The Beaten Path

or "Lights, Camera, Bitch Smile"

I went deep on a Reddit thread this week on Taylor Swift’s I Can Do It With a Broken Heart lyrics which officially catapulted me into Swiftie fandom. As I was basking in my newfound adoration, my mom said something that left me dumbfounded like that time a 20-something door-to-door solar panel salesman started giving me unsolicited life advice.

She said something like: “I wish Taylor would marry her boyfriend and have a baby.”

Wait. What?

Mom isn’t alone. Oh no. The press and millions of others say this about the pop star too and we have countless classic Taylor songs to thank for everyone’s perception of her “inability” to settle down and get barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen already. “I'm so sick of them coming at me again / 'Cause if I was a man / Then I'd be the man.”

Homegirl is playing sold out shows for millions of screaming fans paying $1,000 per ticket for the nosebleeds in a world tour that she created from scratch. Literally “There in her glittering prime / The lights refract sequined stars off her silhouette every night.” And we want her to stop all that for something as common as marriage and a baby?

Why on scorching hot planet earth do we see that as greater than? Why do alternative life paths make people so uncomfortable? Even when someone is thriving on their own terms, we keep trotting out our tired little yardstick, measuring their worth against the same traditional AF checklist. Get married. Have kids. Get a Costco membership. Die. It’s like we’re scared to admit the playbook might suck, so we cling to it like a security blanket even though it smells like blue cheese and existential dread.

And if Taylor Freaking Swift—a global phenomenon and 13-time Grammy winner—isn’t immune to the societal pressure to conform, what hope do the rest of us plebes have?

Last time I checked, half of marriages end in divorce and there are plenty of miserable people in a lot of the marriages that stick. So why are we still talking about marriage like it’s a race to the finish line? I won! I can live happily ever after now! 

I once overheard a married couple in Harris Teeter: “What is this strawberry jam? I told you peach. I swear, if I have to tell you to get the peach jam one more time, I will murder you. GET THE SMUCKERS, MORON! GET THE FUCKING PEACH SMUCKERS NOW!” But I bet they have one hell of a family Christmas card in matching flannel jammies. 

I’m at that age where divorces are popping up around me with more frequency than I wash my sheets. The other day, I ran into my old work husband who–suprise–is getting divorced. Twenty years ago, I pretended not to fantasize about this man being single. But standing there in the grocery aisle, hearing the news, all I felt was…pity? Why? Why are we programmed to think this way? For all I know, he just got a clean slate for a glorious Act II where he can make out with sexy strangers and binge watch the entire series of The Wire eating chicken wings in sweatpants uninterrupted!

We chase commitments while yearning for freedom on a hamster wheel of insanity. If we’re busy checking all these “successful life” boxes, we won’t have time to think about the version of ourselves that once dreamed about living in a treehouse in Costa Rica or being a moderately successful acrobat. WHAT IF I’M AN INCREDIBLE SCULPTOR AND I JUST DON’T KNOW IT BECAUSE I’VE NEVER SCULPTED SINCE THAT LIFE PATH DOESN’T OFFER HEALTH BENEFITS?   

Who is defining our success?

Who says that climbing the corporate ladder is better than leisurely sitting pretty on a middle rung while going to yoga at noon on a Tuesday?

Who says that marriage is better than the freedom to toot freely in your own bed?

Who says that having kids is better than having a fully stamped passport and beautiful glass coffee tables with sharp edges?

What if the answer is different for all of us—and that’s the point?

Tay Tay defines her own success and so must we. Lest we wake up one day living someone else’s dream: a conventional life in the suburbs, driving a Subaru, frantically power washing the house WE OWN, THANK YOU VERY MUCH and following HOA rules by not putting up signs that show we do not support racist sociopath presidential candidates and denying ourselves a sexy lover because we need a life partner and feeling immense pride when we score a parking spot in the Trader Joe’s parking lot and working tooth and nail to take the trip of a lifetime to Disney World for 1.75 days in five months and save for retirement even when AI is going to blow that up and...

Oh, wait.

Shit. 

“I cry a lot, but I am so productive, it’s an art.” Preach, Taylor. It is an art. And maybe it’s time we paint a different picture for ourselves.