Contemporary culture's 'obsession' with Taylor Swift's relationships and whether she is or isn't pregnant has parallels with the rigid gender norms promoted by Far- and Alt-Right groups, new research has shown.
Anxieties around childlessness and conforming to the heterosexual ideals of the nuclear family are being reflected in some of the singer's media coverage and the online behaviour of some of her fans.
These include AI-generated fan art of Swift and fiancé Travis Kelce that bears striking resemblances to the Aryan propaganda created by the Nazis.
Dr Amelia Morris, an expert in culture and media at the University of Exeter, studied online fan sites and news reports to show how the reception to 'Tayvis' has capped a decade of intense speculation around her status. Her findings are published in the journal Celebrity Studies.
"From the moment Taylor Swift attended a Kansas City Chiefs match in support of her new boyfriend, Travis Kelce, in September 2023, Tayvis frenzy has gripped the mainstream media and some factions of the Swiftie fandom," Dr Morris said. "This has involved constant speculation about when Swift will become pregnant with Kelce's baby.
"As the far-right continues to gain electoral and cultural power, the reception to Swift's 'all-American' romance positions her within the rigidity of the 'white picket fence' nuclear family."
Dr Morris conducted a critical analysis of global news reports around Swift's 'pregnancy' and her relationship with Kelce. She also reviewed the 'Swiftie-sphere', the term she's coined to describe the digital spaces where fans gather to discuss Swift's music and personal life, particularly Reddit threads dedicated to 'Tayvis', as well as fan-made YouTube videos.
Dr Morris said Swift's career has consistently been positioned through an "intensely misogynistic lens", from accusations early in her career that she did not write her own songs, to later being ridiculed for only writing about ex-boyfriends. This, she says, stereotyped her as the 'crazy ex-girlfriend', itself descending from the Victorian trope of the 'madwoman in the attic'.
In 2016, OK USA put Swift on the front cover with a headline 'Pregnant! Who's the Dad?' and a tagline suggesting she'd made an emotional call to her ex-partner Calvin Harris. Dr Morris said other tabloids rebuffed the claims, but the coverage portrayed her as 'hyperemotional'. Fan-made videos on TikTok during Swift's record-breaking The Eras Tour in 2024 also openly speculated about her being pregnant.
Dr Morris's research examined the reception of Kelce as her partner, particularly his status as an athlete compared with some of Swift's ex-boyfriends. Spanish newspaper Marca, for example, reported that Taylor had 'ditched the soft boys and has now fallen head over heels for the jock'. Meanwhile, Vulture magazine created a lineup of her partners ranked according to height, with Kelce at the top. In online spaces, numerous fans likened it to a 'high-school happy ending', with some producing videos set to her track So High School.
"At the heart of this speculation over the Tayvis baby is a cultural obsession that Swift has a baby with a man who is at 'her standard'," says Dr Morris. "This insidiously props up Alt-Right narratives around White reproductivity. Swift's relationship to Kelce is deeply entangled with gendered norms around 'real' masculinity and, by proxy, Whiteness. This is best seen in the vastly different reception to some of Swift's relationships, such as rock star Matty Healy."
These themes, says Dr Morris, are further evident in the wealth of fan art that has been produced that depicts the couple with their mythological baby. Among them are AI-generated images bearing a striking resemblance to Wolfgang Willrich's portrait The Aryan Family. In one, Swift is portrayed with a 1950s-style blonde bob, set against a backdrop of flowers and a futuristic city. Dr Morris says their "strong and unwavering" faces, accentuated blondeness, and muscular frames emphasise their perfection and the rigid gender norms of the Aryan ideal.
Dr Morris said the bot attack against her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, and accusations that it revealed affiliations with the 'Trad Wife' movement, showed how Swift's celebrity continues to be used to sow division and further far-right agendas".
