Taylor Swift is the personification of the millennial aesthetic For better or for worse

Taylor Swift is getting married. If you didn’t know, maybe you’ve been wrapping up your summer holidays deep in the ocean or on the peak of a mountain with no internet signal, or maybe your algorithm simply doesn’t care for the most quintessentially American star - second only to Dolly Parton - to the point of keeping her out of your feed. If that’s the case, we’d love to know how you managed to do it. For everyone else, the news broke on Instagram with a joint post from her and her fiancé, NFL player Travis Kelce, known on social media as "killatrav." In the photos, we see the Love Story singer and her partner in what looks like a dreamy flower garden filled with pink, white, and green. He’s on one knee, there’s a kiss, a hug, and of course, a close-up of the ring: a major stone (read: huge), seemingly vintage, set in yellow gold.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement caption, explained (sort of)

The caption is a whole statement on its own, and the perfect place to start. "Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married" with a dynamite stick emoji. Setting aside the eyebrow-raising choice of emoji, what does this remind us of? What does it say? Social media users went wild. Some pointed out the bad taste of a billionaire appropriating humble (and underpaid, at least in the U.S.) jobs like teaching, others mentioned Glee (the Ryan Murphy TV series), and others still argued that this is, at its core, cringe, basic millennial stuff. Pure millennial. It fits right into a current wave of online personality taxonomies that crystallize and meme-ify human archetypes: black cat, labrador, older sister, English teacher (meaning literature, broadly speaking), type A and type B, and so on. In this context, the metaphor is obvious: Taylor Swift writes songs full of literary and cinematic references, Kelce plays ball. Clear enough, right?

The millennial aesthetic in her outfit choices

Speaking of millennial aesthetics, her outfit deserves a mention too. While he wore a navy knit polo with white shorts and dark brown suede loafers, she opted for a long Ralph Lauren dress with vertical stripes in silk bland fabric and a small peplum, paired with brown leather low-heeled sandals, loose hair, a watch, and delicate gold bracelets. Sexy? No. Unique? Not really. In line with the aesthetic of her new album, The Life of a Showgirl? Not at all. Millennial? Absolutely. A Taylor Swift-as-a-regular-person look? Definitely. The pop star has never shown much interest in a style too far removed from the white woman preppy aesthetic one might expect from a blonde, white, self-professed Christian American woman raised in Pennsylvania. Except, of course, when she steps into her various musical eras or when she’s on tour performing.

Taylor Swift is a 35-year-old american white woman

There’s nothing wrong with it, nor anything shocking. Taylor Swift, after all, is a 35-year-old woman who can (literally) afford to do and be whatever she wants, and if what she wants is to be cringe, who are we to complain? Her overall moodboard feels like it’s been pulled straight from a 2008 high schooler’s diary or a 2012 Pinterest board, and that’s just the way it is. In her, several dynamics collide: there’s millennial aesthetic, but also the deliberate choice of cringe, of infantilizing herself and her fans, of carrying on the character of the cursed young woman who messes everything up—the most traditionalist, least disruptive kind of anti-hero. As a result, her aesthetic feels distant from the contemporary moment. And let’s not forget that American ideas of femininity and fashion differ greatly from European ones, with the exception of major cities like New York and Los Angeles. Her engagement to MAGA buddy Travis Kelce and her transition from queen of thirty-somethings with a turbulent love life to America’s sweetheart wife will surely influence her image and the women who follow her. The foundation, however, remains the same: U.S. aspirationalism, whiteness, and apolitical wellbeing. Now, we just have to see where this is going, with the looming specter of cottagecore and trad wives hanging over us.