Song of the Week: The Man

Taylor Swift singing her 2019 Lover song, The Man at the Eras Tour.

Our Girl Power Gazette song of this week is The Man by Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift needs no introduction: she’s known globally for her huge success in the music industry, and her even bigger discography. 

Throughout her career, she’s been subject to misogyny and sexism, especially about the topics of her songs, with people stating that her songs only focus on her love life and ex-boyfriends. Although she has written her fair share of songs about her exes, she also uses her platform as a way to bring light to real-world problems and voice her opinions. For example, Only the Young talks about America’s political system and issues with school shootings.

 Her song, The Man, emphasizes the inequality between men and women in all situations. She says, “If I was out flashing my dollars/I'd be a bitch, not a baller/They paint me out to be bad/So it's okay that I'm mad.” Taylor talks about how women are unfairly painted in a negative light for doing things that men in the media are commended for.

 She also alludes to inequality in the workplace and the infamous gender wage gap. (Working women are paid ~84 cents for every man’s dollar) “I'm so sick of running as fast as I can/Wondering if I'd get there quicker/If I was a man” ‘Running faster’ means working harder, and ‘getting there quicker’ means being promoted to better jobs, having more opportunities for success, or just making more money.

“They'd say I hustled/Put in the work/They wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve” of course references to how men are quick to assume that women in powerful positions are undeserving of their status, or even worse that they ‘slept their way to the top’, instead of seeing the hard work put in to achieve that position.

As a celebrity in the public eye, Swift has been subject to many of these sexist behaviors, but she has used her music and her voice to cement her position as a feminist icon.