Context Podcast Digital Collection

Johanna Bringhurst: Hello, everyone, and welcome to context. This program is brought to you by the Idaho Humanities Council with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The views expressed here today do not necessarily represent those of the IJC or the NEA eight. My name is Joanna Bringhurst, and joining us today is Doctor Sharon Patterson, Sophie Pederson and Jazmyne Hartogh. Doctor Sharon Patterson's 30 year career has been dedicated to implementing programs that increase college student success and learning, mentoring students, academics, research and leadership, and teaching sociology courses on broad topics such as gender inequality, work, and higher education.

Doctor Patterson's passion is engaging students intellectual curiosity and helping them apply concepts to everyday life. Sophie Pederson is a senior at Boise State University. She majors in sociology and is also passionate about enterprise knowledge and psychology. After graduating, she plans to continue her studies in sociology or evolutionary psychology. In her free time, she enjoys skiing and camping. Jasmyne Hartogh is a senior at Boise State University, graduating this morning.

She is graduating with a bachelor's in Integrated Media and Strategic Communications, with an emphasis in integrated media, as well as earning certificates in public relations and sports information and culture. I am so excited to have these three wonderful women here. Thank you for joining me today.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Johanna Bringhurst: We're here to talk about a workshop for Boise State students titled sociology of a Pop Star. Taylor Swift. First things first. How did this workshop come about?

Dr. Sharon Patterson: Well, we were bantering one day in a department meeting and thought, wow, there's this is sociology happening right now. And with Taylor Swift. And so I mentioned it. And of course I was teaching that. So we happened to be in and Sophie said I want to do that. Let's do it.

Johanna Bringhurst: So did you partner together to create this workshop?

Sophie Pederson: Yes we did. We also, had another, person that participated. Lauren Caulfield wasn't able to be here today, but yeah, the three of us got together and worked it out.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: So we spent about a semester meeting every couple of weeks to put the structure together. As far as what theories we went on to apply, what, examples we wanted to use apply to Taylor Swift and what we wanted the students to experience, kind of assuming that the students in the workshop would not be sociology students.

So thinking about what we can contribute to their experiences and have them try on a sociological lens.

Johanna Bringhurst: What were you hoping the students would take away from the course?

Johanna Bringhurst: Jasmyne, why did you want to take this class? Why did you sign up?

Jazmyne Hartogh: So it really comes down to, I was looking for a class and I was going through all these different types of workshops and I have had taken psychology and sociology courses in the past. And when I thought sociology of Taylor Swift 100%, I was intrigued as a Self-acclaimed number one fan of her. I felt as if it was my duty to go ahead and see the concept that I could get from this, and maybe choose it, or choose to be a fan of Taylor Swift in a different light.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: It's interesting, though, in terms of you, we weren't sure if the students were going to be fans of Taylor Swift if they would be, you know, maybe the other perspective of of Taylor Swift. And so that was part of the fun of using these, concepts to, you know, kind of help people understand, you know, what's the draw?

Johanna Bringhurst: So who did end up signing up for this class? Were they all Taylor Swift fans? How did that work out?

Sophie Pederson: It ended up mostly being pretty big, Swift fans. There are a few people that I remember that were kind of like ambivalent towards her. And, there are definitely not any people that were like super big critics. I don't think.

Jazmyne Hartogh: Very, what's the word, neutral, to her opinion, I was in a group of three other members, and none of them listened to Taylor Swift, but none of them had a negative thing to say about her.

They actually all apologized before we started in case they offended anyone because they didn't know anything about her.

Johanna Bringhurst: As, our listeners will know that sociology is not a traditional humanities discipline, but we think of you as a sister discipline and learning about a celebrity, how journalists are choosing to portray her and cover her, the history of her music and career. That's such a part of the humanities. So I'm really excited to learn in the course what students uncovered about those aspects.

Taylor Swift, how she's portrayed. So you explored symbolic interactionism. Can you tell us more about the theories of self that you discussed?

