Taylor Swift to Super Bowl Lix: Why the Star that was Booed was more cool than you think

To me, the different reactions felt like a message. That Super Bowl, one of the greatest cultural events in the country, has been recovered by Trump and the type of toxic masculinity he seems to be fired for. And he and his followers seem to live for it.

Just look at the president’s response shortly after he left the game. Not only did he recognize that Swift was booed by the crowd, he welcomed it. When he had many, many times before (including saying he “hated” Swift after she approved her 2024 -Rival Kamala Harris) The president weapons his massive following against her.

“The only one who had a harder evening than Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift,” Trump wrote the president of truth in truth. “She was booed out of the stadium. Maga is very unforgivable! “

By calling her out, Trump then played to play after the now standard internet-missogyny playbook. It was not enough that Swift was publicly mocked, now he had to troll her about it and try to humiliate her even more. We were all normalized for this kind of behavior in 2016 when the president mocked his apparent enemies on Twitter became an almost daily event (certainly he has something better to do, right?). But it is still worth calling how gross – and honestly ridiculous – this kind of behavior is. And when Twitter -Rant becomes real life, in the form of a stadium full of thousands and thousands of people, it’s cool. Online -Mobber from 2016 is now very real by 2025.

It is important to place these two moments in the context in which they exist. Although there are shades for both, Trump exemplifies two fractions of American culture that are currently fighting for dominance.

Ever since Swift began dating Kelce in 2023 and started coming to his NFL games, our cultural conversation about the sport has changed radically. Suddenly, football – especially the bosses – was for the girls. Women’s interest in sports 40% year by year, according to YouTube) and buy Merch (you couldn’t walk through the street this weekend in New Orleans without being lured to buy a “go taylor’s girlfriend” or “in my chiefs era” t- Shirt).

According to Market Watch is Swift Estimated Having brought almost $ 1 billion in fire value to the league since she started dating Kelce, and has raised other women in the NFL in the process. As I wrote last year, the interest in wives and girlfriends of NFL players has also become a huge part of the sport (one that the league, by the way, enthusiastically embraces), and several wags such as Chanen Johnson and Chariah Gordon have become bonafide internet stars. In fact, the whole reason I traveled to the Super Bowl in the first place, to cover wags and swift for Glamor And youtube, from game day fashion to the cultural moments during the game and the surrounding events (I honestly couldn’t have been interested in the actual game from a journalistic point of view).