Taylor Swift is not the English teacher she wants you to think she is

on performative intellectualism, Baudrillard's hyperreality, Disney justice, and hot girls reading books

I remember it like it was yesterday, because it was.

I was casually scrolling through Twitter on my lunch break when I saw The Post. It floated ominously at the top of my feed. I’ve seen it eighty seven more times since without ever intentionally seeking it out. Yes, you know the one: the one in which American singer Taylor Swift and American football player Travis Kelce announced their engagement.

I was hung up neither on the backdrop of florals and manicured topiary, nor on the sizable ring, but rather on the caption Taylor wrote: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married *dynamite emoji*”

This fascinated me, not only because it is confusing (why would she not be the MUSIC teacher???) but because it strikes at a much deeper truth about the Taylor Swift Industrial Complex: it’s built on complete fabrication.

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have some class

EDIT: This post on r/Teachers was made in jest, but Twitizens overwhelmingly agreed with its sentiment

It’s a tale as old as time: a queer kid—sensitive, introspective, a little too cerebral for his own good—eschews the crude, plebeian environment of the cafeteria and spends his lunch periods in the refuge of his English teacher’s classroom.

This English teacher is a lovely woman. She wears cardigans. She wears glasses, but is definitely not an uggo. She eats salads that she brings to school in a big Tupperware. She owns several cats. She is single, but everyone tells her that she’s such a catch, to which she blushes and waves away, fretting that she’s just a plain Jane. Perhaps—O, stars!—she has a crush on the hunky gym teacher, a fact only the most observant students pick up on.

This is either:

1) the person Taylor Swift thinks she is, or

2) the person Taylor Swift wants us to think she is.

Honestly, I don’t buy either of these options.

Do you know what would actually convince me, a writer, that Taylor Swift deserves the title of “our English teacher?” If she had some kind of meaningful presence in the literary world. If she got involved in political causes that fought book bans. Maybe—and hear me out—if she actually read books.

let’s go to the club

Celebrity presence in the literary world is nothing new. Musicians and actors and socialites write memoirs and autobiographies, and sometimes even dabble in fiction. The stars of movie adaptations of books are often photographed carrying the source material around with them. Most notably, celebrity book clubs—think Jenna Bush, Reese Witherspoon, Oprah—have helmed the literary zeitgeist for decades.

But there are some exciting new players in the game promoting literature far beyond the typical offerings of mom-oriented domestic fiction, and they’re not who you probably think they are.

They’re the hot girls.

From left: Dua Lipa holding Service95's August book club pick; Kaia Gerber in LibraryScience merch; Kaia Gerber reading at a LibraryScience live event

Pop star Dua Lipa runs a book club through her literary community, Service95, and has interviewed prominent authors such as George Saunders, Olga Tukarczuk, and Khaled Hosseini. Model and actress Kaia Gerber has featured titles ranging from Marguerite Duras’s The Lover to Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! in her book club over at LibraryScience.

Service95’s mission is to help people “read the world differently,” while LibraryScience “aims to highlight books that aren’t on the typical bestseller lists in order to better support debut writers, new voices, and overlooked / underrepresented stories.” I’ve been thoroughly impressed at the quality of both clubs’s picks and at how thoughtful all of their interviews have been.

Meanwhile, Taylor, who is often referred to as “the greatest songwriter of [our] generation” and as being “on par with Shakespeare” by her fans, does not have a book club—which would be perfectly fine had she not dubbed herself “our English teacher.” If not a book club, what has Taylor Swift offered the literary community instead? Words from thesaurus dot com, half-baked lyrical references to Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith, and an exceptionally anemic record called the The Tortured Poets Department. She even started her own publishing company, only to use it to release an Eras Tour coffee table book, which was honestly less of a book and more of a book-shaped piece of merch.

A still from the “You Belong With Me” music video (2009.) Her schtick has been the same since time immemorial.

Now, I have to qualify here that I have no doubt in my mind that Taylor *has* read books (the literary references in her lyrics aren’t lost on me) and to suggest otherwise would be ridiculous. However, I see a dissonance here with the way “readership” is performed versus how it is practiced.

LibraryScience’s website states: “we don’t claim to be academic, we just love to read.” Taylor Swift almost presents the opposite: she enjoys the status of word-smithing “mastermind” that has been bestowed on her, but doesn’t seem to be all that interested in actual literature. At the same time, she has built a career off of being “not like the other girls,” insisting upon her own nerdiness and distancing herself from the hot in-crowd, which consists of girls not unlike Dua and Kaia.

