When Will We Be OK With a Pop Princess Like Taylor Swift Growing Up?

The response to Taylor Swift’s highly-anticipated 12th studio album Life of a Showgirl was as expected — streaming records shattered, Billboard charts topped and fans clamoring for more in the midst of a new music video, limited edition releases and an upcoming Eras Tour documentary. (The devil works hard, but Swift’s marketing team works harder.)

While the Swiftie fervor has hit a predictable fever pitch in the wake of her engagement to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, so too has the criticism regarding arguably the most sexual Swift song to date: “Wood.”

The catchy tune carries enough of a playful pop beat for you to almost forget that Swift is clearly singing about her fiancé’s, uh, reproductive appendage. The ninth track on the album — what some Swifties say is an intentional ode to the length of Kelce’s manhood — is about love, yes, but also carnal desire.

“He ah-matized me and openеd my eyes / Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see / His lovе was the key that opened my thighs,” Swift sings over and over again. “Girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet / To know a hard rock is on the way.”

In a country that demands women appear sexual but never own their sexuality outright; to adhere to unrealistic beauty expectations for the sake of the male gaze while suppressing their own desires, Swift singing as a 35-year-old woman who enjoys getting d***ed down by her fiancé is simply put: unacceptable.

“Wood” and similar tracks inspired by her romance have been described as “vulgar,” with one conservative outlet arguing that Swift’s “explicit” lyrics carry “the dull thud of a door slamming on girlhood” (again, Swift is 35 years old). Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who admitted via Instagram that he “really liked the song ‘Wood’ the first couple times I listened to it,” told fans he could no longer stomach the tune once he realized it’s not-so-underlying content.

“No. No. I’m not bobbing and weaving and jamming to a song about Travis’ d***,” he proclaimed, though one can’t help but wonder how many songs about women’s body parts Portnoy has “bobbed and weaved” to happily.

From the shock and disgust to the criticism and outright condemnation, the reaction to a female artist’s music growing and evolving with her is a stark reminder that even in the year of our lord 2025, the world remains terrified of a woman who is not afraid to own her sexual power.

Unfortunately, this is a tale as old as sexism itself. In the late 90s and early aughts, it was Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson — all initially packaged as “innocent” school girls with a hint of bad, “will she, won’t she?” energy.

For Spears, it was pigtails and a porn-inspired Catholic school girls outfit while she was simultaneously marketed as a virgin. When she owned her own sexuality, with songs like “Overprotected” and her public relationships with Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline, she was deemed too problematic, too sexual, despite how sexualized she was as a teen.

Then there is Aguilera — a “genie in a bottle” who, once released, prompted relentless outrage. With a few “dirty” lyrics and a pair of assless chaps, Aguilera became the ire of a society still very much steeped in purity culture. She was told she needed “to be spanked like the naughty girl she is” by MTV, and that she looked like she came from an “intergalactic hooker convention” by TIME Magazine.

The message, then and still, to women the world over is clear — be forever desirable but never experience desire ourselves. Provoke passion in others, but never dive into your own so that you may gain a better understanding of yourself and create your own sexual experiences that are worth celebrating.

Adhere to the pervasive Madonna-whore complex: make straight men want to have sex with you, but never have sex yourself lest you be labeled “vulgar,” “explicit” or a “slut.”

Look, am I a big fan of Swift’s “Wood”? I can’t say that I am. At the danger of angering an untold number of Swifties across the globe, the lyrics are arguably cringy and — to a 38-year-old woman with plenty of sexual experience — somewhat juvenile, despite what the pearl-clutchers among us might say.

But perhaps even the cringe-worthy, painfully obvious innuendos are part of the point. Who among us hasn’t been so happy to get our backs proverbially broken by our better halves that we brag to our girlfriends in ways that, when we come to our non-orgasm fueled senses, seem somewhat ridiculous? Love, sexuality, sex and desire — it’s all messy and oftentimes cringe-worthy.

So while the “Redwood” and “hard rock” references evoke more than a few painful giggles, I for one am looking forward to the day when a grown woman, nearing 40, can sing about having enjoyable, consensual sex in whatever way she chooses without being denigrated by those who wish she’d stay perpetually prepubescent.

If I have to choose between a society that wants to forever infantilize women while simultaneously sexualizing them, or a couple of lame lyrics about a man’s praise-worthy willy, bring on the double entendres, one catchy tune at a time.