Sophie Pederson: Sure. So, we talked about kind of three main ways of thinking about the self and how we engage with ourselves and others. That I thought were kind of like they kind of overlap nicely. And you can sort of compare and contrast the three. So we talked about, Theory of Self or the I versus the me, which is this is a concept coined by George Herbert Mead.

And he was referring to this idea of, like, everyone having a passive self and like an active self, where the I is this version of you that engages in the present moment. And it's like kind of maybe sometimes being like reflexive, and like instinctive. And then the me is more like reflecting on past experience and like making predictions about the future.

And then the other two that we talked about were the looking glass self, which was, a concept coined by Charles Horton Cooley, where he talked about how, we kind of reflect or, kind of put other people's perceptions onto ourselves. But there's this really tricky, weird thing where we don't actually ever know what other people are thinking of us.

And we have to kind of imagine that and then, like, put it back on ourselves. And then the other concept that we talked about was Erving Goffman's Impression Management Theory, which he created, this idea of the backstage self, which is the first stage show, which is I thought was kind of similar to like the I versus the me, where the backstage self is like kind of our self when we're, by ourselves and trying to like, kind of cultivate a persona.

And then the front stage self is us. When we're with other people and trying to, like, play a character in a sense.

Johanna Bringhurst: So how did students relate these theories to Taylor Swift and her work?

We talked some about the impression management that fans have. So what do you do to have people see yourself as a swiftie? What do you do if you're trying to distance yourself from, you know, like, I'm not one of them. I'm not. And so, you know, how does that how does that dance happen? And so then also having students connect that with the ways that they do that in their own personal life, and not just looking at the way that Taylor Swift does it, but, you know, gosh, where are you having front stage experiences?

Where are you having backstage experiences? How to social media play into how you see yourself and how you think other people think that you think you they see them, in terms of that looking glass. And then I'm not sure how that translates into what your experience was.

Jazmyne Hartogh: I very similar I mean, we like Sharon said we did get the opportunity to like break it down throughout like the lyrics of each of her album necessarily.

Maybe not typically all of it, but we were given examples that other students ourselves were able to sit and analyze and decide what we thought each theory could be placed upon each lyric, which was super cool because as you decide and discuss throughout with your group members and other classmates, you do realize these theories do overlap. Excuse me, they do overlap, and they form almost an opinion of Taylor Swift that you can almost grasp, since she is like this entity in the celebrity that none of us get to actually communicate with.

Johanna Bringhurst: You played a clip of Taylor Swift for the students, where she is discussing the media's perception of her dating life from several years ago, and I thought this was really fascinating, her almost looking glass of understanding how the media perceives her and then turning that into art. Can you explain more about what was going on and the discussion around that clip in your course.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: That was, that was the section that Sophie taught. So take it away.

Sophie Pederson: For sure. So the clip I played was, clip of Taylor Swift performing Blank Space at The Grammy Museum, and she kind of gave this whole introduction where she talked about, like, kind of what you were saying with, she had this kind of wave of, media like publication against her, not necessarily against her, but talking about how she's kind of like a serial dater and maybe kind of a heartbreaker and how she just takes too much.

And, the perspective as she was writing it from. So I thought that that was just like an awesome, like example to use of, like the idea of the looking glass self and like how you kind of start to internalize other people's perspectives and project them back onto yourself.

Johanna Bringhurst: It's interesting that you see she was playing a character because she did not recognize this portrayal of herself, but then she was like, this is a very interesting character here. I can play that. I can work with that. You also explored ideas of gender, race, class and feminism. So many interesting intersections between those themes. So can you explain to you what is doing gender in sociology?

Dr. Sharon Patterson: Yeah, and doing gender is a helpful concept because we often think about gender as a, physical characteristic and identity. We often don't think about the ways that we enact gender. And so one of the ways to look about Taylor Swift is the ways that she did gender in various. You can look it up from different eras.

So, for example, what does doing gender look like when she was younger and beginning her career? You know, her hair was long and curly and she had more of a, a country vibe. And then we can think about the way that she did gender as she tried to kind of push away from that kind of good girl, image per se.

