When I first heard the rumors that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce were dating, I wanted to be happy for the both of them. Seeing the positivity that Swift has brought from her Eras Tour, combined with how genuine and open Kelce is, as he often shows in his podcast “New Heights” with his brother Jason, I thought that they’d be a great couple. My concerns, however, outweigh my excitement.
As a woman who is a die-hard fan of football (specifically the Eagles), and is pursuing a career in the world of sports media, I know that for women in sports it’s an uphill battle from the get-go. With both the sports and journalism fields being male-dominated, a combo of both is even more so. A survey by McKinsey & Company of about 1,700 women that work in the sports industry in North America found that “the business trails all other industries on every dimension of inclusion. Women in sports administration face negative effects from engaging in workplaces dominated by men; they lack support for advancement.”
It’s clear that the sports industry is one of the least inclusive areas of work, and I could list off a million more statistics backing this up. So when I saw the “Traylor” rumors, I was worried. Building trust between coaches and players is one of the key components of being a sports journalist. As a woman, your credibility is questioned no matter what, and we’ve seen the effects of such biases, like in the case of Melissa Ludtke and Time, Inc., Plaintiffs, v. Bowie Kuhn, Commissioner of Baseball et al, in which Ludtke, a female reporter, sued the New York Yankees to end their policy of banning female reporters from entering the clubhouse after games and won. While that case was a victory for women, there have also been setbacks. When NFL sideline reporter Charissa Thompson recently admitted on the “Pardon My Take” podcast that she made up some of her halftime reports, she put back the cause of for which many female journalists have fought.
So now, on top of all of the difficulty that presents itself from just being female, I have already begun to see even more pushback towards women in sports, like generalizations assuming every female Chiefs fan is just a Swiftie tuning in to see “Taylor’s boyfriend.” And while statements like that might be hyperbole, the Chiefs-Bears game that Swift attended drew 24.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched NFL contest of that weekend, along with Kelce jerseys seeing a nearly 400% spike in sales following Swift’s appearance at Arrowhead Stadium.
And as much as I’m all for pushing back against double standards, I have to beg all Swifties to give this one a rest. Plus, shouldn’t we allow Swift and Kelce to have their relationship separate from their careers? Whatever the case may be, I hope we can all take a moment to step back and remember that we should allow our favorite celebrities to have some privacy within their personal lives, and that the jokes and attention we give every situation aren’t always as lighthearted as we’d like them to be.
At the end of the day, I understand that being a woman in sports is a challenge, and it will take us a long time to get a perfect utopia of equality, but I have to ask my Swifties to remember the other side of the coin. The jokes of “I’m just a Swiftie-who-knows-nothing-about-football” aren’t harmless; you’re hurting your counterparts who work hard behind the scenes so you get those glimpses of Taylor in a glass suite.
