My reference to Taylor Swift goes again a good distance. It started with my ardour for a sure pair of footwear. Once I was three years previous, I made a decision I used to be uninterested in my white “child” footwear. I wished “large boy” footwear and my mom took me to the shoe retailer. I used to be amazed with the range and colours accessible and was entranced by a pair of purple Keds.
After measuring my little ft, the salesperson went to the again and returned with a field which he rigorously opened and proudly introduced out a pair of footwear. However they have been blue, not purple. He defined to me and my mom that blue was for boys, purple was for women. I hadn’t realized that sexual identification was coloration coded, however knew what I preferred and demanded the purple Keds. The salesperson seemed to my mom for assist. “Give the boy what he desires,” she stated. I danced out of the shop in my new purple footwear.
Through the years 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 wished to point out that intercourse and gender stereotypes had modified. I did a Google Photographs seek for “purple Keds,” anticipating to seek out photos of women and men, however noticed solely females and most have been of Taylor Swift.
I first felt an identification along 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 lady. Once I discovered a few new ebook, Swiftynomics: How Ladies Mastermind and Redine Our Economic system, I knew I wished 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’ll be able to 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.
“Once I first began taking note of Taylor Swift, she was already effectively previous her Fame 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} abilities and expertise.
“She was distinctive and weird in her capability 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 would possibly marvel what she would possibly probably educate me, an expert 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 essential about Taylor Swift and what she will be able to educate us all about love, life, and success. I hope you are taking time to discover with me. I consider it is going to be effectively price your time.
I agree with Dr. Heggenness when she says,
“Some could consider Taylor Swift has overwhelmed males at their sport, however I feel she is just taking part in her personal sport. Challenged by a society, tradition, and trade not made to learn her, she used her greatest mastermind methods to create a path ahead.”
I consider that resonates with me and I really feel it is going to resonate with tens of millions 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 complicated financial lives of on a regular basis American girls by tales of groundbreakers like Taylor Swift. Dr. Misty L. Heggeness digs into the info, revealing girls’s missed contributions and aspirations — the unexamined worth by create by pursuing their ambitions. Dr. Heggeness emphasizes that the ebook isn’t just for ladies, however for males as effectively.
She says, “Taylor will proceed to reinvent herself in a brand new period, proceed to thrive and dwell her greatest life. Maybe much more essential is your subsequent reinvention. I’ve little doubt that you’re as much as the problem.”
We will all be taught so much from his participating and sensible ebook.
Riane Eisler and Our Partnership Roots
One other highly effective and profitable lady 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: Changing into My Personal Man had been printed 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 the earth, I appreciated that Riane understood that the issue was not males, however the system of domination that harmed each ladies and men.
Once 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 range of human tradition are two primary 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, wherein social relations are based on the precept of linking fairly than rating, could greatest be described because the partnership mannequin. On this mannequin — starting with essentially the most basic distinction in our species, between female and male — range just isn’t 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 programs embody:
- total egalitarianism;
- equality, respect, and partnership between ladies and men;
- a nonacceptance of violence, conflict, abuse, cruelty, and exploitation; and
- ethics that assist 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.
Ladies 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 discovered in my ebook, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Tranformative Phases of Relationships and Why the Greatest is Nonetheless to Come and supply an on-line course for {couples}, “Navigating the 5 Phases of Love.”
The well-known psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, as soon as stated,
“Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”
We will be taught a fantastic deal about these twin pillars of life from Taylor Swift and her ongoing relationship with soccer star Travis Kelce.
Thousands and thousands 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 famous person, 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’ll have no bother discovering extra details about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and their upcoming marriage.
In the event you’d prefer to be taught extra about Misty L. Heggeness and her ebook, Swiftynomics: How Ladies Mastermind and Redine Our Economic system, you’ll be able to click on the hyperlink under:
https://www.mistyheggeness.com
In the event you’d prefer to see my interview with Dr. Heggeness and luxuriate in our in-depth converation, you could accomplish that right here.
If you want to learn extra articles about love, life, and relationships you’ll be able to subscribe to my free weekly publication right here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/