But then she had boundaries on how much she could stray from kind of that good girl element, but she was still doing gender, in her next tours. And so we talked a lot about, the way that we enact gender, not just the way that we have gender identity.

Johanna Bringhurst: How has she continued to explore gender and her work? I'm thinking specifically of the song The Man and how her image has evolved over time. And she's really taken head on those perceptions of her.

Jazmyne Hartogh: Yeah, men do like to respond. I just I'm ready, I've got all the numbers and details in my head. Yeah. So we definitely see her change from her innocent good girl persona like late in the 2010s. We definitely in 2019 when the man was released. We definitely see her solidify herself. More of the leader and the power position shift and that women can do the same thing that men can do.

And then at the very end, you see her getting all, dolled up to become the man. And that's when you finally see this broken perception of, oh, okay, a girl can do that, too, even though we're almost essentially looking at like a man's perspective. But we also see that break a little bit as she goes off her later career.

Johanna Bringhurst: How is doing gender also racialized? How is it different for different reasons?

but there's a sense of like, oh, that's that's okay. That's not good. Can I get away with this and not get away with that? So for example, Taylor Swift maybe couldn't be too sexualized. We also talked about the ways that, race and class intersect because she portrays herself, as, somebody from Tennessee. And kind of more of a humble upbringing.

But when you look into her family background, that's not the case. And so she does have some financial resources and some access to things that, are not part of how she does gender in a class and racialized way.

Johanna Bringhurst: So in the course, you explored how women with different colors and bodies are allowed to express sexuality in different ways. I have to so who is allowing the expression or not? Can you explain more about that?

Dr. Sharon Patterson: Yeah, exactly. And I'll, I'll jump in real quick and then have, Sophie and Jazmyne add. That was part of why we started with the symbolic interactionism and thinking about the perceptions that we have of ourselves and the perception that other people have of us and how that, impacts our real or perceived choices. And so it's really, norms and culture and expectations and how we see ourselves and how we think other people see us and how we manage those perceptions.

So we intentionally build the three different areas in the course as a reinforcing aspect.

Johanna Bringhurst: Jasmyne. Sophie, did you want to add.

Sophie Pederson: Yeah. And I love that.

Johanna Bringhurst: Okay. Moving forward.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: But one other thing I want to say about gender that we did talk about is, particularly in The Man and Betty and some other ones, the, the, construct of what it means to be masculine. And the value there wasn't really challenged so she doesn't necessarily challenge patriarchy in The Man, she just kind of shows the contrast of it.

So we did talk some about what are our expectations of if she portrays herself as being a feminist, what what what are some reasonable expectations? You know, she's just a human, just the person. Can we expect that she will have this activist role? Because we expect that every turn she'll push against patriarchy or whatnot. So we did have a lot of conversations around activism.

Johanna Bringhurst: I really appreciate you bringing that up, because many people have expectations for Taylor Swift to represent feminism or to be a certain type of feminism. How did you discuss her role as a feminist activist in the course? Or her lack of taking on that role? Depending on how you look at it?

Sophie Pederson: We talked about it, I think, in a couple of different ways because, something that's kind of interesting about Taylor Swift, like feminism, is that it's very it's very kind of like white feminist and it's very focused on like having the same be able to do the same things as men and have the same like experiences as men without having pushback.

But we we also talked about, like, I'm losing my train of thought,

Dr. Sharon Patterson: Nicki Minaj? the, like

Sophie Pederson: Oh, yeah, for sure. I'm trying to think of it. So what was the question again?

Johanna Bringhurst: You you're saying that Taylor Swift's brand of feminism can be characterized as white because she has privilege and she wants to exercise more without pushback, but that's different for black women, indigenous women, other women from minority groups. Why is it different? And what does feminism look like? You brought up Beyoncé before. What does her feminism look like?

In contrast?

And we kind of see that we see the term sexualized. We see that Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj and all these amazing other women tend to more produce their bodies as themselves, rather than we see with other white celebrities such as Taylor Swift. So it definitely goes down to, that depicted image of what is good and what is bad, essentially.

