Could we stop talking about Taylor Swift’s engagement? Yes, of course. But we’d rather continue talking about it. Because this, the overload, is part of it. The posts and jokes, the endless Easter eggs. We—the creepiest, neediest, chattiest, girliest mob of popular culture—are people of plenty.
Being a Swiftie, generally speaking, is a bit like reading Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It’s an immersive and all-consuming fantasy; a whole world that keeps expanding, with more side characters, more possibilities, more subplots. It’s a lot. The Taylor Swift multiverse is built on intense emotions and “eras” that coexist and overlap: the girl next door, the country singer, the unabashed try-hard, the snake, the starry-eyed 22-year-old who is dating the wrong man. A love song about an indie actor gets repurposed, with a few lyrical tweaks, as commentary on her relationship with a jock. We get to cry over the different men she liked and lost when she was twenty, 25, thirty. It’s overdramatic. And true.
There are better musicians than Taylor Swift, better vocalists, better performers and certainly better dancers. But no pop princess writes better stories. I don’t mean just in her songs but in the persona she cultivates—the interviews, the performances, the fashion choices, the fan service. She is famously “off social media,” but only because she already is social media: displaying every heartbreak in excruciating detail, showing you that she knows you are there, inviting you into the perfect parasocial relationship.
Part of her story is about being a girl. This is a story about being needy, about being embarrassing, about wanting too much. For Swift, this is a core experience of femininity—because us girls are given a pin’s width of space in this world, no matter what we do we end up overdoing it. Her story has always been that of a girl who is extra: who obsesses over an ex from ten years ago and writes a ten-minute song about him; who drops a 31-track album while touring the world for two years, performing for three and a half hours in every stadium.
But if there’s one thing that’s been widely overlooked about Taylor Swift (there is little that is truly overlooked when it comes to Taylor Swift) it is her sense of humor. As earnest as she might appear, a key part of her appeal as a storyteller is her ability to laugh at the ridiculousness of the plots she’s concocted for herself. She pokes jokes at TS as a character in the TS story. In “So High School” she imagines herself as a character in an early-2000s teen rom-com. In “Clara Bow” she says she looks like Taylor Swift. She seems to invest as much energy in following the story as in telling it. This is what makes her a Swiftie.
This self-referentiality, this complete command of her fandom, helps to explain why we got the engagement post that we got. In 2025, the rules of the game call for explosive communication between a celebrity and their fandom to be understated—strange angles, blurry images, surprise drops. A pop star of Swift’s magnitude easily could have settled for the smallest hint of a rock on a finger and still made the internet roar. But instead Swift released a staged-photo carousel on Instagram replete with floral set design, her fiancé kneeling on one knee, a close-up of their clasped hands and a huge ring. This is the biggest pop star in the world, and she announces her engagement like she’s a Mormon blogger in 2012.
Revealing everything, leaving nothing to the imagination, the post completely and totally collapsed the hierarchies of class, style and power, as defined by the ability to keep your private life private. Reveling in cringe and kitsch is how she includes us, the fans (“Your English teacher is marrying your gym teacher”).
For those of us who have been reading this storybook romance for years, the tying up of multiple loose plotlines is an immensely satisfying, almost euphoric experience. One of those major plotlines is the search for true love, but there are two other, less remarked-upon story arcs peaking here: the story of her being American and the story of her fame.
For over a decade, Swift has tried to figure out: What does it mean to be American, and what does it mean to be famous? Of course, she’s an international superstar, but it’s her American fame that has tormented her and complicated her narrative for years. See: the Bruce Springsteen references, the long list of songs about how she’s an American girl who loves aloof British boys; the summer she ended up dating not one but two Kennedys (buying a mansion next to one of them after dating him for just one month). The documentary is called Miss Americana for a reason. Now it’s coming full circle: she’s done with all that London nonsense and she’ll do the Shakespeare references only as your English teacher from Kansas City from here on out. She is marrying into the NFL, a sport that doesn’t even exist outside the U.S., to a guy who apparently wants nothing more than to live in Missouri, listen to country, record podcasts with his brother and win Super Bowls.
For Taylor, the question of what it means to be American is tied to the question of fame—how to be a symbol and, at the same time, relatable. Swift is no longer running and hiding from paparazzi, no longer telling us how painful and terrifying it is to be so exposed, no longer sneaking onstage in a janitor’s cart. She is finally letting herself be very famous, a little trashy even, without fear, settling comfortably into who she is: an American icon. This is how we are opening the new chapter fittingly titled The Life of a Showgirl. She’s telling us: I’m as American as Vegas. I’m as famous as Coca-Cola.
The engagement is already ten days old. Decades in internet time. A different era, as Swifties might say. But we can linger here just a little longer. We are not delusional enough to believe that a ring is the end of the story, but we are delusional enough to enjoy watching the fantasy play out. Prince Charming is, in this case, the one who can handle a girl being a lot. The one who came to her shows, brought the friendship bracelets, did all the same over-the-top, emotionally demanding, silly things we do. He makes our collective fandom dream come true, in proving that you can dive headfirst into the lore and make it life. Be extra, and then some.
It’s a kind of tragedy of the commons: the more fans pursue Taylor Swift’s live performances, the more unpleasant and costly the experience of obtaining access to them has become for everyone. Perhaps the world is not equipped for Taylor’s stardom, and she should scale down for the betterment of society. Would we all be better letting go and moving on? If being a Swiftie remains worth it, I’ll wager that the Eras Tour, at least, isn’t.
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