Every Woman Needs to Listen to Taylor Swift's New Song 'The Man'
Taylor Swift‘s been quite outspoken about the sexism she’s faced in the music industry. When she was promoting her 1989 album in 2014, she called out the double standard of being criticized for writing about her exes even though male artists like Ed Sheeran do the same thing. Earlier this month, she opened up about the treatment she received after her 2012 album Red topped the charts.
“It’s fine to infantilize a girl’s success and say, ‘How cute that she’s having some hit songs,’” she told Vogue. “‘How cute that she’s writing songs.’ But the second it becomes formidable? As soon as I started playing stadiums—when I started to look like a woman—that wasn’t as cool anymore.”
Now she’s doubling down on this message with a new song, “The Man” off her album Lover (which dropped today). In it, Swift muses about how her life and career might have panned out if she were a man.
“I would be complex. I would be cool,” Swift sings. “They’d say I played the field before I found someone to commit to. And that would be OK for me to do. Every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you.”
Swift isn’t the first pop singer to call out this troubling dichotomy. Everyone from Madonna to Nicki Minaj has drawn attention to the fact that women in music aren’t allowed to be strong without being branded “divas.” “When [Lil’] Wayne walks on the set, and says, ‘Don’t talk to me. Have my music ready,’ it’s cool. But every time I put my foot down and stand up for myself, it’s like, ‘We’ve heard about Nicki Minaj,'” Minaj said in 2012.