Thanks so much for reading. If you get something from this newsletter, would you upgrade to a paid subscription? I can only do this work with your support. Paid subscribers get full access to my weekend roundups, as well as a discount on Dire Straights, my new podcast with Amanda Montei. A man in awe of a womanAs Travis Kelce put it during his podcast appearance with Taylor Swift: 'She's so hot when she says these big words.'
Yeah, I watched the podcast episode heard around the world. And, yeah, I took notes. My first note was this: “A man in awe of a woman.” That’s my takeaway. Travis Kelce (professional football player, Super Bowl champion) seems to be in awe of his girlfriend Taylor Swift (mega pop star, fourteen-time Grammy winner). At least, that’s the story we’re being presented and I’m interested in it as such—less as a nuanced glimpse into their relationship and more as the curated footage that we’re being shown. It’s especially interesting given that the last time I really paid attention to their relationship was after Kelce pushed his coach and screamed in his face during the Super Bowl, leading some Swifties to worry about his apparent rage. On the pod, we were shown a man who likes women—or this woman, at least. And he doesn’t just like her for her beauty or fame or her apparently very delicious cinnamon-swirl sourdough, which she talked up on the pod. He also likes her for being driven, talented, successful, artistic, and smart. In the two-hour episode, during which Swift announced her next album, Kelce kept hyping her up to Jason Kelce, his brother and co-host. They talked about how Travis developed a crush on Swift after watching her perform. Kelce said he was “engulfed in the curiosity of who” she was. He kept going:
“She makes me so much better,” he said. At another point, while talking about her wise attitude toward online gossip, Kelce said that she “made me grow up real fast.” There is plenty in his remarks that I could unpack at length in the pod I co-host critiquing hetero culture, especially this very common vision of a girlfriend or wife as making a man better (i.e. mothering him into adulthood). I’m also wary of the googly-eyed pedestaling that can happen in straight relationships, both because women tend to inevitably fall off pedestals, and because there are always women who are left off the pedestal. Also, straight men often use “you’re so much better than me” as a way out of being better. But, again, I’m less interested in trying to psychoanalyze their actual relationship than I am in the story that’s being told. Kelce not only gushed about falling in love with her, he also boasted about her skill as a performer, even comparing her concerts to a football game. “She’s an athlete, dude,” he said, talking about all the physical therapy she had to go through after performing on the Eras Tour. She demurred: “No, I'm not getting hit by huge 300 pounders, but the heels.” He insisted:
I wonder if he’s trying to sell his girlfriend to all those football fans who booed her when she was shown on the Jumbotron at his games. But he’s also presenting himself as the enlightened jock, the non-toxic pro football player, who can celebrate his pop star girlfriend as the bigger athlete. Even before the podcast episode dropped, Swifties made memes and GIFs from the trailer of Kelce’s look of giddy excitement when she went to reveal the cover of her new album, her twelfth. On the show, after the reveal, he yelled like it was a game-winning touchdown, “We’ve got TS 12, baby!” At the same time, he’s making negative jock stereotypes work for him. Early on in the episode, Swift used the word “fortuitous.” Then Kelce mouthed the word slowly, like he didn’t know what it meant. “You know what those words mean,” she said, jokingly. “You’re so handsome.” She was lovingly teasing him and he was fine with it. Into it, even. Later, she used the word “esoteric” and he said, “She's so hot when she says these big words.” He said it with goo-goo eyes but also self-effacing humor. When she used the word “effervescence,” he whispered “effervescence” like it was a sexy come-on. There is definitely an undercurrent here of dumb jock/hot nerd roleplay, and I’m happy for them if that works for them. But what is most notable is that he isn’t making fun of her for sounding smart or trying to wrestle for power by quizzing her on whether she knows what those big words mean. The episode felt like a relationship launch. Of course, they have already been in the public eye for a while now. They have made high-profile appearances together and talked somewhat vaguely in the press about their relationship. But this is the public’s first real look at them, together. The episode did give a couple gestures toward Kelce as a romantic hero—at one point, Swift said of their coming together, “This is sort of what I've been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager.” But the dominant romantic narrative on the pod was that he is smitten with her. Kelce did the fawning. Granted, he’s also posing as a sexy construction worker in a just-released GQ cover story, which I could write at least another 1,000 words on. There is definitely some masculine re-balancing happening outside the pod. As much as I have questions about the overall publicity strategy here, as well as the everyday hetero problematics on display, I also find it remarkable to behold such a spectacle at this particular cultural moment. Against the backdrop of American Eagle selling boobs, objectification, and white supremacy, and Donald Trump ranting on Truth Social about “Woke singer Taylor Swift” becoming “NO LONGER HOT,” Kelce is showing what it looks like to be smitten with a woman. He isn’t boasting about his girlfriend’s hotness or taking delight in knocking her down a peg. He is simply in awe of her.
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četvrtak, 14. kolovoza 2025.
A man in awe of a woman
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A man in awe of a woman
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