“I Would Be Complex”

Taylor Swift on Good Morning America for the launching of her Red Album. | Paolo V on Flickr

“I would be complex.” That is how Taylor Swift opens up Lover’s anthemic feminist bop “The Man.” Above all else, before the beat even drops, it’s this wish she shares with the audience. It’s a fairly inconspicuous line, overlooked and underappreciated, as listeners often fixate on the more notable lyrics like “When everyone believes you, what’s that like?” or “If I was a man, I’d be The Man”. But on a random Monday night, the eve of my 27th birthday, nothing struck me more than this one line. I would be complex. 

And how heartbreaking that notion really is. 

Swift’s “The Man” explores a world in which she’d led the exact same life, the only key difference being she was a man. What narratives would be thrown her way? What accolades would she be deemed deserving of? What way would her public perception be changed, and would it be for the better? I mean think of Taylor Alison Swift. Think of the remarkable starlet. The renowned singer, so incredible she’s often referred to as The Music Industry and the double-edged sword that it comes with. She’s been made a mockery more times than any of us are comfortable acknowledging, yet she always gets the last laugh. 

Now imagine if that same person were a man. How praised he would be for his relationship prowess. Admirably dawning titles like “Playboy” or “Bachelor”. No one could tie him down. Instead, Swift is criticized for not being wifed up. And let’s not get started on the hatred she receives for breaking and holding musical records. People have no problem offering honor after honor to the likes of The Beatles or Michael Jackson, both of which she’s beaten in records and stats. But Swift makes her mark? Oh no, she’s undeserving. Uncreative. Music is dying and she’s the killer. 

“The Man” allows us to join Swift in this fantasy. We’re forced to recognize that her life would be so effectively different if she were in fact a man, and yet ours would be so much less enchanted if she wasn’t the stunning and spectacular girl we know her to be. And she’s right, she would be The Man.  

But that’s not really the devastating line that got to me. Again, it’s that opening one. “I would be complex.” It might not seem like much, but in those four little words, Swift offers insight into her most intimate observations. Perhaps the most crushing aspect is that she’s written the line in past tense. She would be complex. Suggesting that in this exact moment, even as we attend the Era’s Tour and scream those very lyrics out with all our might, she is still not complex. We are still perceiving her at a surface level, and she hates it. 

In that one line, Swift speaks to all female-identifying people. Bringing up a key reality in our existence. This idea that people (predominately men) do not perceive us as complex. We are a flat image to them. An idea, that once decided can never be undone. Women belong in the kitchen. Women like the color pink. Women are either good or bad. Rarely is nuance given. Rarely are we allowed to be deep breathing thinking beings, independent from our looks or our perceived kindness. 

I remember becoming a teenager and seeing so much hate and vitriol online. What struck me most was the way the comments changed depending on whether or not it was a man or woman receiving them. Men could be called unattractive, heck they could even agree, but it didn’t matter. Because men’s looks are understood to be separate from who they are as a person. However, women receive the very same criticism as a gut punch. It’s the worst thing you can call a woman because our society still shares the notion that women must be attractive or they lack value. They must be polite or they lack character (have children by a certain age or they lack worth, and so on and so on.) They cannot be annoying or unattractive or god forbid unlikeable. 

But Taylor is yearning for a deeper world. After years of being judged as a stagnant image, she aches for the fluidity of nuance. She wants to be complex. She’s begging the world in that one line to look beyond the surface and see all that lies beneath. Right now she’s people’s one-note opinions, passive perceptions, and judgments they developed in high school that never evolved. She is what people deem her to be, making her emphatically simple. The opposite of her desires. 

I’m not sure why on the eve of my birthday, this one line struck me like lightning. I think growing up, becoming a young adult, and entering my late twenties made this line stand out above the rest. I found myself really pondering it, and finding it far too relatable. Too often I have been reduced to one characteristic. Oh, she’s girly, she’s not smart. She has medical issues, she can’t be sexual. She’s always crying, she must be crazy. The older I get the more I see these perceptions almost immediately. The assumptions laid upon me before I’ve even uttered a word. The limitations are being placed instantaneously, and I too am sick of it. I want to be complex. I want the world to acknowledge as many facets of me as they can, or at least try to. 

But the beauty of this line also lies in the fact that Taylor Swift is not “The Man”, she’s not even a man. And even though she’s fantasizing about all of these things, some are already true. Because fans like me see Taylor for who she is. We see the many nuances that surround every situation. That very world she’s yearning for does exist because Taylor Swift is complex. She doesn’t need a magic spell to create a universe where it’s fact, it already is. 

And the same is true for all of us. Sure, there will always be judgemental onlookers. Idiotic assumers. Micro-interactions that forever change the way someone perceives you. It’s just the reality of life. But those who truly know you. Those that see your value, your worth, your nuance, your multi-faceted beauty. To those very people, there’s no need to wish to be complex. Or ponder what life would be like if one was “The Man”. To those very people, you already are.