The Lack of Intersectional Thought in Taylor Swift’s “The Man”

Taylor Swift’s, “The Man” music video opens with a man in a suit, hands in his pockets, staring at a city skyline outside of the window of his corner office. The camera follows him as he exits his office and his employees cheer for him as he stands soaking in their praise, hands outstretched in a show of self-satisfaction. In the next scene, the same man sits on a train, aggressively man-spreading and smoking a cigar. The camera starts by centering on him, then slowly zooms out to reveal those sitting around him coughing from his cigar smoke that has spread across the train car. In the next scene, the man weaves through a sea of scantily-clad women laying on towels on the deck of a cruise ship. Again, the man is centrally located in the shot while the women exist in the exterior of the shot and are on a plane below him as they are laying down while he is standing. Later on in the music video, we see a scene of the same man sitting on a fountain in a park, holding a small child. He again takes a central position in the shot, while we see other people surrounding him, cheering and smiling at him in a show of appreciation. In the last shot of the music video, the man, dressed in an all-white tennis outfit and matching sweat band, smashes his tennis racket onto the court and upends a basket of tennis balls in a display of unbridled rage. The camera then pans out and we see that this tennis court is actually a set. The man walks over to Taylor Swift herself sitting on a chair labeled “director” and asks how the take was. She responds “Pretty good, but could you try and be sexier, maybe more likeable this time?”

The various scenes in “The Man” music video drive home the message that being a man affords one certain rights to space, opportunity, and treatment. His central position in the shots demonstrate the dominance and deference he is given as a man. In the majority of the scenes, he acts like a total sleazeball yet continues to act this way as those around him either reward him or stay silent about his behavior. The chorus of the Man: “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can
Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man, And I’m so sick of them coming at me again, ‘Cause if I was a man, Then I’d be the man,” highlights the access to status and opportunity that being a man offers. While Taylor Swift is not wrong in noting that the patriarchal structure we live under grants status and privilege to men simply on the basis of their gender, her lyrics lack nuance and an intersectional lens. The core message of “The Man,” that men are advantaged and women are disadvantaged, lacks an understanding of the way social, economic, racial, political, and other factors privilege certain people and disadvantage others. While Taylor Swift would “be the man” if she “was a man,” other women would not because they are not white, affluent, and able-bodied. Taylor Swift centers white womanhood as the default female experience, which comes through when she imagines herself as a powerful and privileged man. Swift’s centering of white womanhood is further illuminated by her dialogue at the end of the music video. She tells the male actor to “try and be sexier,” clearly playing on the sexist trope of male directors urging female actresses to be more sexual and appealing to the male gaze. While this is a very real phenomena, this comment completely disregards the oversexualization of women of color in contrast with the desexualization of white women. Along with truly being one of Taylor Swift’s worst songs, “The Man” offers a commentary on sexism and patriarchal structures that completely lack any sort of intersectional analysis or thought.