The Life of a…Tradwife?

The conservatism that's resurgent in the U.S. wants women to get married and have babies—so Taylor Swift's latest lyrics about getting married and having babies genuinely bummed me out.

By Lauren Tousignant | October 8, 2025 | 12:30pm

Screenshot: YouTube Entertainment In Depth Music

My biggest gripe with Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl is that she promised us an album that reflected her “exuberant and electric and vibrant” inner and backstage life while traveling the world on her record-smashing Eras Tour. Instead, we got a soulless and incoherent album about Travis Kelce’s “manhood,” featuring another metaphor for what the sky looks like when you’re in love. My second biggest gripe? Taylor’s tradwife lyrics.

Obviously, this is the artist who wrote “Love Story,” so marriage and weddings and “happily ever after” have always been a piece of her music. But she was also a literal teenager when she wrote “He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring” in 2008—and traditional cliches aside, that song’s dramatic storytelling and alternate Shakespearean arc are, to use one of her own adjectives, “exuberant.”

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And I have nothing against marriage; I have nothing against weddings; I have nothing against being so fucking happy and drunk in love that you want to sing corny sexual innuendos from the rooftop. But at least write about it well. I recoiled when I first listened to “Eldest Daughter” and heard “When I said I don’t believe in marriage/That was a lie.” Then again, two tracks later, when I heard “Got me drеaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop/Boss up, settle down” on “Wi$h Li$t.” Where’s the woman who gave us, “Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand/with every guitar string scar on my hand?” The line from “Lover” is obviously pro-marriage—but its sophistication lies in the vulnerability of finding “the one” without throwing her previous self under the bus.

And look, maybe I’m too paranoid about the far-right Christian conservatism creeping across the U.S. that’s trying to convince women that their only purpose in life is to get married and have babies. Or maybe I’m just projecting, and thought my favorite artist shared my opinion that marriage is outdated and unnecessary for women. But one of the greatest songwriters of our time couldn’t think of a more interesting way to convey her deep love without a pick-me undertone or resorting to the girlhood fantasies of domestic bliss that the far-right is pushing hard? The Swifties on TikTok doing backflips to defend this album will say I’m a miserable hag, but I feel fine saying that I think this is a major bummer.

Her discography had already evolved from the Fearless era. No one is mistaking Taylor for a feminist scholar, but the lyrics “All they keep askin’ me/Is if I’m gonna be your bride” and “No deal, the 1950s shit they want from me” from “Lavender Haze” on Midnights pushed back against these “traditional” gender expectations—while also being fun, sassy, and well-written. On the same album, she sings “I wouldn’t marry me either,” proving she’s capable of doing both: wanting to get married while also dismissing it. (Statistically, women benefit way less from marriage than men—although for billionaire Taylor Swift, marriage will never be an oppressive institution.)

In August, after Taylor and Travis announced their engagement, conservatives quickly co-opted the news as proof that women are only meant to be married. Sophie Vershbow wrote for Jezebel that, despite the right’s narrative, “the lesson for young women isn’t to marry the first lukewarm frat bro willing to buy you a ring, but that happiness comes from living out loud and not settling for anything less than a partner willing to celebrate you as much as Travis Kelce does Taylor.” I still believe this to be true, and I know it’s just two to three lines of the entire album, but Taylor has given conservatives exactly the kind of catnip they’ve been craving. I can already hear far-right commentators screaming, “See, Charlie Kirk was right, Taylor Swift is submitting to her husband, proving childless cat ladies are happier when they accept marriage.”

I’m not looking for a thesis from Taylor; she can make all the poppy, poorly written glitter pen albums she wants. But it sucks that she now has not one, but two songs that Harrison Butker—Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs teammate—can conceivably reference in another men’s rights rant the next time he tells women graduating from college that the greatest thing they could be is a wife, mother, and supporter of their husband’s career.

I know Taylor doesn’t believe that, but famously, art does not exist in a vacuum. Our culture has shifted towards the right; abortion bans have threatened women’s bodily autonomy; and tradwives are becoming cover girls. Now the biggest pop star and most famous woman in the world is singing about how all she wants is to get married and have babies?? I’d trade this entire album for six new remixes of “ME!” just to get rid of those two songs.

The night TLOAS came out, Taylor wrote on Instagram: “If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain….” Thanks to “Wi$h Li$t” and “Eldest Daughter,” I can’t shake the image of Taylor spending her downtime from tour, lounging on a fainting couch, daydreaming about driving her minivan full of mini-Kelces to football practice. Which, for some, is a lovely life! But it’s far and away from a life of a showgirl—and for me, it’s a bit too close to the life that the right is trying to force on women everywhere.

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