It’s like that one bathroom scene in Booksmart where Beanie Feldman’s academics-obsessed character discovers that the popular kids who party and have sex are *gasp!* smarter than her:

So how exactly did this happen? Why is Taylor Swift lauded as this genius poetess while Dua and Kaia are branded as vapid pretty girls despite their enthusiastic celebration of literature? The answer is simple.

Marketing!

feeling the fantasy

French social theorist Jean Baudrillard has this concept called the hyperreality. It’s rooted in simulacrum (Latin for “copying shit”) and can be defined as a condition in which, because of the compression of perceptions of reality in culture and media, what is generally regarded as real and what is understood as fiction are seamlessly blended together in experiences so that there is no longer any clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. It follows this rule: the “faker” something seems, the more “real” everything else around it seems to be in comparison, even if this perception is a false one. We’ll get to this in a second.

Baudrillard suggests that in order to deal with our postmodern times (aka the Horrors,) individuals employ a fatal strategy (aka a coping mechanism) that he refers to as the fractal self, which involves the self disintegrating and “becoming a proliferating fractal of objects and simulations, leading to the collapse of the subject-object relationship and the realization of a simulated existence” (basically, constructing personalities centered around existing media.)

We as individuals can change who and what we are as easily as we’d change clothes. We can adopt personalities formed as a fad or a fashion with incredible ease. There are many aesthetic uniforms to pick from: goth, cottage core, tweed jacket intellectual, clean girl, scene girl, old money prep, jock, coquette, “indie kid” etc. The “self” is nothing more than a series of ornaments we can put on and take off as we please. What’s a better representation of the “fractal self” than the Eras Tour?

“The Eras Tour” promotional poster, featuring the fractal Taylor

One example of fantasy that Baudrillard presents is Disney:

“…Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the ‘real’ country, all of ‘real’ America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety—in its banal omnipresence—that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.”

In a similar vein, Taylor Swift’s version of Disneyland (I will be calling it “The World (Taylor’s Version)” in this post) exists as pure fantasy: color-coded glittery leotards, copies (simulacra!) she makes of her own preexisting albums, the mythos surrounding the “Easter eggs” hidden in her music videos, and a monster tour with ticket sales equalling the GDP of a small African country. In comparison, everything else feels…boring. Unremarkable.

EVERYTHING IS TAYLOR!!!

The World (TV) is a giant theater act, a grip of illusions: an impeccably curated narrative, a global phenomenon with astronomical production value, a legend of a girl triumphing over an evil music industry with nothing but a guitar and a dream, etc. This illusory world is supposed to be what makes Taylor herself so successful. What actually makes so many people buy into The World (TV) is the fact that it’s a miniature version of everything that is spectacular (and also reprehensible) about the music industry. Think about it: a fan buys every single album variant, hovers by their computer like a moron for tickets, and leaves a concert feeling a huge hole forming in their life (AKA Post Concert Depression.) It’s just the business in microcosm.

This entire “fantasy,” however, isn’t entirely in the music or the stage show: it’s in the mass of Swifties partaking in it all, feeling like a part of something bigger than themselves. All of the matching outfits, the friendship bracelets, the Twitter stan accounts and Instagram fan pages—they are all there to add color to the social atmosphere that gives The World (TV) its fantasy power.

There is also the equal but opposite reaction from the Haters™ in the form of discourse wars fought on Internet forums and haranguers who pen strongly-worded think pieces (including this one, I guess) decrying the whole thing as a big cash grab under the guise of girlbossism, all while lamenting the turbo-normies’s uncritical consumption of pop-slop.

Whichever side of the line you fall on, it is undeniable that Taylor has created a self on the curve of the postmodern by becoming more popular than popular: her own popularity itself has become the foremost topic of popularity.

Taylor Swift on stage at the Eras Tour, looking very glittery!!!

Ultimately, The World (TV) feels so obviously manufactured and overproduced that its very existence serves to hide that it is, in fact, the exact industry it pretends to oppose: shameless, bloated, unfettered capitalistic greed. And it works!

Referencing Baudrillard’s earlier example: Disney is in a position where it can—via films, merchandise, and theme parks—create this immersive fantasy culture that enables fans to accept its slimy business practices. Similarly, there’s enough fantasy in The World (TV) that almost makes us forget that Taylor Swift’s net worth is $1.6 billion, an amount that cannot be accumulated and maintained ethically. But that’s not very relatable, is it?

and justice for all

Before I began my Baudrillardian analysis of The World (TV) and Disney, I already noticed a lot of parallels between the two, most notably in their respective fan bases.

