How one student brought Taylor Swift’s lyrics from the Billboard Hot 100 to an academic research conference.
In the warm summer months of 2023, pink outfits abounded as Barbie had her moment on the big screen and big-name female pop artists raked in billions of dollars from their tours. Following this “summer of girlhood,” as it came to be known, Chandlie Pearson (Public Relations ’24) began her Global Women’s Studies capstone research with a fresh focus on embracing femininity and reclaiming girlhood. Pearson says, “I saw this new wave of acceptance of femininity in a way that I hadn’t seen in my lifetime.” One whole semester and almost 80 hours’ worth of work later, she presented her paper “Give Me Back My Girlhood: Examining Taylor Swift’s Journey and Reclamation of Girlhood Through Her Lyrics” at the third annual Utah Southwest Regional Conference on Student Research in Gender and Women’s Studies on March 22, 2024.
Taking inspiration from the titular Taylor Swift lyric “give me back my girlhood, it was mine first” from the song “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” (2022), Pearson began her research by creating a coding system for Swift’s entire discography, combing through songs to find representations or rejections of girlhood. Pearson then narrowed down her focus to four specific songs that covered the range of Swift’s discography and explored the research topic: “Tied Together with a Smile” (2006), “Nothing New” (2012), “mirrorball” (2020), and “Bejeweled” (2022). Pearson applied content analysis methods to closely study the four songs and their messages.
One of her most interesting takeaways involved the relationship between “mirrorball” and “Bejeweled,” two of the more recent additions to Swift’s discography. “Mirrorball” consistently uses the word still in the context of feeling stagnant or ignored (as in, “I’m still trying everything to keep you looking at me”). “Bejeweled,” on the other hand, functions as an antithesis to “mirrorball”: it represents a reclamation of power and recognition of inherent self-worth. In the context of discussing girlhood, it most clearly differs from “mirrorball” in its use of the word still, which in this case celebrates progression and persistence (as in, “I can still make the whole place shimmer”). Pearson says, “Through Taylor Swift’s specific experiences, which relate to a lot of other women, we see that girlhood is really this idea of engaging in an identity, owning actions, and finding self-worth.”
Pearson was eager to share her findings at the research conference at the University of Utah, saying, “I love this paper. It’s like my baby, my greatest accomplishment in my undergrad. [And] I loved presenting; it was such a great professional development opportunity and a great opportunity to connect with a lot of other scholars across the state.” She found that talking about Taylor Swift with other conference attendees became an easy way to form connections and bond over shared interests.
Pearson also appreciated the chance to learn from other research presentations. She says, “Gender and sexuality studies is so near and dear to my heart . . . it’s an opportunity to understand this world and to understand the experiences of various groups of people and individuals.” At its core, the Global Women’s Studies program and its related research and events embody what the humanities is all about—recognizing, acknowledging, and appreciating the human experiences that surround and shape us.
Discover more about the Global Women’s Studies program at BYU.