The Idolization of Taylor Swift - A Look At Parasocial Relationships

Originally Written in June 2023

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Taylor Swift is a name familiar to all, the music star a big part of American pop culture and a global sensation. Starting her career at the mere age of nineteen, Taylor Swift has made a name for herself, and her success has reached all corners of the world beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. With ten studio albums under her belt and an ongoing stadium tour that consistently stays sold out, Taylor Swift’s platform has reached immeasurable heights. The singer has a media mainstay recently in the world of entertainment, whether it be about her album re-recordings, news regarding The Eras Tour, or her personal relationships. Specifically, fans are shocked about her recent split with Joe Alwyn, whom she was in a long-term relationship with for about six years. More shockingly, she seemingly moved on quickly with the 1975 frontman Matty Healy, which sparked a lot of backlash for the singer from her fanbase. The idea that Taylor Swift isn’t free to date who she wants to date because her fans don’t agree is an idea preposterous to anyone who isn’t familiar with the intense fanbase dubbed as the “Swifties”. 

But on the contrary, Swifties have always felt a certain closeness with the singer, despite the singer not reciprocating the feelings the same way. With the recent backlash the singer is receiving for dating Matty Healy, it shines a certain light on the Swifties in a negative way, highlighting the problems with putting celebrities on a pedestal they never asked to be put on. The idolization of Taylor Swift is unhealthy for both the singer and her fan base due to the unrealistic standards put upon the singers and the extreme backlash she faces when those standards aren’t met. 

Taylor Swift has been in the spotlight for decades now since a very young age, and both her accomplishments and tumultuous life and career events have been broadcast to anyone who would watch.The singer, as mentioned before, also has ten studio albums out right now, excluding her re-recordings, which has made her an integral staple of pop culture. Because of being in that spotlight for so long and continuously making music, people are more exposed to her whether they like it or not. To those who resonate with Taylor Swift and the music she puts out, those extreme fans start to develop a parasocial relationship with her.

In a parasocial relationship, one party in the relationship exerts most of their energy into maintaining a bond, sacrificing their time for them; however, the other party in the relationship doesn’t even know that this person exists. Parasocial relationships are more common among celebrities, influencers, and tv personalities and their respective audiences. Developing a parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift isn’t too hard to do since she is interactive with her fanbase, from connecting with them on social media to including secret messages in her songs and announcements for fans to find and decode. Progressing that relationship for years without being kept in check escalates into putting that person on such a high pedestal, which is exactly what it is like right now in the case of Taylor Swift and her fanbase. With the singer, the pedestal has made Taylor Swift almost godlike. In many of the Swifites’ eyes, she can do no wrong and is always in the right, even when she’s not.

Many of the singer’s shortcomings are overlooked due to her immense influence over her fanbase. One instance this has happened is when a list came out ranking the biggest celebrity “climate criminals” that contribute to harming the environment in 2022, and Taylor Swift instantly overtook Kylie Jenner in both the number one climate criminal and in online backlash, many identifying the singer as the face of the problem. It was reported that in that year, the singer took at least 170 flights, with the total carbon dioxide emissions totaling to 8,293 tons, and due to her more lowkey persona that she puts out, many fans found the information jarring. While Taylor’s Swift became the subject of mockery due to her hypocrisy, majority of her fanbase simply labeled the information as “misinformation”, refusing to see that their “Lord and savior” can be flawed after all. Taylor Swift has been put so high on the pedestal that no one else compares, and her songs are revered as gospel and ways of life almost among the Swifties.

Having these unrealistic standards put such pressure of Taylor Swift, which can be damaging to the star’s mental health. Because of that idealized version of her in her fanbases’ heads, the singer has to be aware of everything she says and does to maintain that certain image, even if it’s not really her. Viewing Taylor Swift as a symbol or “an icon” is only erasing the fact that she is human like everyone else and prone to make mistakes.  

Another harmful effect of the intense parasocial relationship between Taylor Swift and the Swifties is how her fans crucify the singer’s exes and past relationships with people. Furthermore, she does nothing to keep that in check, so it just escalates further and further, impacting those directly involved. For example, Jake Gyllenhaal dated Taylor Swift for a period of a couple months around ten years ago and is the subject of a lot of Taylor Swift’s songs on her studio album “Red”. When the re-recording of “Red” was announced, Swifties took it upon themselves to “defend” Taylor Swift by flooding the actor’s Instagram comments with negativity and harassment to the point where the actor had to take down the Instagram post in question and limit his comments. For a relationship that ended ten years ago, getting this much harassment from people that don’t know the full story is extremely unwarranted and also harmful for Jake Gyllenhaal’s mental health. Swifites tend to forget that the actor, along with all of Taylor Swift’s other exes, is human as well, just like the rest of them.

More recently, Joe Alwyn and Taylor have split up, and fresh of the breakup, many Swifties have taken to the internet to give hate to Joe, despite having done nothing wrong before and being viewed as “the best boyfriend” for Taylor in the past couple years. Much to the fanbase’s surprise however, Taylor Swift quickly moved on with Matty Healy. The singer is not known for only being in the 1975 though. Matty Healy has made a series of racist and degrading comments towards rapper Ice Spice and has fetishized violence against women in the porn industry. So imagine everyone’s surprise when Taylor started associating herself with someone who is so against the Swifties’ self-proclaimed standards for the music star. Fans absolutely hated that to the point where a collective wrote an open letter addressed to Taylor Swift to break up with Matty Healy.

Going to those lengths seems crazy to anyone on the outside looking in, but this kind of behavior is considered normal in the fanbase. While not all Swifties reacted to this news with outrage, a good amount of them tried to enforce those unrealistic standards onto the singer when in reality she never had to uphold them to begin with. If Taylor Swift wasn’t in the position she is now, her dating choices wouldn’t matter as much to anyone else. Having forced these standards onto the singer when she never wanted them in the first place is not fair to her, and fans can’t be upset when those ideals aren’t being met. And because fans can’t deal with seeing the cracks in Taylor Swift’s image, they shift the blame onto Matty Healy, which also isn’t fair despite all he’s done. 

The parasocial relationship between Taylor Swift and her fanbase are gone unchecked for too long with the impacts affecting the singer and her personal relationships. Those who hold celebrities in high regards start to lose their touch with reality, the relationship they’ve created devolving into something more harmful than fun. Being a fan of a certain celebrity isn’t necessarily a bad thing; in fact, creating a sense of community over mutual interests and fandoms is something good that comes out of it . However, it’s when it starts to become more and more parasocial that raises cause for concern. Putting celebrities on a pedestal is dangerously unhealthy due to the mounting pressure that comes with it; furthermore, it’s not fair to those celebrities when they fail to meet those expectations and experience backlash from their fans.