Some Disney adults say that their chosen lifestyle is their attempts at reliving their happy childhoods, or conversely, rewriting their unhappy ones. Some say it’s just harmless, fun escapism. Any way you slice it, it’s about the childlike desire for warmth and comfort. Taylor Swift’s fans often describe their fandom in similar terms: being a “Swiftie” is a reclamation of girlhood, a middle finger to the patriarchy, a uniform to be worn by soldiers in the war of love and heartbreak. In fact, I’d bet that if you asked any Disney adult, they’d tell you they were also a Swiftie.

I think the key to analyzing the draw of both of these worlds lies in one fundamental truth: people desire a fantasy justice system.

A shot of the Enchanted Castle in Paris, a city where they already have *literal* castles. How’s that for simulacra?

I don’t mean justice in the sense of due process or anything like that. This is a sense of justice that stems from a very specific moral code that we are trained to aspire to as soon as we’re old enough to know right from wrong. It’s the justice of our bedtime stories. It’s the justice of a utopia, and it can’t actually exist in the “real” world, which is why it’s so appealing.

This justice is black-and-white, the battle of good versus evil. Of course, you’re always on the side of the good guys, who always win out in the end, and the villains are always cartoonishly evil, mustache-twirling, bad for the sake of being bad. There’s always a happily ever after (and what’s more “happily ever after” than getting married?)

This is the exact system of justice that is found in The World (TV.) Taylor is the creator and heroine of this world, but she is not its god. Instead of witches and curses, the heroine is attacked by other enemies: mean girls, lousy ex boyfriends, other (female) pop stars, shadowy music industry execs in suits, talk show hosts, private equity firms, the media, Scooter Braun, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian. The heroine must always win—it’s her fundamental design principle, kind of like how Superman must never kill—and her fans cannot conceive of an instance when her “good” does not triumph over “evil.” The fantasy is too strong to fail; her battles are won before they’re even fought.

Now…who are the heroines of these Disney stories?

They aren’t popular or pretty or have a hot boyfriend—they’re average, ordinary girls just like you and me. It’s no coincidence that Taylor Swift chooses to present herself in this way off-stage—look at her awkward dancing, tragic fashion sense, and social media pages full of pictures of cats—all which make her ascent to her current station feel even more like a Cinderella story. Conveniently, the trope of “book nerd” is an easy ornament to throw onto this existing “lovable dork” framework, so if the shoe fits...

Vanessa Hudgens as the immortal Gabriella Montez, heroine of High School Musical and one of the foremost nerdy girl heroines of the Disney Channel

I think this desire for fantasy justice is the reason why there’s so much crossover not only between Disney adults and Swifties, but with Marvel fanboys and adult women who read YA fantasy novels as well. When Cinderella gets chosen by Prince Charming and the Wicked Stepmother gets her comeuppance, there’s a certain ecstasy that accompanies the experience, the same cheap & fleeting neural thrill you get when the superhero defeats the bad guy or when the YA fantasy heroine is ravished by the billionaire fairy king.

Let’s revisit the caption on the engagement post: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

There’s a sense of poetic Disney Channel Original Movie justice conveyed here: in a shocking turn of events, the nerdy girl-next-door English teacher (the platonic ideal of an English teacher) has ended up with the jockishly handsome gym teacher (the platonic ideal of a gym teacher.) He has removed her glasses and has discovered that she is actually…pretty! They are now in love. He dumps his popular (sluttish) girlfriend instantly. This is the ultimate form of justice in The World (TV.)

You think I’m exaggerating? This is quite literally the plot of the “You Belong With Me” music video:

I could write a whole post on the metatext of this video (the nerd glass are fake! her ass is not reading that book! the “villain” is literally just Taylor in a wig!) but I will refrain. Let’s just say that this video is from 2009, and her strategy was the exact same back then as it is now.

And no, it isn’t lost on me that she gets with the football player at the end of the video.

The tortured poetry of Travis Kelce

the poetry unit

Guess what? I like “YBWM.” It’s a classic teen pop song with a country bend and was featured heavily on the soundtrack of my tweenhood.

