My reference to Taylor Swift goes again a great distance. It started with my ardour for a sure pair of footwear. After I was three years previous, I made a decision I used to be bored with my white “child” footwear. I needed “massive boy” footwear and my mom took me to the shoe retailer. I used to be amazed with the variability and colours obtainable and was entranced by a pair of crimson Keds.
After measuring my little toes, the salesperson went to the again and returned with a field which he fastidiously opened and proudly introduced out a pair of footwear. However they have been blue, not crimson. He defined to me and my mom that blue was for boys, crimson was for women. I hadn’t realized that sexual id was shade coded, however knew what I appreciated and demanded the crimson Keds. The salesperson appeared to my mom for help. “Give the boy what he desires,” she stated. I danced out of the shop in my new crimson footwear.
Over time I started working within the rising subject of gender-specific drugs and males’s psychological, emotional, and relational well being. I used to be writing an article and needed to indicate that intercourse and gender stereotypes had modified. I did a Google Photos seek for “crimson Keds,” anticipating to search out footage of women and men, however noticed solely females and most have been of Taylor Swift.
I first felt an identification together with her alternative of footwear, then started listening to her music, and at last got here to understand Taylor Swift’s savvy as a enterprise girl. After I realized a couple of new ebook, Swiftynomics: How Girls Mastermind and Redine Our Financial system, I knew I needed to interview the writer, Dr. Misty L. Heggeness.
Dr. Heggeness is codirector of the Kansas Inhabitants Heart, Affiliate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs on the College of Kansas, and former Principal Economist and Senior Advisor on the US Census Bureau. You may learn my unique interview right here. For Dr. Heggeness, her ebook displays each her skilled and private curiosity in Taylor Swift, her music and her work.
“After I first began listening to Taylor Swift, she was already properly previous her Popularity period and immersed in selling her album Lover,” says Dr. Heggeness. “She appeared to have layers of self-confience, ambition, and knowledge past her years.”
That was my very own feeling after connecting with Taylor Swift’s music {and professional} expertise and expertise.
“She was distinctive and weird in her skill to talk her fact, from her vantage level, and her followers soaked it up,” says Heggeness. “Tall, gangly, awkward, sparkly, and girly — she had all of the traits that society so simply dismisses in girls. At first blush, one may marvel what she may presumably train me, knowledgeable economist who research girls and work.”
One may additionally marvel why a psychotherapist with a PhD in Worldwide Well being and a sixty-year profession helpling males and their households would discover vital about Taylor Swift and what she will train us all about love, life, and success. I hope you are taking time to discover with me. I consider it is going to be properly price your time.
I agree with Dr. Heggenness when she says,
“Some might consider Taylor Swift has crushed males at their recreation, however I feel she is just enjoying her personal recreation. Challenged by a society, tradition, and trade not made to learn her, she used her finest mastermind methods to create a path ahead.”
I consider that resonates with me and I really feel it’ll resonate with hundreds of thousands of males in addition to girls. Dr. Heggenness concludes,
“She perfected the artwork of escaping confines. She leaned into the ability of ladies’s expertise and voices. In so doing, she developed a motion, a ‘Swiftynomics” motion, if you’ll. She centered on offering artwork and experiences that different girls (and males) who’re shriving as financial belings need.”
Swiftynomics assesses the advanced financial lives of on a regular basis American girls by means of tales of groundbreakers like Taylor Swift. Dr. Misty L. Heggeness digs into the information, revealing girls’s ignored contributions and aspirations — the unexamined worth by create by pursuing their ambitions. Dr. Heggeness emphasizes that the ebook is not only for ladies, however for males as properly.
She says, “Taylor will proceed to reinvent herself in a brand new period, proceed to thrive and stay her finest life. Maybe much more vital is your subsequent reinvention. I’ve little doubt that you’re as much as the problem.”
We are able to all be taught quite a bit from his participating and sensible ebook.
Riane Eisler and Our Partnership Roots
One other highly effective and profitable girl who has influenced my life and my work is Riane Eisler. I first met Riane in 1987 shortly after the publication of her ebook, The Chalice & the Blade: Our Historical past, Our Future. I bear in mind discussing our views on the way forward for humanity and the therapeutic that wanted to happen between women and men. My first ebook, Inside Out: Turning into My Personal Man had been revealed in 1983, the place I described my very own therapeutic journey. At a time when many feminine writers have been blaming males for the issues on this planet, I appreciated that Riane understood that the issue was not males, however the system of domination that harmed each ladies and men.
After I first learn these phrases in The Chalice & the Blade, I used to be moved by their simplicity, imaginative and prescient, and fact:
“Underlying the nice floor variety of human tradition are two fundamental fashions of society. The primary, which I name the dominator mannequin, is what’s popularly termed both patriarchy or matriarchy — the rating of 1 half of humanity over the opposite. The second, during which social relations are based on the precept of linking somewhat than rating, might finest be described because the partnership mannequin. On this mannequin — starting with essentially the most elementary distinction in our species, between female and male — variety is just not equated with both inferiority or superiority.”
In her newer ebook, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Form Our Brains, Lives, and Future, written with anthropologist Douglas P. Fry, they are saying,
“The central options of partnership techniques embody:
- total egalitarianism;
- equality, respect, and partnership between ladies and men;
- a nonacceptance of violence, battle, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation; and
- ethics that help human caring, prosocial cooperation, and flourishing.”
These are the values, I consider, we acknowledge within the music, life, love, and the values and practices of Taylor Swift.
Girls and Males, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, Me and You: Collectively We Can Change the World for Good
My spouse, Carlin, and I just lately celebrated our 45th anniversary. Like Taylor and Travis, we had quite a few relationship breakups and heartaches earlier than we met. I share the issues Carlin and I’ve realized in my ebook, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Tranformative Levels of Relationships and Why the Greatest is Nonetheless to Come and supply an on-line course for {couples}, “Navigating the 5 Levels of Love.”
The well-known psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, as soon as stated,
“Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”
We are able to be taught a fantastic deal about these twin pillars of life from Taylor Swift and her ongoing relationship with soccer star Travis Kelce.
Tens of millions of ladies and men all through the world noticed the headlines final yr:
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s Love Story — From Friendship Bracelets to Engagement Rings.
In an article by Jocelyn Noveck and Maria Sherman, August 26, 2025, they reported,
“It began with a friendship bracelet. It ended with an engagement ring. Taylor Swift, the pop celebrity, and Travis Kelce, the soccer champion, are engaged. The fiancés, each 35, introduced the information in a joint put up on Instagram on Tuesday. It’s the newest chapter within the couple’s love story, one which has spanned two years, two Tremendous Bowls, an album announcement and the highest-grossing tour of all time.”
For Carlin and me, it’s enjoyable to benefit from the evolution of two iconic people whose love lives and work lives encourage the world. I’m positive you should have no hassle discovering extra details about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and their upcoming marriage.
Should you’d prefer to be taught extra about Misty L. Heggeness and her ebook, Swiftynomics: How Girls Mastermind and Redine Our Financial system, you may click on the hyperlink beneath:
https://www.mistyheggeness.com
Should you’d prefer to see my interview with Dr. Heggeness and revel in our in-depth converation, you might accomplish that right here.
If you need to learn extra articles about love, life, and relationships you may subscribe to my free weekly e-newsletter right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/