What Taylor Swift Taught Me About Aging
No age is the right age to be a woman. Unless, of course, you're Taylor Swift.
In 2014, the year I turned 25, I spent a great deal of brain power trying to figure out how to respond when someone asked me how old I was.
At the time, I was working in a major newsroom in the U.K, covering important financial news, read by important people. I’d established myself as a meticulous reporter and capable writer, but sometimes—when people figured out that the person behind the byline was just a few years out of college—the age thing threatened to topple my credibility.
“Dude,” I remember one inebriated banker telling his colleague right in front of me at an industry event, ”Josie was 12 years old when Enron collapsed.”
That same year, far, far away from source meetings and off-the-record comments about bond issues, Taylor Swift released an album grandly announcing to the world how old she was—which, as it happens, is the same age as me.
1989, the year we were both born, was the title of her fifth studio album, a Grammy-award winning masterpiece that showcased her genre-defying artistry and marked her as an international superstar.
I listened to 1989 when it first came out and while I didn’t end up identifying as a Swiftie, I liked it a lot. Swift’s songs took up residence in my brain and have stayed there ever since.
But mostly, I was taken by the name of the album.
I admired the unapologetic undertone, the audacity even, of what it stands for. She told journalists that she named the album after her birth year because it signaled a metaphorical rebirth of her image and artistry. Yes, Swift was saying, I’m about to turn 25 but I’m not too young for a renaissance.
‘An Economic Force’
On Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, Taylor Swift concluded her Eras Tour in Vancouver, capping a 149-show run that earned more than $1 billion in revenue; that caused seismic activity in Seattle; and altered entire economies.
For these reasons alone, superlatives feel insufficient when it comes to quantifying Swift’s success. She’s dispelled all kinds of myths about the capabilities of a woman in show business. When her music label was sold in 2019 in a deal that gave control of her master recordings to an entity she didn’t approve of, she simply created new master recordings of the sold material: Taylor’s Version.
Yet, from my particular vantage point of sharing a birth year with her, the one thing I keep coming back to is that she never seemed to give a damn about her age. And though it sounds perhaps a little bit basic, that is one of the things I love most about her.
Truth is, there has never been and never will be a perfect age for women. Women are either too young (inexperienced, immature, naive, cute) or too old (tired, outdated, lackluster, unsexy).
And in the professional realm, that magical moment—when a woman has both the necessary youthful dynamism and that all-important gravitas that comes with experience—might not exist at all.
Is there research backing this up? You bet. A few years ago, Amy Diehl, Leanne M. Dzubinski, and Amber L. Stephenson conducted a study of 913 women leaders in which they concluded that many women suffer what they term the ‘never-right’ age bias. “In our research we found no age was the right age to be a woman leader,” they wrote in an article for the Harvard Business Review explaining their findings.
“There was always an age-based excuse to not take women seriously, to discount their opinions, or to not hire or promote them. Each individual woman may believe she’s just at the wrong age, but the data make the larger pattern clear,” they added. “Any age can be stigmatized by supervisors and colleagues to claim that the woman is not valued or is not a fit for a leadership role.”
Childless Cat Lady
I know, I know: Taylor Swift is hardly a middle-aged middle manager toiling away at spreadsheets or an account director pitching to win a campaign mandate. But hear me out.
A lot of us, Swifties or not, care about Swift. She’s the zeitgeist; she’s an icon, an advocate, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, a businesswoman. Plenty of women look to her for clues on how to navigate this tumultuous, ugly world in which we live.
When, at the age of 11, Swift’s Dolly Parton karaoke covers were summarily rejected by record labels, she didn’t cower. She carried on. When Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to tell the audience that “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time,” she wrote a song about it. The journalist Allison Stewart praised the song ‘Innocent’ in The Washington Post as “a small masterpiece of passive-aggressiveness, a vivisection dressed up as a peace offering.”
In more recent years, Swift’s taken any criticism and clapped back beautifully. “I stay out too late; Got nothing in my brain,” she sings. And guess what? The insults don’t trouble her. (Or if they do, she surely doesn’t let it show.) She just keeps “cruisin’” because she “can’t stop; won’t stop movin’” and she’s got music in her mind “saying’ it’s gonna be alright.”
When Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president, she signed her Instagram post (11.5M likes), “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady” throwing shade at Donald’s Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance who used the same phrase to disparage women without children. Talk about shaking it off.
Ten years have passed since I was ridiculed for being 12 at the time of Enron’s collapse. Ten years have passed since Swift released an album that changed the global music industry. I think we’ve both come a long way. She’s established herself as one of the most important recording artists of all time. I’ve become comfortable telling people how old I am. And though I’m not a Swiftie, I’m not entirely unconvinced the two aren’t connected.
I turned 35 in May. Swift turns 35 this Friday.
Haters gonna hate, she sang back in 2014, subtly urging me to take a leaf out of her book and not give a damn. Perhaps—just perhaps—I took it to heart.
Aubrey Hirsch
Josie Cox
Emma Haslett
