When Taylor Swift named her record-breaking global tour The Eras Tour, it wasn’t just a quaint way to describe her now 12-strong body of albums. Quite literally, it was a celebration of her many reinventions, with each and every album exploring either a new genre, concept or aesthetic overhaul for the now 35-year-old singer. Her latest, The Life of a Showgirl, is no different.
Combining the storytelling of Folklore and infectious melodies of her biggest pop hits, Swift announced the album on her boyfriend, Travis Kelce’s podcast with his brother, New Heights. ‘It was something I was working on while I was in Europe, on the Eras Tour, I would be playing three shows in a row, have three days off, fly to Sweden [to work with producers Max Martin and Shellback] then go back to the tour,’ she explained. ‘This album is about what was going on behind the scenes, in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant… it comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life.’
With little else known about the album, it’s the visuals that have caught public attention most. Undoubtedly more glamorous and provocative, The Life of a Showgirl seems to be Swift’s first foray into boldly embracing her sexual agency. Previously, she has spoken openly about feeling uncomfortable in her own skin, more clumsy and awkward than particularly sexy – it’s part of what’s made her so relatable to so many women. ‘It’s fine, I’ve accepted it. I’m a lot of things, overtly sexy is not one of them,’ she said in a 2015 interview with The Washington Post.
Ten years on, has Swift found new confidence in her sex appeal? Certainly, many women would describe their 30s as a transformative time, the decade when you shed the weight of societies expectations and find confidence in how much wiser and resilient you are. It helps that she’s also in a new relationship with the internet’s sexiest himbo, a marked change from her usual type, to put it nicely.
Either way, it’s one of many reinventions we’ve seen Swift undertake in her now 20-year career. And while fun and exciting for fans, the pressure of said rebirths can also be heavy, as she’s opened up about before.
‘The female artists that I know of have to remake themselves 20 times more than the male artists, or else you’re out of a job,’ she said in her 2020 documentary, Miss Americana. ‘Be new to us, be young to us—but only the way we want. Reinvent yourself but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting and a challenge for you. Live out a narrative that we find interesting enough to entertain us, but not so crazy that it makes us uncomfortable.’
Certainly, the showgirl aesthetic feels entirely new for Swift. And yet, it also feels like s safer way to do ‘sexy’ after a career of largely avoiding it. Because showgirls aren’t just sex appeal, they’re glamorous and edgy – often with an emotional backstory that adds layers to their otherwise crowd-pleasing appeal. In fact, it’s a path we’ve seen many female celebrities go down later in their careers, when – as Swift eludes to in her above quote – an overtly sexual aesthetic might cause discomfort in a society that devalues women the second they turn 30.
Kylie Minogue, for example, went full showgirl for her greatest hits tour in 2005 aged 37, as did Beyoncé in 2013 for her Mrs Carter world tour, aged 32, and Mariah Carey who adopted the full showgirl aesthetic from her mid-30s onwards, and continues it now. If you add in Cher and Tina Turner, you’ve got an entire quintet of examples where women turn showgirl the second they hit 30.
Of course, where Swift eschews this narrative is in the fact that she’s always written about her life behind the scenes and this album just happened to be written while she was performing the world’s biggest tour. She is, quite literally, living the showgirl life right now. Beyond that, if she’s proven anything to fans, it’s not to take bets on the next reinvention – her success lies in how unexpected she is. Whether she should have to reinvent herself at all is an entirely different question.
Georgia Aspinall is an award-winning journalist and acting assistant editor at Grazia UK, previously senior editor. As well as co-ordinating news and features for both digital and print, she is responsible for Grazia’s campaigning efforts. Georgia has a vast knowledge of digital journalism and SEO best practice, covering women’s interest stories across politics, health, dating, travel and pop culture.
