The Life of a Progressive Showgirl: How Taylor Swift’s New Album is an Indication of the United States’ Shift to the Right

By: Ellie Simmers | Assistant Editor

As the clock turned to midnight on Friday, Oct. 3, I refreshed my Spotify until it finally appeared: Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. 

With the lyrics pulled up on my laptop and the first track blaring through my headphones, I had high hopes.

 Not only was I let down as a long-time Swiftie, but I was let down as a progressive woman living in 2025. 

My initial criticisms of the album were very surface-level: it sounded very “millennial ” to me. 

Hearing the same person who wrote folklore and evermore use phrases like, “girlboss too close to the sun,” and “I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage,” was devastating in its own right. 

But after listening to this album in full, I was forced to confront feelings I’ve repressed about my favorite artist for a long time. 

In The Life of a Showgirl, it feels like Swift takes a big step into traditionalism, whereas she had previously just been testing the waters. This is an album that romanticizes the joys of staying home, baking bread, and settling down when you fall in love. These sentiments are not inherently bad, and as a feminist, I want everyone to have the choice to live the life they want. 

However, these lyrics and overall messages take on a different meaning when they come from one of the most powerful women in the world. 

In 2025, when reproductive rights are being stripped across the country, every ten minutes, a partner or close relative kills a woman, and fascism is being dressed up as patriotism, this shift to domesticity feels less like growth and more like compliance. 

Even the people Swift surrounds herself with publicly have shifted, from hanging out with progressive artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Lorde to spending all her time with people like Brittany Mahomes, who has been openly praised by Donald Trump. This reflects not just a personal evolution, but a shift into quiet complacency. 

I’m not asking Swift to denounce her friends, but her silence has become deafening. 

While humanitarian crises erupt across the world, when the government is deploying the military to cities across the country, when ethnic cleansing and a genocide is being committed in Gaza, Swift’s voice, one that once stood up to Trump, remains silent. 

Even the rollout of her past three albums is a masterclass in consumerism. Like Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, The Life of a Showgirl debuted in nine different vinyl variations, each with different exclusive bonus art or bonus material. With die-hard fans collecting every single different variant, excess begins to disguise itself as devotion. Swift’s world is no longer about songwriting; it’s about sustaining an empire on the backs of the people who got her there. 

What stood out as especially egregious was Swift’s use of AI generated content as promotion for the album. As someone with an estimated $1.6 billion net worth, she has more than enough money to be able to pay photographers and artists to create these images for her, rather than contributing to the automation of art and the harm AI does to the environment. 

Regardless of your opinion of her music up until this point, Swift once cared about the music and the words she wrote. At this point in her career, it feels like she serves the system more than the music. 

The Life of a Showgirl isn’t just a cringey album, it’s a reflection of the United States in 2025 and the way capitalism can turn even the loudest feminists into quiet participants. 

In an era defined by uncertainty and fatigue, we are all craving comfort and escapism, which is served up to us on a platter through self-care products, health fads and influencer wellness brands. We are being fed the idea that once we “fix” ourselves, everything will get better. 

What The Life of a Showgirl exposes is the limit of that narrative. When empowerment and self-care becomes synonymous with financial success and consumerism, it becomes compliance. 

As Swift remains silent on global crises, embraces an ultra-wealthy circle of friends and turns her songwriting into rantings of her personal fantasies, her choices become cultural indicators, telling her fans that political silence is elegant and detachment is safety. It’s the same logic that has allowed Donald Trump to rise to power alongside the alt-right, through exhaustion, distraction and the promise of stability. 

Maybe the life of a showgirl isn’t so different from the life of a citizen in late-stage capitalism: performative empowerment while submitting to the system controlling us. 

I keep thinking about what it means to be a progressive showgirl, a label I’ve given myself. To love the performance, while knowing it’s all an illusion. I still love Taylor Swift. I still listen to her music, own her vinyls and merch and I still fall for the glitter. Yet, every time I do, I feel a sting of contradiction. 

How can I be a woman who wants meaning and beauty in a world that sells me the exact opposite?

Perhaps, that is why The Life of a Showgirl has troubled me more than any of her other albums. I don’t just see Taylor in it, but I see myself and the instinct that even I have to retreat and craft an image of power rather than actually practicing it.  

In that way, Swift’s album isn’t solely a reflection of a nation’s shift to the right, but it’s a mirror for every progressive who has ever tried to live ethically under the thumb of capitalism. 

I want to believe that art can be provocative and powerful, that sincerity still has value in 2025. But as the lights dim and you can never fully wash the glitter off, I’m left wondering if even our rebellion has become a part of the choreography.