will you still want me when I’m nothing new?
16 January 2022
Written by Jada Harris
Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
I didn't expect this line from Taylor Swift's rerecording of Red to hit me so hard. I think it perfectly describes so many of the fears I've been confronting lately while wondering if they exist in other people. It speaks both to the unnecessary pressure we put on people to find themselves during the most uncertain and confusing part our life, our youth, and also to ways in which society only values women when we are young and vulnerable.
Female artists understand this more than anyone. Taylor Swift specifically, has talked about the pressure put on us to remain young and beautiful and it shines through more than ever on the rerecording of Red. She talks about how quick the entertainment industry is to replace women with younger, prettier, preppier, perkier versions of us. How the standards are always getting thinner and harder to fit into but they will always just find a newer, skinnier girl to fit into them.
Women are never allowed to be just artists, they have to prove how beautiful they are before they're given a chance to speak. It's something we experience every time we have to communicate with another human being. Professionally, politically, socially, romantically, platonically. It's the unspoken rule, the invisible guillotine above our heads that determines our worth. It always comes back to this.
It’s Lana Del Rey asking if we’ll love her when she’s no longer young and beautiful. It’s Ladytron saying they only want you when you’re 17, when you’re 21 you’re no fun. Like there’s a special age, a golden era in our lives where we are allowed to be pretty and that is the only thing that will ever be meaningful about us. It’s Olivia Rodrigo saying who am I if not exploited? It’s Olivia Rodrigo saying if I hear enjoy your youth one more time I’m going to cry. Its impossible to enjoy your youth when they tell you it’s the single most important part of your life, it’s so much pressure and its just another year, another age, there is no way to actually enjoy it anymore than anything else. You don’t know anything yet. You’re easily manipulated. You’re given no instruction, no tools to become a proper person, they just throw girl after girl off the high-rise and expect her to fly without wings.
"Nothing New" is a song that's been playing over and over in my head and I can't stop thinking about how it describes so many different feelings. Like many other songs it speaks to the pressures we face in our teenage years and then in our twenties, to reach certain benchmarks, to never age. It also speaks to the anxiety we all face and our fear that other people will finally get tired of us. When will they get bored of me? When will their feelings fade? What will become of me once I've lost my novelty? This song describes so well the uncertainty that comes with vulnerability and letting other people see you for who you are. The innate human desire to be wanted and accepted by other people. The desire to be truly seen and known and the fear that comes with it.
It’s a weird coincidence that vulnerability has been on my mind a lot in the last couple of weeks. My therapist recommended this incredibly popular ted talk on the topic and essentially the speaker has come to the conclusion that vulnerability is the key to everything. Vulnerability is the key to happiness. Happy people who are in successful relationships are not afraid to let other people in and it’s not because they’re fearless people who are different than you and I, it’s because this is truly the only way to form a connection. If you are not being honest and raw, you are not giving yourself a chance to connect. You are not giving yourself a chance to be heard and known and loved.
Most of us think that vulnerability is something you can do in parts. We think you can be vulnerable about certain topics but keep others locked away and that will somehow be enough. Some of us think that vulnerability is a myth and that anyone who gets too close to us will see too much and leave. We think that if we put up enough walls with enough locks and keys, no one will ever be able to hurt us and that is the universe we want to live in, the one without pain and heartbreak. Essentially th,e message of this TedTalk is that everyone who puts up walls to keep out the pain is also putting distance between themselves and happiness, they’re also keeping out love. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you can’t push away pain without pushing away joy. You have to let everything in.
I think this is one of the most difficult truths in life, one of the hardest concepts to understand, that there is no good without the bad. Which brings me back to the title of this song: Nothing New. It concisely captures one of the fears we foster that prevent us from experiencing vulnerability and happiness. The fear that other people are going to get sick of us, bored of us, over us. The idea that at some point we have an expiration date, we will no longer be worthy of affection after a certain point, we’ll miss our chance at love.
My last interpretation of this song relates to the way that it touches on the uncomfortable age gaps that we are now realizing were present in too many of Taylor Swift’s relationships. If Taylor’s experienced an enormous amount of pressure to remain young and beautiful throughout her career as a musician, it’s no surprise that she would also seek out relationships where an age gap is normalized and she’s praised by men for her youth. This song and the 10 minute version of "All Too Well" show us how much they actually used this to manipulate her and trivialize her feelings. "Dear John" also comes to mind when Taylor dated John Mayer at 19 while he was 32. I'm not the first person to point out this uncomfortable pattern but every time Taylor talks about how she wishes she’d known better I feel a sharp pain in my chest.
And then in "Nothing New" and "The Lucky One" she briefly talks about how she was indoctrinated into these ideas and despite trying to escape them and heal, she’s still perpetuating it and participating in the cycle. Younger and younger girls make it to the top 100. The music industry is still going to use her younger self as an example. The men who dated her are still dating young girls. Girls are listening to these songs and still lying about their age. Still experiencing the same shame.
So I've had a lot of thoughts on Taylor Swift’s new/old music and how it relates to the pressure we put on everyone. What it means for other artists like her and how they all seem to be talking about the same things. It’s a weird coincidence that Taylor has re-recorded 22 and released another song talking about this age right before I am about to turn 22. A decade after the original release. It’s like she’s decided to put an asterisk next to the song, a little post-it note with a warning to listen with a grain of salt. To turn the record around and look at the b-sides. I have to say that it resonates with me, everything she writes always has and always will.
You’re supposed to find yourself in your twenties, you’re supposed have fun and make friends and lose friends and fall in love and land a new job and move somewhere different and break your heart over and over and over again. It’s supposed to go a certain a way, everything already has a script, the book of our lives are written before we’re born which makes the pain of not being able to remember your lines all that much sharper because you’re constantly reminded of it.
It shouldn’t have to be this hard. Stop asking us about our jobs, our partners, our bodies, our lives, our hearts. Don’t place the expectations that drained the life from your veins onto me. Everything is bad enough as it is, maybe all I can ask of you is to not make it worse. Let us live, let us breathe, let us love.
