Taylor Swift is tired of people talking about marriage. In the first song off her latest album, Midnights, she sings, “All they keep asking me / Is if I’m gonna be your bride / The only kinda girl they see / Is a one night or a wife.” The song, “Lavender Haze,” finds her complaining about “the 1950s sh*t they want from me.” That doesn’t seem to mean aprons and brooms and pot roasts — she’s just talking about marriage itself.
Swift has been dating boyfriend Joe Alwyn for six years, a time frame after which most women I know would be giving an ultimatum, if they haven’t already. But perhaps just because the media are so obsessed with the idea of a Taylor Swift wedding, the star insists she won’t have one — for now.
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Swift is not the only pop star to complain recently that marriage is outdated and unnecessary. This summer, Lizzo made headlines for protesting not just marriage, but even the idea of monogamy.
“Monogamy, to me, is a little claustrophobic because there are rules,” she said in a radio interview while discussing her relationship with her boyfriend. “I think a love relationship that’s not monogamous has no rules.”
Just because she doesn’t want “any rules,” that doesn’t mean she’s running around sleeping with other people, she said. “It just means that there are no expectations, and that way, the love gets to just be the main event … It’s like, do what you wanna do, as long as you love me.”
The problem with this kind of attitude is that it requires that the other person in a relationship have the same boundaries, and despite what Lizzo says, it does rest on an assumption of certain expectations. And you know what they say about what happens when you assume.
This month, Lizzo opened up about her perspective on relationships again, telling Vanity Fair, “People fight for monogamy like they pray to it every day.”
“I’m not thinking about sex when I think about monogamy and rules,” she said. “I’m thinking about the autonomy and independence of him and me. How wonderful would it be to be this complete independent person and to come together to make two complete independent people? Not that whole ‘You complete me, you’re my other half.’ No. I’m whole, and you’re incredible too.”
Lizzo may think she’s trailblazing here, but this emphasis on independence is an incredibly short-sighted, and deeply American, perspective. Like it or not, no one is completely independent from anyone else, and that goes double when we enter into relationships. Our culture is obsessed with the individual — it’s no surprise that Taylor Swift released a song called “ME!” — to the marginalization of all else, including relationships and community.
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Anything that might create ties is potentially painful. Plus, it’s not cool. So, instead of monogamous relationships and marriage, we have “the autonomy and independence of him and me.” Swooning!
Swift and Lizzo aren’t blazing any new feminist trails by rejecting traditional relationships. What they say is that their relationships are too special and loving to be constrained by society’s pesky ideas of long-term commitment and building a life together. What they mean is that they’re too scared to try.
