taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are the couple of the hour. The pop star and the football player are young, gorgeous, at the top of their respective games and seemingly in the throes of an intense new loThey’re also a surprisingly positive relationship model for men and women alike.
Swift needs no introduction: She’s a singer, songwriter and performer who boasts a string of broken records: highest-grossing tour of all time; most number-one albums by a female artist; most-attended concert by a female artist. Her “Eras” tour has been a phenomenon — a must-see for thousands of girls (and some boys) around the world, and projected to rake in billions.
Kelce needs a little more explanation for those of us who aren’t football enthusiasts. He’s a 34-year-old tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, scoring touchdowns in two Super Bowls the Chiefs won. He also co-hosts a podcast with his brother Jason, who plays center for the Philadelphia Eagles. Kelce, in other words, is a star in his own world. But Swift is a superstar the world over
In a moment of what feels like peak male insecurity, the Taylor-Travis relationship is a useful model: two ambitious adults, both excellent at what they do, but the female half of the couple is both more successful and a higher earner, by a huge margin — and the male half seems totally fine with that.
Finding love isn’t always easy for American women in a more feminist world, even as American women have become far better off. Thanks to immense social changes brought about by a combination of feminist activism, reliable contraception and the right to a safe and legal abortion (that last bit was good while it lasted), American women have been on a steady rise since the 1950s.
Age of first marriage has gone up while birth rates have gone down, which means American women and girls are far less likely than in past decades to be teenage brides or mothers before they are ready. Women have outnumbered men on college campuses for the last several decades, and record numbers of women now work outside the home. This has all been wonderful for women and families, and for men, too, who can enjoy the benefits of healthier, wealthier and freer friends, wives, sisters, mothers and daughters. Women, to borrow from Gloria Steinem, are becoming the men they once wanted to marry.
Unfortunately, though, a startling number of men see women’s successes as a threat. The husband-as-breadwinner nuclear family model has been on a rapid decline, but nearly half of Americans still say that men prefer to out-earn their wives. Studies have found that men become stressed and uncomfortable when their wives out-earn them, and that men feel emasculated by intelligent and successful women.
