It’s been six months since Travis Kelce first said he wanted to give Taylor Swift his number on a friendship bracelet. In those months, I’ve examined many an aspect of their relationship.
As a millennial Swiftie, I can’t overstate the extent of my parasocial interest in whether this wildly successful woman is happy with her boyfriend.
Swift and Kelce give their audience a lot of content to dissect, from snapshots of them smooching on the football pitch to PDA at club afterparties.
We know he opens the car door and holds her hand. We know he calls her “Tay” and “baby.” We know she’d fly from Tokyo to Vegas and bend time to be in her man’s arms when he stands at the top of the world, winning back-to-back Super Bowls.
That last bit is the critical one.
She’s won 14 Grammy awards with a record four Album of the Year wins, and last year she racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings with the Eras Tour. He’s a football phenom and one of the best tight ends the sport has seen. These are two people at the very top of their professional games, and on top of that, they are together.
And that is why the spell Swift and Kelce collectively cast is so irresistible. They are the living embodiment of the dream that we can have it all.
But while some would call it the dream of having it all, others would call it a fairytale.
The truth is, this is just a beautiful lie. Most of us aren’t jetsetting. We’re trying to find some work-life balance,praying we don’t get laid off, and figuring out how to save enough to buy a house.
So why then, am I, in the sage words of Regina George of “Mean Girls” fame, so obsessed with Tayvis?
Swift might be the patron saint of heartbreaks, but I don’t think her fans really want her to be the tortured poet all the time. It’s what’s on the other side of all of that that’s so alluring: The growing up, the bright lights, and the boy on the Chiefs.
And if the dream of finding that person comes without having to sacrifice the things I built on my own? Well then — even better.
