Taylor Swift’s Journey to Fame
Taylor Swift released a documentary, Miss Americana, on January 23, 2020. During this documentary, Swift begins by talking about intimate moments in her life. She began writing her first diary when she was 13. As a kid, she thought she always had to be perfect and do the right thing. Swift admits that she knows she's not a perfect person, but has constantly strived to be a “good girl” or in her mind perfect. Growing up, she was taught to live off the approval and applause of others.
Swift speaks about how one thing can just crumble all of your confidence. The moment in her life where everything crumbled, was when she won best female music video for “You Belong With Me” at the VMA’s, and Kanye got up and said that he thought Beyonce had the best video. When he did that at first she felt that the crowd was booing her, but in fact they were booing Kanye. She speaks about how she built her “whole belief system on getting people to clap for you” and that being completely shattered by one person who shared their opinion not in the right way. When Kanye West took the microphone from Taylor in 2009, she felt like she was not good enough. Then Kanye wrote about Taylor in a song. The line in his song turned everyone against her and Twitter had a new hashtag going around. The #TaylorSwiftOverParty. The hashtag was trending and she was just thinking about how many people it takes to make that go viral. This caused Taylor to “hide” from the media for about a year
Taylor shares her views on body image and how body image can affect your mindset and how you feel in your own body. Taylor struggled a lot with her body image. She thought that she had to be this perfect, tiny waist, and tall person, but in reality she really was all that and more. She would talk about how she would starve herself to be smaller for other people when the only opinion that should matter is her own. She felt like inorder to be perfect and to be how everyone else wants her to be, she felt like she had to be tiny and perfect.
Taylor shares how she felt like she was alone and didn't have anyone she could talk to. She feels like her mom is the most supportive person in her life. She shares how her mom is like one of the only people in her life that understands how she feels. When she found out that her mom had cancer, she was really struggling with the fact that she could lose her mom who was one of her only support systems. She begins to realize, as her mom is going through this, that family is more important than the fame and approval of others.
After Swift stays out of public eye for a little , she realises that she is doing better than she was before. This is when she writes her album “Reputation”. While she is writing reputation, she begins to find herself again. Once she finds herself, she becomes the best she could be. Taylor begins to recreate herself through her new music. The REPUTATION album was Taylor reinventing herself. Taylor became who she wanted to be. She no longer cared about what others thought and she became her own person. However, the REPUTATION album was not nominated for any grammys in 2018, she immediately said she's gonna make a better record. Soon after, Taylor started writing her recently released album “Lover”. This album is all about how she is who she is and not one comment about it can stop her from being herself.