Being seated in the only row of Singapore National Stadium without a roof would have required a special kind of bad luck. Unfortunately, I had that in spades.
Hours before my Eras Tour show, I got caught in the middle of a sudden and vicious thunderstorm that ruined the face I painted and the ensemble I put together for hours. Because of my stubborn, stupid insistence that a poncho would kill my vibe, water started seeping into the ports of my phone, until it shut down towards the end of Sabrina Carpenter’s set. As if my excursion from the Philippines wasn’t difficult enough already. I had to spend upwards of $2,000 to attend Taylor’s only stop in Asia.
As I bit my tongue to keep more tears from spilling down my face (or was that rainwater, who’s to say?), the only thing running through my mind was: Is this my karma?
You see, over a decade ago, I used to be the biggest Taylor Swift anti. At the time, Taylor was dating One Direction member and pop prince-to-be Harry Styles, whom I was in a committed one-sided relationship with. The first public appearance in Central Park, the matching outfits for a friend’s party at the Crosby Hotel, the well-documented New Year’s Eve kiss — I fear it was too much for my pre-pubescent heart to handle. I took my frustrations to the only platform that could grant me anonymity, soon growing fluent in the many ways Twitter fandom can call a woman a slut without even knowing what the term meant.
On Facebook, I shared a meme poking fun at the many men of Taylor’s past. The exact punchline escapes me now but any direct insult seemed like the funniest thing in the world to me. Shortly afterward, I noticed my friend count decrease by one, a detail I quickly overlooked until I realized that I could no longer contact my best friend from kindergarten, a fan who rightfully took offense. Rather than treating this as a rude awakening, I wore it like a badge of honor and lost another Swiftie best friend within the same year. Collateral damage, I guess.
The worst part of it all was I used to love her! The first music video I ever watched on my family’s ancient laptop was “Love Story”, and the first song I ever learned to play on the guitar was “Fifteen”! Its simple chords and down-down-up-up-down strumming pattern formed the first calluses on my fingertips one balmy summer. To sever a bond as secure as that of a young girl and her true idol obviously would have taken more than misplaced jealousy.
In my desire to set myself apart from Taylor or my peers, I never got to lean into this pillar of girlhood — something that is best experienced with others.
Within the context of the all-girls Catholic high school I grew up in, we were primed to be submissive, subservient women — in one subject, we were literally asked to sign a pledge to remain virgins until marriage. Fellow students were often called into the faculty room if they were caught speaking to a man on school grounds or attending soirees in their free time.
What you might call regressive and repressive was just regular programming here in the Philippines, where our historic ideal woman was the epitome of virtue, portrayed by our own national hero as “demure and self-effacing”, with downcast eyes, a weak constitution, and a pure soul. Though our sole purpose was to fulfill a man’s desire, we weren’t allowed to express our own. Instead, as Carmen Guerrero Nakpil says in her classic essay Maria Clara, “[Filipinas] forced their persons into a narrow mold and became effete, exceedingly genteel caricatures. They affected modesty to an absurd degree and became martyrs to duty and familial love.”
As Taylor chronicled each of her relationships and converted them into country-pop hits, I thought her to be vapid, boy-crazy. Doesn’t she have anything else to talk about? This hyper-surveillance and judgment of other women’s behavior bled into my daily life: I was quicker to judge, prone to asserting some false sense of moral superiority. If someone liked me then, I wouldn’t have paid attention to them anyway. To be on the precipice of young love, or something of that sort, was a source of shame.
Surprisingly, my hatred toward Taylor continued well after she and Harry broke up. But at that point, I had just fallen victim to the sunk-cost fallacy: why stop now, after investing so much energy in the undertaking? It was only when her infamous scandal with Kim Kardashian broke out that I felt something shift within me: muscle memory dictated that I rally against Taylor for old time’s sake, but suddenly, even that seemed too evil for me.
I was already 17 at this point, with a more developed frontal lobe and a newfound shift in priorities that forced me to distance myself from the internet. This inadvertent grass-touching led me to form my own genuine female friendships: the ultimate game-changer. When my girls would talk to me about whoever they were seeing, I was no longer inclined to police them or call them names in my head. As Taylor’s earlier songs began to soundtrack their first brushes with everything, and consequently our group karaoke sessions, I realized that her resonant lyrics are still what we turn to when navigating a new chapter of our lives.
My relationship with Taylor finally healed when she dropped an album dedicated to love in all its forms, with a title track I still dream of dancing to during my wedding. Though not a standout lyrically or sonically, Lover remains her most significant project to me: how beautiful it is to love someone, find the love in everything because of them, and share the experience in the hopes of making others feel the same. In my desire to set myself apart from Taylor or my peers, I never got to lean into this pillar of girlhood — something that is best experienced with others.
Which brings us back to me, drenched from the rain, tears streaming down my face. I realized that in spite of the circumstances, I might have been crying not in response to punishment, but out of gratitude: that the girl I was has grown so much since, and gets to enjoy the fruits of her inner work. In my years of reacquainting myself with Taylor, I’ve acknowledged that she isn’t perfect: I’m too old to be putting fallible human beings on a pedestal anyway. But her ability to inspire magic and mystery in even the mundane moments of a relationship stays, giving me hope that love is still in the cards for me.
As the colossal feathers in shades of pink and purple came out on stage, my phone miraculously turned itself back on, just as Taylor’s signature line reverberated through the entire venue. There were around 70,000 of us there, predominantly women who are bound to Taylor for life by way of a shared love for love, no matter how they define it. As she sings to herself, “It’s been a long time coming.” I’m glad that I finally came around.
Taypedia 