Who's afraid...? Well you should be
We're deep diving "Who's afraid of little old me" on this week's new AP Taylor Swift podcast episode
“You don’t get to tell me about sad.” This week we deep dive into Taylor Swift’s song “Who's afraid of little old me” from The Tortured Poet’s Department. For this TTPD and Eras Tour favorite, we unpack the song’s references to fame, power dynamics, and female identity. We explore how this song brings up our experiences of passive-aggressive workplaces, and being asked to change our behavior to fit other’s expectations. It’s a meaty episode— listen and let us know what you think!
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🎧 Listen above and ⬇️ scroll below to read Maansi’s extra credit about women’s past, present, and future.
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🎒This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to You by Maansi
On our podcast, we often talk about the female experience (what it means to be a woman). We also analyze songs and come to totally different conclusions, because all of us have unique life experiences that lend themselves to our interpretations of the songs. I start there because the simple truth is: women are complex. There are many of us and we can’t be summarized or painted with a broad brush. Different women have different lived experiences and want different things and prioritize their lives and their politics accordingly. All are valid.
The key is that just because things are going great for some women, it does not mean they’re going great for others. For many women, this past week was a good one. And for many women, it was like something out of a nightmare. I, personally, have been blasting this week’s deep dive song out loud all week. Taylor Swift has referred to the TTPD section of the Eras Tour as Female Rage The Musical (which, incidentally, she has trademarked), and I certainly see “Who’s afraid of little old me” as a modern-day women empowerment anthem.
For as long as history has been written, there are those who have painted women as these helpless, demure creatures, the softer counterparts to man, the pretty, helpless partners. “Who’s afraid of little old me” calls them out. It is a reminder of our power and a threat to anyone guilty of underestimating or ignoring women, to anyone who has ever dismissed women as being less than. Given current events, I wanted to share some thoughts that have been swirling around my head this week, as they relate to this incredible anthem.
“You don’t get to tell me about sad” — the voices of women’s past
Somewhere deep in the internet this past week, I heard a quote about how throughout history, women have had to fight every battle for themselves. They’ve had to show up, and inch forward, little by little. Sometimes they had allies, but women had to do the work. No one stood up for us, nothing was handed to us, we had to fight for it.
For many of us who’ve spent most of our lives in the 21st century, it is difficult to imagine a time before women could vote. The movie Suffragette does a truly marvelous job painting a picture of what it was like. Though the movie is set in England, the path to earning the vote has looked very similar in many countries. In fact, one of the most moving moments of the film comes at the end, when you’ve gone through an emotional rollercoaster of a journey, and the screen fades to black and proceeds to list out the dates for when women earned the right to vote in every country. I remember those dates left me flabbergasted. The women who are a part of this movement, the Suffragettes, often lost everything, their jobs, their husbands, their children, because the vote was just a symptom of a larger problem at the time — the lack of any rights. Women did not have the right to their own children. Women did not have the right to money, they did not have the rights to any means to make money. They themselves were considered property, first of their fathers, and then of their husbands. How could property have a right to children or a job or a home? How could property have any rights at all?
Suffragettes were incredibly brave. They were a force. They put everything on the line, including their own children. When peaceful protests didn’t work, they resorted to violence. They reminded people again and again that they were not helpless, that they were a force to be feared and taken seriously.
Earning the right to vote was just the beginning. They had to slowly draw support to change the laws in their favor. Only in the last few decades have women been able to open their own bank accounts, get their own loans, and own their own homes. To have lived as a woman in any time prior to the present is to have faced hardships. The line “you don’t get to tell me about sad,” feels particularly apt when I picture the faces of my mother or my grandmothers.
“… So tell me everything is not about me | But what if it is?” — the reality of women’s present-day
Women’s rights around the world are being tested. While the exact details about the law are unclear, headlines about Taliban banning women from hearing other female voices were making rounds across the internet recently. In Iran, protests against Iran’s morality police made headlines last year. In India, women’s safety in public places has been under threat as news of brutal rapes and murders makes headlines every few months.
I get flashes of a few significant moments for the women of our generation. The objectification of women’s bodies in the 90s and 2000s, the Me Too movement, the demand for equal pay. The desire to see more women in leadership positions, especially, on a more political note, the desire to see a female president.
The year is 2024 and the United States of America has still never elected a female president. The president of the United States is an important job, and there’s so much more than just gender that must go into making this decision. People vote for leaders for different reasons. But for many, the 2016 and 2024 elections stand out as examples of where women have been held to completely different standards than men. I’m not here to compare the merits of various candidates when we’ve all been bombarded with political propaganda for months, but it’s hard to dismiss the chants of “Lock her up!” in 2016, when in 2024, we elected a literal felon into office. It feels like an example of how the same job can come with different requirements for men vs women. The pundits and polls tell us it’s not about gender, that there were so many other factors at play, but the fact remains, in the last 3 elections, when up against the same opponent, two female candidates lost, one male candidate won. “…So tell me everything is not about me. But what if it is?”
“… If you wanted me dead, you should've just said | Nothing makes me feel more alive” — what lies ahead for women’s future
As the mother of a young daughter, for the first time in my life, I am acutely sensitive to what the future will look like for my little girl. It feels like she may live in a world with worse access to healthcare than her mother or even her grandmother. Advancements in science and medicine that so many of us have taken for granted for decades are being taken away from women. Young boys are chanting dangerous rhetoric to put little girls “in their place.” Safety and well-being for our daughters seems to have taken the backseat to economic factors.
As a new mother, I’ve struggled with the reality facing new mothers. Paid time off, work life balance, dividing domestic and professional duties, support with childcare, there are so many topics that come up in conversations with fellow moms. It often feels like we live in a world that doesn’t want to see women succeed— a world that is determined to stack as many cards against us as possible. “If you wanted me dead, you should’ve just said | Nothing makes me feel more alive.”
The future looks bleak, but for better or for worse, that’s enough to light a fire inside many of us. I’ve been so inspired by women in my own community, amongst my friends and family, in positions of power. And though there are those who underestimate us, time and history have proven that there is nothing stronger than women who have something to fight for. Rather than feeling despair, there is a sense of urgency and hope that we can lock arms, and show up, as we always have, for each other, to build a better future.
“Who’s afraid of little old me?” Perhaps no one. But, perhaps, “you should be.”