Or like, essentially what is a good reputation or a bad reputation?

Johanna Bringhurst: I mean, that goes back to what you had said before, Sharon, when we discussed who is deciding what's good and what's bad. It's those, it's complicated. Right. It's those theories of self, it's the media. It's our perception of how other people see us and how we see ourselves. So it's very complicated to advocate for something different as one of these women in that spce.

But you also address the idea of the commodification of Taylor Swift. This was very interesting to me. Can you tell us about commodification, and what does it mean for a person to be commodified?

And so talking about, how when can you tell that something is not for sale anymore? And then what things are for sale? We talked some about her connection with, Kelce Travis and the that they were trying to sell. You know, I'm not a fan or swiftie fan. But you know how the NFL is commodifying some things and just the how there's a price tag on everything as compared to just having it be an experience.

Unknown Speaker: We definitely touched on the fact that because of her amount of fame globally, it's really hard to draw the line of commodification because it's very simple for people to take her lyrics, put it on a tote bag and sell them. And people will still associate that with Taylor Swift because of her huge fame and the amount of work that she has produced across the world,

Dr. Sharon Patterson: We also kind of contrast it with other fandoms, and we think about the Beatles, and that was a different time.

But you saw people, you know, waiting in line and screaming, but you didn't. You know, you couldn't buy a packet of 200 stickers on Amazon, which we actually did for that for the workshop, that, you know, the keychains, the everything, everything, everything, is for sale now. And, you know, you often wonder what are her calculations for her media attention.

That might then increase sales, which, you know, can be a good business thing, but it's all intertwined together.

Johanna Bringhurst: Did any ethical issues come up in your discussion? Is it ethical for Taylor Swift's fans to feel that they own her private relationships, romantic and friendships, access to her private life and time? What do you think about that?

Sophie Pederson: I think that's a really interesting question. I think that I don't know how much we talked about the ethics of, how fans interact with Taylor as much, but, that is an interesting question because it brings up this thought of how Taylor Swift is like, she's not just a person. She's also a brand like, she, she that she's a brand.

And she is, in a sense, kind of selling her, like, self as the product that people consume. And it's we we talked about fandom and her fans in terms of consumption in kind of a different way. I think when we talked about, like Sharon was, was saying, like merch and things like that. But I think there's also this interesting component that we talked about, how fans, which gets back into like impression management stuff, how fans sort of also kind of brand themselves and try to manage impressions of themselves between, you know, between Taylor Swift's fans and how there's these things that that sometimes an online community, especially where you have

these little like symbols of like status as a fan, and there's levels of how good of a Taylor Swift and you are, how much you know about her, and how closely connected you are to her. Which kind of gets into your question of like, how much of a personal relationship fans feel like they can have with her? Because there's this dynamic I've noticed before where people will post on like Instagram or Twitter or X, like noticed by Taylor Swift, like three times in their like Instagram bio.

And it's like the symbol of how close they are to her. If that makes sense.

Johanna Bringhurst: This is opening my eyes to a whole new level of being a fan of something. Also our listeners will realize how old I am that this is kind of news to me. I, I'm curious now that the workshop is finished or looking back, what were your big takeaways from the class? What will you remember from the course? Each of you.

I think everyone agrees that we all feel like we are different people, that we're alone or by ourselves, or we have different personalities and different people. And I think just being able to take this workshop and learn these theories and learn different theories that can present in different people, and understanding that, is definitely really important. And just looking forward and how I'm going to take my interactions with other people.

Johanna Bringhurst: Thank you.

And, I think the, the biggest takeaways for me were I thought it was so much fun. In the actual workshop when we were talking about there were specific concepts that it seemed like people really were interested in, like people really resonated with the idea of the looking glass. So I think it's really like it's really relevant and like personally applicable.

And there's so many different ways that you can like, use examples to explain that concept. And I think people also really resonated with the idea of doing gender. I think it's kind of it's funny because it feels like this really, like basic idea. But then when you when you really start to think about how, like, think about in your personal life, all the ways that you do gender and all these really small ways, I think people are thinking is a really interesting example of that.

