The Decent Man Fetish - by Candice Wuehle

So much disturbs me about The Life of a Showgirl. The politics, the pettiness, the marketing disconnect, Swift’s dishonesty regarding the real tone of certain songs, the fact that the songs are mostly all lazy rip offs of other songs, and most of all: the terrible, terrible songwriting. But you’ve read all those takes by now, so what I want to address is something larger that this album crystallizes about the state of pop music and perhaps culture writ large right now: women’s desire has become indistinguishable from their gratitude for male decency. Most of the “discourse” about Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl lives inside the tiny screen—who knows what opinions are really dominant in the algo-driven AI ensloppifcation psy-op of an existence most of us currently live in? But, because I teach a poetics of Taylor Swift class every fall and have an open office door, I’ve had dozens and dozens of actual, in-person conversations about this album. And I have to tell you: across demographics,

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• Anjali Mathi