Sitting in the darkened interior of my Honda Accord, I lean back and smile, electrified by the semi-religious concert my sister’s best friend and I had just experienced. Despite the fact that I had been driving since early morning and that the clock had long since rolled past midnight, my heart felt full and my body grateful for the forty-five songs I had witnessed Taylor Swift perform in just under three-and-a-half hours. Nothing could have felt more special, more surreal, more holy than screaming along with sixty-thousand of my closest friends the words I had sung, prayed over, and sobbed over the past year and a half. As my friend and I waited for the parking lot to empty, we listened in comfortable quiet to Swift’s “Dear John (Taylor’s Version),” a song she penned about her relationship to a then thirty-two year old man when she was nineteen. I told my friend, for the first time, of my first love and lost, an older man who tolerated my love as I treasured his heart, body, and soul. After pausing for a moment and taking a deep breath, my friend looked at me with saddened eyes and whispered, “That’s why I don’t want to enter a relationship right now; I want to make sure I’m ready and have enough self-respect before I start dating.” Color climbing into my cheeks, I sat there in stunned silence, thinking of a million different defenses, the likes of which included, “He took advantage of the first-year college ingénue,” “We were equal partners until he changed,” and, my personal favorite, “That’s easy for you to say.”
This response had not been new to my ears; other than my super close group of girlfriends who knew about him when we were dating, the responses from my school friends and more casual acquaintances fell along those same lines. Although the age gap between us was not great, the distance was enough to cause my companions to raise their eyebrows and sigh in disapproval. Almost every one of those women made a critic along the lines of, “You should have known better” and “I would have seen that red flag.” When I found the courage to adventure onto my first date after the breakup, I heard another round of commentaries regarding my romantic life, such as, “Maybe you go for the wrong type of guys,” and “Why don’t you go out with some better men?” Lividly, I cursed myself for even mentioning my lovers to my friends, feeling both exhausted from the heartbreaks and enraged from the headaches my friends were giving me. After all, they had no right to criticize and constantly discuss my personal life when none of them had even been on a single date. Crushed, I felt so alone, frozen from the loss of my first love and bitter that I couldn’t share my hurt with my friends for fear of trial and retribution.
However, as I sat and watched the cars roll slowly towards the exit, a thought suddenly occurred to me: if I was a man, would anyone blame the breakup on me? If I was the man and my ex was the woman, would my friends have told me that I picked the wrong type to date or demand that I didn’t have enough self-respect when I was trying to turn a sad song back around again? The answers were quite clear to me: no. If I was a man, no one would have ever told me to toughen up, that it was all on me and my poor decisions, and that I should’ve known better. Why do we do this? I wondered to myself, driving away from the brightly-lit stadium on twisting back roads with Taylor’s “Mean” in the backdrop. Why are women so critical of other women’s love lives when we all live in this sexism every damn day?
From studying Swift’s career, it’s obvious that women who date more men than society deems they should, often code for more men than just their eventual partner, are referred to as “boy crazy,” “clingy,” or “manipulative.” This fixation on famous women with various lovers throughout their lives and calling them abnormal teaches young girls and women that women who step out on a limb and ask multiple men out are sluts who have no self-respect, dignity, and are desperate for any male to love them. This stereotype forgets to include the fact that to date anyone of any gender takes great courage and an enormous amount of self-respect going into the relationship. Dating is simultaneously an electrifying and terrifying experience that requires an individual to have enough bravery to put their heart on the line in the hopes of finding their forever love and a base level of self-worth for the person to believe that someone could love them for just them. Even more for women, who have to dodge double standards and overcome their own doubts and internalized sexism to seek love, dating is an adventure in its own right that is only for the most valiant soldiers. Instead of applauding women for overcoming the societal patriarchy and taking a great leap of faith, we shoot them down and when they fall, kick them to the curb and say, “I told you so.” However, no one questions men for dating multiple women and having plenty of rebound relationships, for men are assumed to already come with sufficient self-respect and confidence at birth. Women are assumed to be insecure and thus seeking the approval of men, especially through romantic relationships. Additionally, as with any bias, sexism is a two-way street; it is used to pigeon-hold women at the hands of men and a way for women to pigeon-hold one another.
