The popularity of Taylor Swift and Barbie has nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with girl power This summer pop behemoth T...

 

The popularity of Taylor Swift and Barbie has nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with girl power

This summer pop behemoth Taylor Swift embarked on her Eras Tour. As it wends its way into a second and third leg next year, it is set to be the highest grossing tour of all time. Meanwhile, women and teenage girls – some men too, I am sure – flocked to cinemas to watch Barbie. It is now the biggest film of the year, and sits comfortably among the biggest of all time. It would be a good moment for Hollywood and record companies to listen: this is clearly a market starved of something that Swift and Barbie, for all the film’s flaws, provide. But what is it?

We could think about the Barbie movie as it dwells on the contradictions inherent to womanhood; the insatiable desire for men to exert their power over women; the pains and demands of female adolescence. And we can listen to Swift sing about exacting revenge on the men who betrayed her; profited off her career; held her back. Taking all of these things together we might then rush to the assumption that the market wants more detailed commentary on the intricacies of 21st-century feminism; more on the difficulties women face, replayed right back to them; further entrenched gender warfare.

Hollywood could easily leave this summer with that as their final takeaway. They would be wrong to. Instead, what Barbie and Swift are selling us is something much simpler: girl power is back in vogue. At Swift’s concerts, teenagers swap friendship bracelets with one another, they travel in huge packs and carefully co-ordinate their outfits. They watch Swift glide across the stage in glittery body suits and sparkly boots – no attempt at androgyny in sight. In the Barbie universe the roster of dolls forms one big girl gang, replete with pink plastic houses and perfectly preened hair. Their dance numbers are reminiscent of the Spice Girls. It is poptimism in its purest form.

Girliness has long been derided – cast as frivolous and shallow, traits possessed only by the teenage girl. This has never been fair, but society tends towards unfairness when it comes to teenage girls. The phenomenon, however, applies not just to them. The celebration of straightforward and uncomplicated femininity is a reaction to the prevailing cultural norms of the 2010s; when feminism metastasised into something rather unrecognisable; and overnight any notion of female solidarity melted away into something obsolete and unfashionable.