Taylor Swift is My Roman Empire

"Cause you know I love the players and you love the game!" -Taylor A. Swift

Taylor Swift crossing the Rubicon

Everyone on TikTok is asking the men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire. [Men, it would seem, think about it quite a lot! My dad said, “Not that often. Well, I guess I did this morning.” This MORNING, he said!]

Now a response trend is going around where women share what their version of the Roman Empire is — something they think about daily, weekly, monthly; something that frames their understanding of the world. [Obviously a lot of the answers are: “getting murdered.”]

You wanna know MY Roman Empire?

It should surprise no one that it is Ms. Taylor Alison Swift!!

More on that below, but first, this week’s Ask the Audience: What’s your Roman Empire? That thing you get hung up thinking about, framing your world through, appreciating, doting upon, asking questions about in the group chat. What you got?

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In the News: America’s Main Character, Taylor Swift

[I say that as a joke. Obiously America’s main character is teachers and they are GOING THROUGH IT.]

…and you love the game!

Taylor Swift as the Main Character of America is BACK! Thanks, surely, to the invisible and unrelenting work of her indefatigable publicist, Tree Paine. As they say, the devil works hard but Taylor Swift’s Publicist Tree Paine is both an unstoppable force and an immovable object!! [Like, Matty Healy who!??]

Most importantly, of course: Taylor has made headlines all summer by boosting the US economy, making well over $1 billion during her Eras tour, stimulating billions in economic impact in the cities where she performed, and voluntarily paying over $55 million in bonuses to people working on the tour. She has broken every kind of record and won very kind of award. She’s an economic juggernaut, business genius, and songwriting savant.

That’s really all we NEED to know about Taylor Swift. Period.

But now I’m going to be shallow and dive into all we WANT to know.

First, she was seen last week going out to dinner in NYC not once [!] but twice [!!] with Sophie Turner, who is in the midst of a messy divorce with Joe Jonas, whom Taylor briefly dated over a decade ago.

Women supporting women! [And also eating the best green salad in the world.]

THEN, last night — as you MUST have heard — after weeks of rumors that she was dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — she was seen on national television at the Chiefs/Bears game next to Mother Kelce in the Kelce Box and later walking out of the locker rooms with Travis in tow and leaving in an actual getaway car!

Netherfield Park is let at last!

I would say the story writes itself, but Taylor has already written it in several of her songs!

Here, in no particular order, are my thoughts on the questions spinning in America’s collective head right now…

Is Travis Kelce even Taylor’s type?

Girl, absolutely not!

There are two types of straight white women. [Don’t cancel me for this.] You might call it the Aragorn vs. the Legolas girls. The women who like a strapping lumberjack of a man with a good beard vs. those of us who prefer, in the words of Taylor Swift herself, “that boyish look that I like in a man.”

Gerard Butler vs. the hot priest from Fleabag. The American Football girlfriends vs. the European Football girlfriends.

You get it.

The American Football boys have long been attempting to win the heart of Ms. Taylor Swift. They Tweet. They talk. They dream. And she has stood firm. She has always been a Legolas Girlie. Despite the fact that country music is the forge that built her, she has never been with a meat-and-potatoes man.

She preferred her men to be soft, boyish singer-songwriters who are slightly underweight. She said, “Give me a man whose only sporting experience is at the Country Club; I want a man who has never touched a football except once a year during his family’s annual trip to Martha’s Vineyard.” Or, maybe, a girl! In short, she prefers the blue-blood prince to the blue-collar farmhand.

That is, until now.

Travis Kelce is just an absolute BEAR of a man, 100% meat and potatoes, the poster child of hot bearded lumberjacks, on a straight diet of whatever it is to be corn-fed.

And last night, at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Taylor Alison Swift crossed the straight white woman Rubicon. She is entering her Lumberjack Era.

Anyhoo, if you have always been a lumberjack girl, I understand if you’re upset. We will give you your privacy at this time.

Is this real or just a PR relationship?

As the little girl from the taco commercial once wisely said, “Why not both?”

After all, the two most ancient human ideas are: 1) God exists, and 2) relationships are an economic proposition.

Why aren’t they holding hands or touching at all in that video?

That’s an excellent question to which I have no answer except that maybe it IS all a stunt! Or maybe Taylor has adopted the Queen’s Rules on PDA? Apparently, they were much more affectionate later that night at the restaurant they bought out for their friends!?

Are the football bros going to ruin this?

Of course! The internet is a bad place full of bad things!

I’m happy for Taylor and Travis [Taylis? Traylor?] and whatever they are or aren’t doing together—but omg, now we have to hear every football bro who has never had a consensual, mutually respectful relationship with a woman talk trash about Taylor Swift!? These guys will spend 15 hours calling Dave Matthews a genius and then turn around and say, “What can Taylor Swift even do?”!?

Like, you still don’t know how to do laundry and you just lost all your bets on FanDuel and you’re calling Taylor Swift “mid”!? GTFO!!!!

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^Football bros running to deliver the most sexist comments about Taylor Swift imaginable.

I will end with some humility: It crossed my mind that Brittany Mahomes is probably acting insufferable about all this, and that is just as wrong of me as the football bros calling Taylor mid! Mea culpa! Let any one of you who has not sinned cast the first stone? Couldn’t be me!

That’s all for this week. :) Bake Off comes back Friday so expect a warm and cozy post next week! I promise to try not to talk about football! Drop a heart or a comment — I’d love to hear from you. :)