I must admit that I’m not an indiscriminate T Swizz hater (shocking, I know.) Both Folklore and Evermore feature some of Taylor’s most narrative lyrical work yet, and she effectively delivers stories of outcast socialites and war-torn soldiers and scandalous lovers. Throughout these albums, you can hear little glimmers of what Taylor Swift’s lyricism could be with the right collaborators in the room (then again, a broken clock is right twice a day.) Tunes like “The Last Great American Dynasty” and “Epiphany” and “Ivy” actually contain lovely imagery, which makes the material she intentionally brands as “poetry” that much more infuriating.

“The Trick to Holding On,” penned by Taylor Swift and featured in British Vogue. As far as a poem goes, I am less than impressed by it

Some have praised Taylor for “bringing poetry to the mainstream” with the release of The Tortured Poets Department. Sure, with writers like Rupi Kaur and Aliza Grace being at the forefront of contemporary poetry, we need all the help we can get. However, Taylor never really championed the art, or even delved into how it informed her work beyond inspiring cheap Bukowskian imagery of winos and typewriters. Then…surprise! The moment the TTPD “era” was over, she never mentioned poetry again.

In her Rolling Stone interview with Paul McCartney(!) Taylor said that when writing Folklore’s lyrics, she chose to use “bigger, flowerier, prettier” words such as “epiphany,” “elegies,” and “divorcée,” just because they “sound beautiful.” She also said that she keeps lists of these beautiful words to use in future songs; for example, one such word is “kaleidoscope,” which she whipped out for synth pop offering “Welcome to New York.”

…Boy, I sure am glad our generation’s Shakespeare has been studying for her SATs! Okay, that was mean of me. But girl, come on. You are thirty-five.

lesson summary

What was my point in writing all of this? Yes, I know Taylor doesn’t know I exist, and I know that she will never read this (not like she’s busy reading anything else, but still.)

I don’t know, man. I’m tired of performative intellectualism. I’m tired of anti-intellectualism. I’m tired of media illiteracy. I’m tired of book culture being squashed down to a set of cheap aesthetics ripped from a Pinterest board. I’m tired of defenders of literature—champions of debut authors and fighters of book bans and actual English teachers—getting kicked aside to make room in the sandbox for some billionaire who wants to use big words in order to sound deep.

If Swifties aren’t going to give the real heroes their flowers, I’ll give them out myself. If someone needs to be pretentious about literature, I will gladly be that person. If someone needs to pick up Taylor’s slack and read a damn book, sign me up.

I sometimes wonder if Taylor Swift is actually complicit in her role within the greater ecosystem, or if she’s so distracted by the fantasy of her own creation that she’s completely unaware of herself. I can’t say for sure; I think only she can answer that. However, I do think that maybe she is no longer able to divorce Taylor Swift, the Mickey Mouse of The World (TV), and Taylor the Human, a girl from Pennsylvania. In this case, Baudrillard would say that Taylor the Human is the hyperreal: the desiccated husk of a woman who can’t even recall the exact moment she lost herself. Maybe it was the moment her net worth surpassed one billion dollars. Maybe it was the moment she branded herself a book nerd.

Taylor, I hate to break it to you, but you are not our English teacher—the gay kids are next door, eating lunch with Miss Lipa and Miss Gerber.

-T

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EDIT 8/27/25 10:14 PM: Holy shit. I completely forgot to mention that Taylor Swift released an entire Eras Tour movie. ON DISNEY+. The Venn Diagram is a circle.

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EDIT 8/29/25 11:57 AM: WOW. This got waaaaayyyyyy more traction than I ever thought it would (most of my posts get two likes.) Hello to everyone new here!

I completely undersand why people are so divided about this post. I will say that although I made some snarky jokes throughout, my intention wasn’t to be a “hater” or be “mean” for its own sake. My aim was to provide an analysis that I haven't really seen from either Swifties or the haters before, so I understand why people on both sides might be confused. Taylor and her team are clealy marketing geniuses, and I’m not going to be “disappointed” in a business for trying to make money—this post is not about that at all. This post is about the phenomenon, and if any other artist constructed a similar fantasy of Disney-proportions, I would analyze that fantasy the exact same way I analyzed Taylor’s fantasy here.

Obviously Taylor (The Human) doesn’t owe anyone anything, especially not a nobody writing a post on a social media platform. However, as a writer who *prays* that there will still be literate people by the time I publish a book, it’s my hope that Taylor will one day choose to use her power, influence, and resource to champion literature. Maybe she’ll turn Taylor Swift Publishing into a full-fledged operation and publish stories from debut / marginalized / historically underrepresented authors—this would turn traditional publishing on its head. Maybe she’ll even start a book club of her own. Just imagine the net good for the literary world if she got millions of people back into reading!