The response to Taylor Swift’s long-awaited twelfth studio album, Lifetime of a Showgirl, has been predictable: it shattered streaming data, topped the Billboard charts, and left followers clamoring for extra amid new music movies, restricted version releases, and the upcoming Ella tour documentary. (The satan works laborious, however Swift’s advertising and marketing workforce works tougher.)
Within the wake of her engagement to Kansas Metropolis Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce, Swiftie’s craze has predictably reached a fever pitch, however so has the criticism of “Wooden,” maybe Swift’s most sexual track so far.
The catchy track has sufficient of a playful pop beat that you simply virtually neglect that Swift is clearly singing about her fiancé’s reproductive organs. The album’s ninth track (which some Swifties say was a deliberate nod to Kelce’s prolonged manhood) is actually about love, but it surely’s additionally about lust.
“He made me oh Matthew and opened my eyes/Sequoia timber, it isn’t laborious to see/His love was the important thing that opened my thighs,” Swift sings over and over. “Ladies, you don’t want a bouquet of flowers / to know that onerous rock is on the way in which.”
On this nation, girls are required to look sexual however by no means absolutely personal their sexuality. For Swift, who suppresses her personal wishes whereas clinging to unrealistic magnificence expectations for the sake of the male gaze, to sing as a 35-year-old lady who enjoys being fucked by her fiancé is, in a phrase, unacceptable.
“Wooden” and related songs impressed by her romance had been described as “vulgar,” and one conservative outlet claimed that Swift’s “express” lyrics contained “the uninteresting sound of a door slamming into girlhood” (once more, Swift is 35 years previous). “I actually favored the track ‘Wooden’ the primary few occasions I heard it,” Barstool Sports activities founder Dave Portnoy admitted on Instagram, telling followers that after he realized the track wasn’t about a lot, he could not take it anymore.
“No, no, I am not swaying and weaving and jamming to songs about Travis fucking,” he declared, however one can not help however marvel what number of songs Portnoy was prepared to “sway and weave” about feminine physique components.
From shock and disgust to criticism and outright condemnation, the reactions to the music of feminine artists who’ve grown and advanced together with her are a stark reminder that even within the yr of the Lord, 2025, the world stays fearful of ladies who’re unafraid to personal their sexual energy.
Sadly, it is a story as previous as sexism itself. Within the late ’90s and early ’90s, it was Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, and Jessica Simpson. They had been initially packaged as “harmless” highschool ladies with a foul vibe of “she can be, would not she?” power.
For Spears, it was pigtails and a porn-inspired Catholic schoolgirl costume that additionally marketed her as a virgin. Regardless of how a lot she had been sexualized as an adolescent when she had her personal sexuality, together with songs like “Overprotected” and her public relationships with Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline, it was deemed too problematic and too sexual.
And Aguilera is a “genie in a bottle” who, as soon as launched, provoked unrelenting wrath. With some “soiled” lyrics and two assholes, Aguilera incurred the ire of a society that also has a robust purity tradition. She was advised on MTV that she wanted to be “spanked like a naughty woman” and that she appeared like she got here from an “intergalactic whore conference” in Time journal.
The message to girls all over the world, then and now, is evident. It stays without end engaging, but it surely means it is best to by no means expertise want your self. Encourage the passions of others, however by no means dive into your personal. By doing so, you’ll be able to perceive your self extra deeply and create your personal sexual experiences value celebrating.
Adhere to the rampant Madonna-whore complicated. Make a straight man need to have intercourse with you, however by no means have intercourse your self lest you be labeled “vulgar,” “blatant,” or “slut.”
See, I’m a giant fan of Swift’s “Wooden”? I am unable to say so. On the threat of incurring the wrath of numerous Swifties all over the world, the lyrics are in all probability distasteful and considerably infantile for a sexually skilled 38-year-old lady, it doesn’t matter what the pearl-clutchers amongst us say.
However maybe even the cringe-worthy, painfully apparent insinuations are a part of the purpose. Who amongst us wasn’t so pleased about having our hips damaged by our higher our bodies that we boasted about it to our girlfriends in a means that appeared considerably ridiculous after we returned to non-orgasmic sensations? Love, sexuality, intercourse, and want, it is all messy and typically cringe-worthy.
So whereas references to “redwoods” and “laborious rock” elicit quite a lot of pathetic laughs, I look ahead to the day when a grown lady approaching 40 can sing about having enjoyable, consensual intercourse in any means she chooses, with out being vilified by those that want her to stay prepubescent without end.
If it’s important to select between a society that without end needs to infantilize girls and sexualize them on the identical time, and boring lyrics about Willie who deserves male admiration, one catchy track at a time with double meanings.
