The Summer Camp Culture Saved the Economy
From the TSwift Lift to Barbenomics, Girl(ie)s Rule the World
When that rumor that Miley Cyrus had joined a cult came out a couple weeks ago, a friend texted me to make sure I was aware. Because I’m sure she thought I’d be interested in the cult part more than the Miley part, I responded, “Wait—did I tell you I love Miley now?”
Her reply: “I assumed it. You love all the girlies.”
While I acknowledge that any group of people doing the same thing are “girlies” (my dad is with his girlies at a speaker building competition this weekend; as I write, a deer and her girlies are eating the neighbor’s garden; at work, a group of more than two people waiting for the elevator together can be greeted with “Hi Girlies!” or, if we’re all leaving work, the elevated: “Let’s go girls!”). But enough about my personal life. I really like Nana Baah’s definition of girlies for Refinery 29,
Girlies are [huns] more youthful counterparts. 'Girlie' is infantilizing in a way that feels completely disconnected from misogyny. It is not linked directly to age but encapsulates a more gleeful, playful energy.
But, yes, when my friend assesses that I “love all the girlies,” she means the Pure Distilled Girlies—Miley, Charli, Britney, Rihanna, Taylor. You get it. It’s kind of a weird turn for me. In high school, I tolerated pop music but, also, I read Lolita when I was fifteen. It wasn’t lost on me that the lollypop in Britney Spears’ mouth was fucked up.
Even more fucked up (and I’m not claiming I could have articulated it this way at fifteen, but I intuited it) was that fact that the preditorial gaze Spears and Simpson and Auguilera and Moore were cast in wasn’t being used to make them more marketable to predators—it was being used to make them more marketable to the prey; teen girls, like me. In this way, I guess the cultural history of pop music is a history of large scale grooming. Not by somebody you actually know (Lifetime taught us to watch out for pervy English teachers and our dad’s divorced friends), but by media at large.
In this way, I guess the cultural history of pop music is a history of large scale grooming. Not by somebody you actually know (Lifetime taught us to watch out for pervy English teachers and our dad’s divorced friends), but by media at large.
But as soon as I discovered KRUI, my college’s radio station, the next two decades were pretty emo: The Smiths, Death Cab for Cutie, Belle and Sebastian. This was, I felt, music that commented critically on the situation as opposed to perpetuating it (okay, Death Cab was just emo).
My swerve to pop music sort of only began within the last year, aside from an ironic love for Shania (is it ironic? Can’t tell!!). Sure, I’d heard Taylor before — I even have a lesson on visual rhetoric using the “Blank Spaces” video I teach to composition students who roundly resent it — but my feelings about her were somewhere between ambivalent and lightly contemptuous. Then Midnights came out, then I became interested in the politics of the Taylor’s Versions, then the Eras Tour happened, then Spotify started notifying me that I’m in the Top 5 Percentage of Tay Listeners.
But it’s not just me! Seemingly the majority of America has taken a decisive turn toward the Girlies this summer. Between Barbie, The Eras Tour, and Beyonće’s Renaissance World Tour, the cultural and economic zeitgeist appears to be distinctly fueled by Millennials who want to hear a critique of patriarchy—but make it fun!!
As I mentioned in last week’s Toward a Critical Barbie Theory, I think noting who is spending money and on what provides crucial information about our societal values. For this reason alone (girlies aside), I was fascinated to see that the U.S. Federal Reserve announced The Eras Tour has actually boosted the economy, with a projected $5 billion added to the worldwide market. Tourism boards in major cities across the country have testified to the TSwift Lift (that’s Fortune’s phrase), claiming a visit from Taylor provides a bigger influx of cash than the Super Bowl. Fans spend on average $1700 per person across tickets, hotels, outfits, food, and merch to see Taylor. Then there are the cottage industries — in Cincinnati, 41,000 fans attended Taygate, a free event featuring hair braiding and glitter makeup applications before the show. Nearby businesses report that they experienced their best two days of sales in seven years. My very favorite detail of Taylornomics, from WSJ:
Swift isn’t performing in New Zealand, but Air New Zealand said it experienced a “Swift surge”—people rushing to book flights to Australia, where Swift will perform in February. The airline had to add 14 more flights to accommodate 3,000 more people.
Some of the flights are getting a special Swiftie flight number: NZ1989, after Swift’s fifth album.
