IN every bit the “here she goes again” manner that this is intended – there was something deeply sinister about Taylor Swift being booed at the Super Bowl this past weekend.
There’s, very obviously, something deeply sinister in the air across the pond full stop, but we are really starting to feel the reverberations and the real-life consequences of recent political choices. Particularly if you are a woman.
The Super Bowl is arguably the biggest American culture phenomenon of the year and it seems to be growing arms and legs with each one that passes, as if it isn’t egregiously over the top already. This was the most watched of all time, pulling in an impressive global audience of more than 176 million people. So, an even bigger stage for the intentional humiliation of a young woman at the hands of testosterone’s biggest cheerleaders.
I can see why it’s been easily dismissed, particularly by men. Yes, she has become irreversibly affiliated with the Kansas City Chiefs owing to her relationship with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and as a football fan myself, I understand the emotion involved in a game of this calibre, but are we confident that this was merely a case of some perhaps misplaced passion from the Eagles fans? You won’t be convincing me any time soon.
The Super Bowl being what it is also means that it attracts an annual audience packed with the world’s biggest celebrities. From A-listers like Anne Hathaway and Samuel L Jackson to political figures like Jill Biden to influencing-royalty like Alix Earle, the stadium was – as it always is – rammed with notable figures.
Not least due to the fact that it’s so inaccessibly expensive to attend that the insufferably wealthy are in the minority of those who can actually afford to go. It’s capitalism’s biggest night.
It’s not Taylor Swift’s first rodeo either, having essentially been the star of the show in 2024 when she watched Kelce take home the third Vince Lombardi trophy of his career. Success he fell short of replicating this year, though hardly reflective of his wider performance given that he’s gone home with a ring in three of the last five Super Bowls.
So what was their beef with this one woman in particular? There were plenty there just like her, and far more offensive figures were featured on the big screen to a backdrop of enthusiastic applause. She was minding her own business – simply there, as she has been on multiple occasions throughout the NFL season and those previous, to cheer on her boyfriend – and as any good partner would do if their other half was playing at their profession’s most elite level.
Let’s not forget that her recent involvement has been intentionally milked and promoted by the NFL organisation – and has reportedly made the league almost a billion dollars. Not only that, the NFL has enjoyed an unprecedented surge in female support – the Chiefs in particular. But irrespective of team, her mere existence in this space has in turn opened the door to it to her millions of adoring fans. The majority of which are women and girls.
But ironically – this is an aspect of the problem. Men, and I will caveat this with the fact that I am speaking generally before anyone gets overly emotional, often have trouble with female success as intimidating as Swift’s. She is quite literally a phenomenon in herself in a way that little others have ever achieved before. The roaring crowds she pulled in for her recent Eras tour, which was a cultural event in itself, induced seismic activity in some places and broke virtually every record possible as far as scale, profitability and attendance goes.
When she posted on Instagram about voter registration after coming out in support of Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, she drove 409,999 people to the US Government’s voter registration site in under 24 hours. Her influence, in every conceivable way, is palpable.
I use that example in particular on purpose, because it definitely matters that she is vocally anti-Trump. The Super Bowl was not only host to the loser-in-chief himself, but is home turf for a lot of Trumpian support. Patrick Mahomes, Kelce’s co-captain, comes from an infamously Trump-adoring family. His wife has vocally supported the president on multiple occasions, despite being good friends with Taylor Swift whom Trump has confessed to “hate”.
In fact, Taylor’s own boyfriend last week said it would be an “honour” if Donald Trump were to attend Sunday’s event. A man who thoroughly enjoys ridiculing your partner across any social media platform that will have him? It all just feels very sinister to me, and it was not easy to watch a woman with so much power look so uncomfortable. It was like watching someone being bullied in the school playground, except it was in a packed stadium, by thousands of jumped-up football fans at once in front of an audience of 176 million people all over the world.
It is a marked difference to the reception Travis Kelce received on the numerous occasions he attended the Eras tour. He was met with nothing but support from her army of fans, so much so that he even took to the stage and performed with her on occasion. Again, being met with nothing other than rapturous applause.
Is it lost on you that the Eras tour audience was predominantly female, while the Super Bowl audience is predominantly male? It’s not lost on me.
They don’t hate her because she supports the Chiefs. They just hate her. They hate that she has invited women and girls into a sport that they were systematically and purposefully left out of. They hate her power, her influence and the audacity of her to possess any of it as a woman. Her only crime in this context is being a woman. And it is that deep.
Misogynist brain-rot has been once again legitimised by the politics of Trump, even more severely than the last time America inflicted this on us all. Taylor Swift will be fine – she is cushioned by her billion-dollar fortune, has access to the best support money can buy and has been in the public eye long enough to take some booing on the chin – but what happened to her on Sunday was a symptom of a much wider problem that is seeping into the realities of people with much less power and resource. Misogyny is alive and well, and it’s multiplying faster than we think.
