced though, clips of Swift getting teary as she sang the songs that fans had always assumed were about Alywn routinely went viral.
Swift’s professional life was thriving, but her personal life took a pretty painful hit. Then along came Travis Kelce the tight-end for NFL team The Chiefs.
He attended one of her concerts with plans to give her a friendship bracelet with his number on it.
He was left disappointed because she doesn’t meet many people at her shows, even famous ones, because she has to rest her voice.
He said in very football bro style that he was “butt hurt” he didn’t get to give the bracelet to her on his podcast.
Swift heard about the complaining and found it charming and the pair met and began dating privately only to hard-launch their relationship when she was seen supporting him at one of his games.
The internet went feral over the images of Swift at his game in September 2023, and the moment Kelce seemed to turn to his teammate and say, “she’s here” with an awestruck look on his face.
From there, Swift became a fixture at Kelce’s games, and Kelce was always met with cheers from the crowd whenever he turned up at one of Swift’s concerts.
Swift landing a non-private boyfriend who was comfortable celebrating her publicly was embraced and made Kelce seem like a really good guy.
The kind of man who was secure enough with his own success that he was able to embrace hers.
No one was accusing him of taking away Swift’s spotlight or ruining her concert.
Since Swift has become a fixture on the sidelines for Kelce, there’s been commentary that she’s somehow taking away from the game.
A football-goer once got media attention for wearing a “Taylor Swift sucks T-shirt” to watch a game. People online have complained that the NFL “is not about Taylor Swift” and called her appearances at games “tacky” and “tone deaf!”
Others claim she’s turning up to his games for “attention”, as if the biggest pop star in the world needs more of it.
This commentary is undoubtedly in the minority, but it is still simmering away on the internet.
When she booed at the Superbowl, where The Chiefs were playing The Eagles, it was starkly different from how her community has embraced Kelce.
When Kelce turned up at shows, he was greeted with cheers, and videos of him dancing along to songs, looking excited, and showing any support went viral. And yes, that has happened for Swift, but then there’s all this other negative stuff that goes along with it.
Men are given the benefit of the doubt, whereas women are treated like they might have some evil agenda. Kelce gets praise for being a supportive partner, but Swift gets accused of her support being just a ruse to get more “attention” for herself.
Taylor Swift might be the most famous, even close to one of the most liked women in the world, but not even that won’t save her from being booed or for disliking her to be treated like a sport. So what hope does any woman have? We don’t have any.