Taylor Swift and Searching for Prince Charming

So after reading that one article about music and what popular songs teach us about love (Bader 2007), I couldn’t help but think of Taylor Swift. Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some T-Swift! I mean, shoot, I’ve actually been to two of her concerts! I loved them both by the way. The thing is about my girl T-Swift is that most of her songs are about the perfect guy who didn’t work out or hurt her. I mean, you have this one, and this one, and that one, and don’t forget about this one! I can’t help but think, HOW ON EARTH HAS SHE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THIS MANY GUYS!? I mean seriously, how is that possible? She’s like 21 years old and yet has 3 albums of love affairs with different guys! This is just unbelievable. This girl falls hard and falls fast.

My worry comes in when you think of her audience. We’re talking young girls aged from 6-17, and the occasional 21 year-old male (guilty!), that is the main audience she’s singing too. By looking at Bader’s (2007) article we see myths that popular songs are preaching about love. Bader admits that, "we do not know enough about the influence of popular song lyrics on our cultural understanding of love... [but] commonsense notion that 'we are what we eat'" (p. 156).  I think T-Swift’s lyrics could be detrimental to how these young girls look for guys. They may expect everyone to be prince charming, and if they’re not, then they’re jerks just waiting to hurt you.

Now I see myself as a pretty good guy, but in no way am I anywhere close to prince charming. Prince charming doesn’t exist because everyone has flaws. According to the some of Swift’s lyrics, if a guy hurts you once than he’s an asshole and you need to find someone better. I wonder how this myth will affect those males aged 6-17. I feel for them.