In 'Eras Tour' movie, Taylor Swift shows women how to reject the mandate of one identity

This week, the movie version of Taylor Swift’s record-obliterating Eras Tour opens in theaters around the world. It will be easier than ever to watch Taylor Swift perform. Really, watching Taylor Swift do anything seems to be our national pastime. When she was photographed eating a chicken strip with ketchup and “seemingly ranch,” it made so many headlines that Heinz and the official Empire State Building entered the conversation.

Swift has reached an unfathomable level of fame. One reason we can’t stop looking at her, perhaps, is that her career has always been built around relatability and identification. When we look at her, we see ourselves.

The concept of Taylor Swift’s Eras makes this even easier. As each of her albums has become associated with a distinct personality − a hairstyle, color and vibe − people can look to Swift to express who they are and who they are not, as well as how those categories shift over time.

The glass boxes the Taylors are trapped in

Taylor Swift first introduced us to the imagery of her eras and the idea of using different versions of herself to represent different albums, moments and personalities back in 2017, in the music video for the "Reputation" track “Look What You Made Me Do.” In it, the different Taylors fight each other, wrestle, cry and hurl insults, seemingly at war with each other. It’s a message about killing the old self and reinventing your identity to survive.

The Eras Tour performance of “Look What You Made Me Do” says something new. Stomping around in a one-legged, snake-bedazzled jumpsuit, Swift slings lines like “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now … 'cause she’s dead.” Surrounding Swift on the massive stage, the show’s dancers stand locked away in glass boxes, each dressed like a different Taylor era.

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Through visual performance cues, Swift speaks to the experience of being misunderstood and misrepresented by others and the disorienting experience of letting yourself become defined by those outside assertions. Even as we accept those identities in an attempt to appease others, all too often we’re left only with self-loathing. Ultimately, her performance speaks to the things we do to ourselves when we let our identities become defined by the judgments of people around us.

It is much easier said than done to refute or even ignore the identities the dominant culture expects us to perform. To use the parlance of “Look What You Made Me Do,” we are all made to play a role, like it or not.

The glass boxes the Taylors are trapped in call to mind glass ceilings yet to be shattered. They also put us on display, easy to see, as tokens of freedom and progress, while still being stuck. Women today have more options about who we can be and where we can go than generations before us, yes. But we are not yet fully free.

We are given options of predetermined identities – ones that make sense to patriarchy – and asked to choose. Who do you want to be? Madonna or whore? Career woman or wife and mother? Pretty or smart? Sporty or flirty? Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte or Miranda?

In some ways, the zeitgeist has attempted to turn Swift’s eras into another one of these metrics. Are you the romantic "Fearless," the upbeat "1989" or melancholic "Evermore"? We accept these categories, use them to sort ourselves and let those categories set the expectations of how we should behave. In some ways, this itself is somewhat liberating.

Taylor Swift gives me new ways of presenting aspects of my identity

Taylor’s eras offer women other markers of growth and identity beyond getting married and/or having children. As a single woman in her 30s with no children, my life is sometimes seen by others as stagnant or empty. It’s an untrue assessment, but one that’s pervasive still.

Patriarchy looks first at how a woman is related to others, typically men, to determine who she is. I appreciate that Taylor Swift’s eras offer new ways of presenting aspects of my identity. Swift is also an unmarried, childless woman in her 30s, and her eras take seriously life changes, interests, milestones and identifications that are often dismissed or overlooked. Who do you want to be? Miss, Mrs. or Ms.?

As women learn to navigate gender roles and try to remain intact while navigating unfriendly systems, we are not only expected to choose a box, to select a label, but also to eschew any other version of ourselves that falls outside that box. Working mothers still face the "motherhood penalty" at the office. Full-time working moms make 74 cents to every working father’s dollar. Working mothers of color make even less. Attempts to exist in two boxes at once – even if both boxes are “approved options” by the dominant culture – are still punished.

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Taylor Swift hasn’t just rejected the dominant culture’s mandate to choose one identity, she isn’t just the sum of her eras: She is herself − something we, as entities existing outside of her – can never fully know, much less dictate.

This sort of celebration of nuance – an acceptance of and rejoicing in the fullness of female identity – is healing. As our lives become more and more restricted, as the government rolls back women’s rights and our ability to choose what roles we will and will not play, the Eras Tour rolls forward with a glimmer of hope.

We can, at least, be nice to ourselves. And we can only ever dismantle oppressive ideologies if we cease trying to make ourselves acceptable to those ideologies. Together, but rooted in our own self-actualized identities, we can stop playing along with what patriarchy makes women do.

Juliette Holder is a Ph.D. student studying rhetoric at Texas Woman’s University, where she also teaches writing. Her research focuses on feminist rhetorics in popular culture.