By Hannah Gebhardt
It was 2006 and I sat in a packed stadium full of fans donning their Rascal Flatts t-shirts and cowboy hats. Growing up a backwoods southern girl rocking to Flatts best hits on the radio, I had begged my parents to take me to the Me and My Gang Tour in Charlotte, NC. But what my little 5 year old self did not expect was what came next. Stepping out in blonde curls and a sparkling white dress, I could have been sure she was as beautiful as the Disney princesses I watched on TV. I had come for Rascal Flatts, but left wearing a purple Taylor Swift t-shirt and singing “Should’ve Said No” at the top of my lungs. I played her first CD until it was completely scratched up, watched Hannah Montana The Movie just to see her, and brushed the hair of my Taylor Swift Barbie doll until every last curl had fallen out.
But as I got older, the country music Taylor that I had known and loved began to change. As I matured, throwing out the dolls and Disney channel posters, and she ventured into the world of Hollywood pomp and popularity, I let go of my childhood idol. Swift, who had once inspired in me creativity, a love for music, and cowgirl boots, began to fall from grace before my eyes as she was molded by the ever changing narrative of the media. Swift has come out in recent years in support of abortion, the LGBTQ+ community, feminism and various other anti-woman pushes for control, dashing the girl power vogue she had inspired in so many young girls.
But that’s what idols do. They fall. Come up short of all your hopes and expectations, just like a bad fantasy. Swift has upended the dating scene, bringing about an era of emphatic flings and toxic relationships. She has romanticized short-term infatuation and meaningless sex, all while hiding her tendency towards non-commitment under the guise of catchy break-up lyrics. I mean just ask Tom Hiddleston. I don’t profess to be a Swiftie or a Taylor-hater, but merely a girl from a backwoods town in North Carolina who has watched another girl from a backwoods town in Tennessee have stardom rip her values and life from her, only to repaint her through each era of her life in accordance with pop-culture’s latest craze. But as the Swifitie effect continues to sweep the nation, we mourn for the girl who was and could have been. No amount of album remakes will take us back to those warm stadium lights in 2006 because the old Taylor has become glassy-eyed under the drug of her own popularity. So here is a concerned former fan, positing that the sparkly popstar “Should’ve Said No” to the shifting cultural escapades of the day and maybe the world would be embracing a different Taylor today.
Hannah Gebhardt is founder of The Edifier, a writer for Lifeway Christian Ministries, and a columnist at the Standing for Freedom Center at Liberty University. She can be found on Instagram @hannah.gebhardt.