The Life of a Showgirl is About to Drop, So Let's Unpack What Makes Taylor Swift So Popular

Taylor Swift's 12th album drops on October 3, And in light of this moment, I think we need to unpack the Taylor effect and what it says about women in 2025. 

I don't know what to expect from the album, and that's the beauty of it: Because Taylor Swift knows how to keep her audiences both incredibly engaged and also constantly guessing. And while we've seen imagery and sensed a ~vibe~ from the album, we don't really know what it'll sound like. Taylor is the ultimate genre-defying star, and that means something much more than just a varied discography.

What makes Swift so positively iconic is that she is bigger than the boxes she's been put into — unapologetically so. And really, isn't that what all women want for themselves?

 In a world that tells us to pick a niche, to stay in one lane, to define who we are through zeitgeist-y terms like "tradwife" and "girlboss" and so on, the ultimate aspiration of womanhood if to live in all our nuanced, messy, undefinable glory. And that's what Taylor Swift dares to do.

She is a lover girl and a fiercely independent woman. She's traditional and incredibly modern. She's soft, yet strong. She is larger than life, yet extremely private. She's curated, but she colors outside the lines. She's sparkly dresses and power suits and poetic lyricism and sick beats and a literal billionaire and a symbol of enduring girlhood.

She's all of it, and the boxes women are always shoved inside don't stand a chance. 

And at the end of the day, isn't that what we all want? To break open the barriers and the boxes that try to keep us small and contained and easy to define? Shout out to Taylor, for always showing us that it's possible.

Ask Clara: Why are women always labeled?