If you want to know more about the many bespoke ways to spend money on Taylor experiences, I recommend you read The Wall St Journal article (linked above).
While the Fed hasn’t name checked her, Beyoncé’s tour is expected to bring in $2 billion, which puts Renaissance $0.4 billion higher than Eras. Greta Gerwig became the high grossing female director of all time this last Friday—and it was announced on the director’s birthday! It really is a Barbie World!! <3
While I used to have a general belief that culture could only be assessed after the fact, the quick cause-causality of the last few years has started to change my mind. I think our post-Pandemic, post(ish)-Trump, post-#MeToo moment has left a lot of queers and female-identifying people born around 1989 with A.) No children and extra cash and B.) A vague sense that while movements like #MeToo or the E. Jean Carroll verdict shed light on a culture that has long facilitated sexual harassment and assault, there is a lot of affirmation without much consequence. Which is in a way, so much worse — to have everyone agree the problem exists, but we’ll do nothing real to change it. The women who grew up aspiring toward Britney’s just-north-of-child-porn aesthetic united to “#FreeBritney,” but now we watch Instagram Britney from inside her mansion’s foyer, dancing in a thong and cowboy boots (fabulous!) with increasingly disturbing amounts of what appears to be cried off mascara staining her smiling face (unfabulous).
I think we turn to the Campiness of Barbie, Eras, and Renaissance in this moment for a lot of reasons. Fantasy, escape, nostalgia for a time that we are never, ever getting back together with. The resistance inherent to Camp. But mostly, I think it’s for the community. Sontag writes:
Something is good not because it is achieved, but because another kind of truth about the human situation, another experience of what it is to be human — in short, another valid sensibility — is being revealed.
I think “another kind of truth about the human situation” has revealed itself to a lot of people in the last seven years in a way that, like the moment itself, is unprecedented. As we awaken to and disabuse ourselves of a Taste defined by patriarchal and white supremacist values, “another valid sensibility” gets to fill the void. It occurs to me as I watch Beyonće, Taylor, and Barbie vogue that what Sontag refers to as “flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders” have permeated mainstream culture. This sounds overly academic, but it’s basically just IYKYK; it’s Taylor’s Easter Eggs. Swifites (cognoscenti) have a private, although not secret, community that exists right in public, amongst the “outsiders.” It is a way, in Sontag’s words, to find “a private zany experience of the thing.” The “thing” in this instance being, well, Life.
While I love the fandoms and the community that surrounds these events, as I’ve noted in previous posts, I don’t really find the aesthetic standards of these tours or film to align with their purported message. Every time Taylor claims “sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/and I’m a monster on the hill,” I love it and I relate and I also cringe. We all know Taylor is not a monster.
Every time Taylor claims “sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/and I’m a monster on the hill,” I love it and I relate and I also cringe. We all know Taylor is not a monster.
Likewise, Gerwig knew enough in Barbie to include a meta-moment in which she admits beautiful Margot Robbie is the wrong actress to cast for her message that everybody is beautiful. Overall, this infiltration of Camp culture into the mainstream is another iteration that prioritizes inoffensively beautiful, mostly white cis women, who are meeting the standards of industrialized beauty. As much as Taylor laments how much easier her life would be if she were “the man” or how often she doesn’t “dress for women” or “for men” because “lately [she’s] been dressing for revenge,” her behavior is in decidedly Good Taste. Unlike my girlie Miley, she has never had the Bad Taste twerk in a Golden G String and then write an awesome song about how she knows she “did it all to make you love me and to feel alive,” the “you” being “old boys.”
In the end, the only really revolutionary thing Swift is doing is modeling a humane use of economic power (which is sure not nothing!!) by giving $55 million worth of bonuses to everyone involved with the tour. Famously, her truckers each received $100,000. Less famously, this has always been one of the singer’s values. Never forget her appearance on Letterman:
So maybe the Campiest thing of all about Taylor is not her fringe or sequins or the fact that her entire tour is an homage to herself, but that she’s the second richest woman in music (Rihanna is first) and all the media wants to talk about is who she’s dating. It’s a fabulous sleight of hand—I’d love to read the novel Oscar Wilde would write about Taylor Swift.
Your camp rec this week? Watch the Original Girlie, Cher, tell her “I am a rich man, Mom” anecdote.
(Are you a rich man like Cher? Gift a subscription to Camp! Kitsch! Schmaltz! Schlock!)