There's nothing more predictable than the backlash against Taylor Swift

There’s nothing more predictable than the backlash against Taylor Swift.

It arrives right on cue, as sure as an Eras tour costume change. The minute a woman’s success begins to look too big, too confident, too profitable, the cultural tide turns. Admiration morphs into irritation. The same qualities that were once framed as ambitious or empowering are reinterpreted as manipulative, calculating, or insincere.

This is an old story dressed in new clothes. From Cleopatra to Madonna, women who rise high enough to be seen are rarely allowed to stay there without punishment. We talk about equality, but our social reflexes still haven’t caught up. The patriarchal imagination struggles to hold space for powerful women - it either sexualises them, trivialises them, or tears them down.

The cycle of rise and ruin

It starts innocently enough: praise for talent, admiration for perseverance, applause for relatability. Then comes the turning point - the moment when admiration shades into discomfort. The woman becomes too visible, too wealthy, too influential. She begins to take up space reserved for men, and suddenly the knives come out.

The language of critique becomes gendered. A man with vision is a genius; a woman with control over her career is a ‘master manipulator’. A man monetising his art is savvy; a woman doing the same is ‘cynical’. Taylor Swift isn’t the first to live through this, but she’s one of the most documented examples of the pattern.

And the backlash intensifies when she becomes - shock horror - happy. Because the world doesn’t quite know what to do with a woman who has everything she once said she wanted. We’re comfortable with her suffering, hustling, proving herself. But joy? Fulfilment? Success without apology? That seems to unsettle people more than anything else.

The threat of the visible woman

Visibility has always been dangerous territory for women. To be visible is to be subject to judgment. To be successful is to magnify that gaze. Swift’s public life—like those of Meghan Markle, Greta Gerwig, and Beyoncé - reminds us how fraught the terrain remains. The public feels ownership over visible women: her art, her body, her choices, her love life.

And when she asserts boundaries, she’s accused of being controlling. When she reveals vulnerability, she’s manipulative. When she’s political, she’s opportunistic. Every move is a double bind.

Every visible woman becomes a mirror

Every visible woman becomes a mirror. She reflects back what others project. People see in her what they want to see, what they fear to see in themselves, or what they won't allow for themselves. Their viewpoint is always filtered through their own experiences, prejudices, and agendas.

So much so that I sometimes wonder if any of us really sees, or if we’re all just projecting - each of us, casting our own stories onto whoever’s brave enough to stand in the light.

And this, friends, reveals the heart of our collective fear of visibility: the loss of control over how we’re perceived. To be visible is to be misunderstood, to be turned into a symbol, a target, or an idea. It’s to relinquish the fantasy of being universally liked and be willing to become an easy target for everyone else's grievances. 

Why women policing women hurts us all

Perhaps what makes the pattern even more painful is how many women join in. Internalised patriarchy is a powerful force. We’ve all been taught to measure our worth against other women - to feel that another woman’s success somehow diminishes our own.

So when someone like Swift reaches stratospheric fame, it can stir something old and uncomfortable. Envy. Comparison. The belief that there’s only so much room at the top, and she’s taking up too much of it. But every time we join the chorus of criticism rather than curiosity, we reinforce the very system that limits us all.

What this reveals about us

Ultimately, the backlash against successful women is not really about them - it’s about us. It reveals our unresolved relationship with female power. We’re still learning how to celebrate it without suspicion, how to let women be large and complex without demanding humility as payment for success.

Until that shifts, the cycle will keep repeating. Swift will be followed by the next woman who shines too brightly, and the pattern will begin again.

Breaking the pattern

To break it, we all need to catch ourselves in the act - each time we’re tempted to downplay, diminish, or deride another woman’s success.

We can ask: What in me feels threatened by her confidence? What story about women’s ambition have I unconsciously absorbed?

When we begin to see those stories for what they are - old scripts written for a smaller version of womanhood - we can rewrite them. We can learn to celebrate women who take up space, rather than punishing them for daring to do so.

Every visible woman is both mirror and teacher. Taylor Swift’s success doesn’t just provoke envy; it provokes reckoning. She shows us what it looks like when a woman insists on owning her narrative, when she refuses to make herself smaller for our comfort.

And she forces us to ask the harder question: When a woman shines, do we see her - or do we only see ourselves reflected back?