Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2023 3:03:38 GMT
In 2023, world leaders and mayors competed to bring her monumentally successful Eras Tour to their jurisdictions. Swift has become a feature of American soft power: a U.S. diplomat told me how meaningful it was to get Swift to agree to play in his host country. And Swift, as we now know, has had a Midas touch, improving the fortunes of every place she visits and business she celebrates. Just ask the NFL about its millions of new fans. Or your secretary of state: tens of thousands of fans registered to vote after she encouraged them on Instagram, spiking visits to Vote.org. “She’s done a great job of sticking to her guns and being vocal and political in the ways that she wants to,” says the Chicks’ front woman Natalie Maines.
At the same time, much of what Swift accomplished in 2023 exists beyond measurement. She mapped her journey and shared the results with the world: She committed to validating the dreams, feelings, and experiences of people, especially women, who felt overlooked and regularly underestimated. They know she respects her audience, and trusts them with her story. She held up a mirror to her own life, helping people better see themselves. She embraced her past, foibles and all, and in doing so encouraged others to do the same.
While Swift’s success can feel like a counterweight to traditional forms of power, the secret to her mastery has ancient roots. She is writing her own myth, informed by her own journey. And it has been an epic. So many have turned to those tales because they’ve been so disappointed by the storylines that emerge elsewhere in society. Any student of that Great Man Theory of history knows how deeply intertwined it is with centuries of sexism and the exclusion of women from power. Indeed, this isn’t the first time Swift has been part of TIME Person of the Year; in 2017, she was among the “Silence Breakers” we recognized for standing up and speaking out against discrimination, harassment, and assault faced by too many women for far too long.
Read More: Taylor Swift Makes History as Person of the Year. Here’s How
Swift has been both avatar and author of shifting narratives, never more so than in 2023. Where do they take us? It might look something like what Swift has created, making a space for 70,000 people, night after night, to experience joy together. What is a higher form of influence, after all, than giving millions of fans, young and old, the time of their lives, where they can revel not only in Swift’s voice but in finding their own? These moments were all the more magical for taking place as we exited a pandemic, rediscovering the communal experiences that were so recently taken from us.
For building a world of her own that made a place for so many, for spinning her story into a global legend, for bringing joy to a society desperately in need of it, Taylor Swift is TIME’s 2023 Person of the Year.
At the same time, much of what Swift accomplished in 2023 exists beyond measurement. She mapped her journey and shared the results with the world: She committed to validating the dreams, feelings, and experiences of people, especially women, who felt overlooked and regularly underestimated. They know she respects her audience, and trusts them with her story. She held up a mirror to her own life, helping people better see themselves. She embraced her past, foibles and all, and in doing so encouraged others to do the same.
While Swift’s success can feel like a counterweight to traditional forms of power, the secret to her mastery has ancient roots. She is writing her own myth, informed by her own journey. And it has been an epic. So many have turned to those tales because they’ve been so disappointed by the storylines that emerge elsewhere in society. Any student of that Great Man Theory of history knows how deeply intertwined it is with centuries of sexism and the exclusion of women from power. Indeed, this isn’t the first time Swift has been part of TIME Person of the Year; in 2017, she was among the “Silence Breakers” we recognized for standing up and speaking out against discrimination, harassment, and assault faced by too many women for far too long.
Read More: Taylor Swift Makes History as Person of the Year. Here’s How
Swift has been both avatar and author of shifting narratives, never more so than in 2023. Where do they take us? It might look something like what Swift has created, making a space for 70,000 people, night after night, to experience joy together. What is a higher form of influence, after all, than giving millions of fans, young and old, the time of their lives, where they can revel not only in Swift’s voice but in finding their own? These moments were all the more magical for taking place as we exited a pandemic, rediscovering the communal experiences that were so recently taken from us.
For building a world of her own that made a place for so many, for spinning her story into a global legend, for bringing joy to a society desperately in need of it, Taylor Swift is TIME’s 2023 Person of the Year.