Those are my biggest takeaways, right.

Johanna Bringhurst: How about you Sharon?

Dr. Sharon Patterson: I mean, it was it's always a treat to work with students. I think we don't often give students enough empowerment to, to co-create and to, to try things on and to, to, think about things in different ways that don't have to always agree, but I always call it putting on, glasses. But you put on new glasses that you see the world with, and you can maybe never take them off like that was saying.

But also you can then choose to incorporate those, those different ways of thinking. And so this class really, I think, achieve that opportunity for students to put on these different glasses and to see how they're connected, how, you know, how we see ourselves, others see us connect with gender and connect with commodification. And so I think that that works, that works out really well.

And it was really fun. We had a really good time. So much.

Johanna Bringhurst: Do you look at Taylor Swift differently now? Jasmyne and Sophie, the fans, after taking this course.

Jazmyne Hartogh: Going into this course, I knew a lot about Taylor Swift. So I had a very open mind and I knew a lot of the topics and the examples and unfortunately, everything that was shown or shown, all the examples, I have seen them before and have like actually talked about it. So looking at Taylor Swift differently, I would say no, but I definitely went in with a way of more of an open mind on the subject of who she is as a person and human, rather than as she is.

Or, they see her as like my number one, you know, like celebrity or musician or anything of that realm.

Yeah.

Johanna Bringhurst: Perfect. Mission accomplished, Sharon.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: I knew nothing about Taylor Swift. That was, that was,

Jazmyne Hartogh: You were fantastic I'll tell you that.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: It's a reliance on them, it's like I know nothing.

Jazmyne Hartogh: I was fact-checking you. You did great. You did amazing.

Johanna Bringhurst: Through this course. You really are trying to make sense of human behavior. Thinking how we see ourselves, how each other. I would love to hear from each of you. What did you learn about being human? About the human experience from taking this really close up look at.

Jazmyne Hartogh: I think I learned that, it is important to understand that everyone is human. You're not alone, and that those, like, internalized feelings and those decisions you make in your head, everyone else going through that, everyone else has their decisions and they have to wake up in the day and get through. And they're gonna, who knows, go through those examples of doing gender or go through the differences of race or class that we see presented in it within our world.

But I really think this course just coin down on the idea of everyone's human. So these feelings that you're internalizing and these theories that you're conceptualizing, it's happening all around you. And it's definitely something that can expand outside of ourselves.

Johanna Bringhurst: That's so well said. Thank you Jasmyne.

Sophie Pederson: For sure. I think, Jasmyne was saying I kind of I agree with that. Like, I think that it was helpful and really interesting to kind of hear everybody kind of had their own perspectives, but also be so similar in the way that, like you were saying that it's, we all go through the day doing the same things and having the same little, like, worries and, think that the backstage front stage, everybody kind of experiences that.

And that was fun and interesting.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: I think for me, thinking about the Swiftie fans and this with the haters, it, it reminded me that we all kind of get to those same places and in similar ways where we see ourselves in certain ways, we are managing kind of impressions of ourselves. We have these different identities, and so we're all doing the same thing.

We're just kind of getting to a different place. So the folks that maybe are Swiftie haters, it's the similar kind of impression management as Swiftie lovers. And so that was just a good reminder in terms of, of humans that we're trying to be ourselves and that we're constantly navigating these messages and just trying to find our way.

Johanna Bringhurst: That is the perfect way to end our discussion, that we're not alone. We are all trying to do our best to navigate our way. I really appreciate all three of you being here today. It's so fascinating to learn about this workshop, and I can't wait to hear about further adventures that you have. I don't know who's next in your, Celebrity sociology workshop lineup.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: We're going to do a couple more Taylor Swift. It's an evolving process. So one in May and one in the fall. So still up.

Johanna Bringhurst: Okay, awesome. So BSU students sign up and we look forward to hearing how those go. Thank you.

Dr. Sharon Patterson: Thank you.