When I was younger, I was taught that girls and young women had to walk a very fine line of showing enough interest in boys to confirm their sexuality as heteronormative while never taking an active interest or pursuit in the opposite sex due to the high possibility of being labeled as “boy crazy,” which Monica Potts explains beautifully in her article on rural women in America. The main premise of this stereotype is that I would drive everyone around me crazy if I were to go “boy crazy.” My love would cause harm to my family, my community, and the “greater good,” meaning I was expected to stay quiet, keep my eyes from tracing his biceps, and never let him know how many minutes he occupied my headspace. And if I were to fall in love and we went down in flames, I was expected to heal quickly without a sound. Consequently, I began unconsciously internalizing all of these messages and held not only myself to these standards but the women around me, as well, including my dearest friends.This internalized sexism, therefore, shames women from speaking up and seeking help when their relationships go askew or fall apart, which is why so many women stay in such abusive relationships for so long; we will do anything in our power to keep our partner tied to us, even if the ring begins to suffocate us. Thus, as women, how do we unlearn this narrative and support our female friends and seek aid when we need it? Just as this misogyny is learned from experience in the world, the key to unlearning said bigotry is from trusting our own experiences and feelings in the world.
Most of my friends never had boyfriends until a dear friend of mine began seeing someone her senior year of high school. Since she was a few years older than me, I had not yet begun dating; yet that never caused me to pause or think twice about her relationship until her first year of college. After building this relationship for over a year and falling deeply in love with him, she told him she loved him as he dropped her off at college. Promptly, he responded by stuttering, driving away, and then breaking up with her over the phone. She texted me a few days later, clearly devastated; and, at first, I was a good and empathetic friend, telling her how sorry I was and that I would gladly kick his ass. When Christmas rolled around, however, I would sigh when I read her text, describing how she still had feelings for him and hoped to rekindle their love when she was home for the holidays. By the time the weather warmed up and the birds began chirping again and she continued to speak about him, it took all of my self-control to not say, “Why aren’t you over this yet? He doesn’t deserve you!” I didn’t understand that we can’t always help who we fall for until I fell for a finance major. I didn’t realize that falling into love is so fast and falling out of love is so long. I thought strong feminists didn’t need time to get over a man until I watched my walls crumble for someone who was so much more than just my man – my loyal friend, my trustworthy confidante, and my silent rock. Unfortunately for me, not all feminism can be taught in theory; sometimes, it can only be learned through gut-wrenching experience.
As my friend and I entered the driveway of our AirB&B that night, Taylor’s song “Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)” began blaring from the speakers. When Swift was eighteen, her then-boyfriend dumped her over the phone for another girl, whom he later wrote a song about, comparing the two women like Barbie dolls. While Swift did write several songs about her ex, she also wrote this song about her ex’s new girlfriend, claiming that she stole Swift’s boyfriend and using the lyrics as an opportunity to shame this woman. The lyrics are searing, particularly the line “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress,” which she removed from the 2023 rerecording. But by Swift canceling this younger, less feminist version of herself, we miss the opportunity to remember that we are all sexist and that we all have internalized misogyny, particularly in regards to women’s sexualities and love lives. As long as we are willing to learn from our mistakes and apologize to those we have wronged, there’s no need for women to feel shame for following what our patriarchal culture has forced us to memorize. Choosing to unlearn the slut-shaming society has coached us to weaponize against other women will help embolden us to take full autonomy of our relationships, including seeking help and a safe space if things turn south or become abusive. By creating an atmosphere where women don’t fear the pressure of judgment from our peers, we’ll feel liberated to open up to our friends without judgment and give ourselves permission to grieve the loss of this love. Furthermore, we will be able to give ourselves the chance to date without trepidation of being looked down upon for our love life and will encourage us to feel and enjoy all of the beautiful and tragic emotions that make us human.
During the Taylor Swift concert, I nearly burst into tears on three different occasions, the final being when she played my favorite song, “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which she wrote more than a decade ago. After an emotionally abusive relationship where she had little power, she penned this song, reclaiming her story and countering the message her ex had enforced upon her, that this was never love when it was all along. Although, to many, this song is depressing and sombering, I find this song empowering. For the woman in the relationship is refusing to let a man dictate what she thinks about their love and allowing her to own her truth and find her peace on the road to healing. This is how we, as women, can find our freedom and feel liberated in our love lives – by owning our stories proudly and having confidence in our own life experiences. However, most women don’t have the opportunity to write a song about their secret love affair and breakup and share it with their infatuated fans in order to release their romantic anxieties and heartbreaks. But if we all critically examine our feminist blindspots and remember you have to experience love before you can advise another woman in love, we can create the safe spaces for processing our love lives as if we were all screaming along at a Taylor Swift concert.
Last Love 