I’ve never had a good answer when people asked me what music I liked. Usually, I would default to an evasive response, like “oh, everything” or even better, “anything but country.” Sometimes, I found myself trying to give answers that aligned with the other person’s taste or, worse, with what I thought they expected me to listen to. But in truth, none of these answers were completely accurate. My music taste has always been hard to define. I love kicking back to Kendrick Lamar albums, but can also jam to hits from the 70s and 80s at the same time. And perhaps most jarring of all, I love Taylor Swift.

Revealing this fact would almost always precipitate some level of surprise. When you think of Swifties, you probably don’t envision 16-year-old boys. Gut-reactions like these are fundamentally built upon perceptual categorizations of others into what they “should” be. Teenage boys should be interested in trap or rock, not Taylor Swift. Likewise, the traditional Swiftie should be a teenage girl who became infatuated with Taylor’s definition of music and femininity at a young age. Few of these characteristics are mine.

A problem arises when we stereotype and label others at first glance, even if it’s on an implicit level, because they fuel specious and misleading societal norms. These norms are what end up dictating our music tastes, boxing people into what tunes they ought to be drawn to and ultimately controlling our enjoyment. The stigma surrounding boys like myself listening to and liking Taylor Swift songs isn’t just one isolated instance but is endemic to the entire music industry. In the K-pop world, non-Asian people enjoying groups like BTS or EXO bears a similar shock-factor. 

The issue isn’t whether these stereotypes are true or not — most Taylor Swift fans are indeed teenage girls — but that the narrative such stereotypes push is almost always incomplete and thus dangerous. It is this incomplete and exclusionary narrative that becomes problematic for everyone, especially those purposefully steering clear of specific artists because of it.

More often than not, this self-imposed handicap of blindly adhering to such societal norms causes people to internalize stigmas and shy away from their favorite artists. For men who avoid Taylor Swift despite knowingly enjoying her music, the root of their non-participation is often a deep subscription to toxic masculinity. They brush off her music because it’s “too feminine” or “too emotional” and her lyrics don’t align with the traditional male predisposition of being “strong” or “courageous.” In reality, we should be asking ourselves how enjoying metaphorical and emotional songwriting takes away from our masculinity. How do figurative lyrics threaten our manliness? How do sentimental chords threaten our strength?

The simple answer is that it doesn’t. Gender norms like these coax us into a false chauvinistic perception of the world around us, prioritizing a societal expectation at the expense of our own self-image. Over time, predisposed philosophies like toxic masculinity make us more fragile. Men end up endorsing a “tough it out” mindset, making them unable to ask for help, realize trauma, or accept failures. This is inherently contradictory. You can chop wood for a fireplace “like a man” while dancing to “Shake it Off” or backpack across the Alps “like a man” while screaming the lyrics to “All Too Well.” Enjoying Taylor Swift isn’t mutually exclusive with being masculine. Toxic masculinity is innately flawed because it creates a false binary between masculine and feminine traits in a world where overlap between the two is ubiquitous. Listening to Taylor Swift doesn’t make you any less of a man, and ultimately, listening to any other artist that deviates from what you’re societally expected to listen to doesn’t reduce your worth either.

Backward cultural norms act as an engine for problematic mentalities like toxic masculinity and, crucially, defeat the purpose of music itself. We listen to music for ourselves and for our own enjoyment, not to fulfill and satisfy some de facto societal expectation or to validate others’ perceptions of us. The incomplete narratives of people painted by these cultural norms don't help anyone, and certainly not the listener.

Next time you hit play on your device, don’t let your decision be maneuvered by social expectations. Listen to what you like, even if it turns a few heads. My top recommendation would be any “1989” or “evermore” Taylor Swift song, but I’ll let you make that discovery on your own.