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The Slicks: On Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift
In The Slicks, Maggie Nelson positions culture-dominating pop superstar Taylor Swift and feminist cult icon Sylvia Plath as twin hosts of the female urge toward wanting hard, working hard, and pouring forth – and as twinned targets of patriarchy’s ancient urge to disparage, trivialise and demonise such prolific, intimate output.
The Slicks is a heady, rallying and unexpected melding of popular culture and literary criticism – an inspired treatise and unexpected celebration of two iconic female poets by one of the most revered and influential critics of her generation.
The Slicks is a heady, rallying and unexpected melding of popular culture and literary criticism – an inspired treatise and unexpected celebration of two iconic female poets by one of the most revered and influential critics of her generation.
64 pages, Paperback
Published November 25, 2025
44 people are currently reading
1422 people want to read
About the author
Maggie Nelson
41 books4,632 followersMaggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. Her nonfiction titles include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times bestseller The Argonauts (Graywolf Press, 2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (Norton, 2011; a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Bluets (Wave Books, 2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), The Red Parts (Free Press, 2007; reissued by Graywolf, 2016), and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (U of Iowa Press, 2007). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005; finalist for the PEN/ Martha Albrand Art of the Memoir). In 2016 she was awarded a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. She has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, an NEA in Poetry, an Innovative Literature Fellowship from Creative Capital, and an Arts Writers Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation. She writes frequently on art, including recent catalogue essays on Carolee Schneemann and Matthew Barney. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and has taught literature, writing, art, criticism and theory at the New School, Pratt Institute, and Wesleyan University. For 12 years she taught in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts; in fall 2017 she will join the faculty of USC. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 233 reviews
October 14, 2025
I’m not a fan of Taylor Swift and haven’t been since I was maybe thirteen or fourteen, but I am a fan of Maggie Nelson and going into this I had hopes for an interesting & insightful critique & exploration of Swift & Plath, and the environments that they exist in. This was not that. I am genuinely baffled at this being the same person who wrote Bluets, The Red Parts, Jane, The Argonauts, Something Bright, Then Holes…
I came into this with an open mind. I thought this was going to be an examination of music, art & how being a woman makes those things more challenging, of how it is harder to be taken seriously, of all the hurdles women in art face that simply do not exist for men—while also holding Swift accountable. I think there is an interesting conversation to be had around misogyny and the alienation and ridicule of women, and how this opens the door for them to become, in Taylor Swift’s sense at least, selfish and abandoning of morals in pursuit of recognition. Nelson touches on how women are held to a higher standard than men, but does so in a way that suggests she thinks Swift should not be held accountable of anything she has done wrong simply because of these double standards.
Instead of a fair and considered essay, The Slicks is a jumbled and half-hearted array of thoughts that all boil down into the sentiment that ‘if a woman is doing something then that makes it feminist’. The whole thing is very out of touch, surface level and to me at least seems at odds with everything else Maggie Nelson has published. This paired with how thoughtless The Slicks seems makes me think that this is really just a piece of work trying to capitalise on Taylor Swift’s name—there is no criticality, no nuance, and quite honestly nothing of any importance being said.
Nelson highlights how Swift’s success is poorly perceived because she is a woman with power, and how this resentment is particularly strong in ‘MAGA/incel circles’ but fails to mention Swift’s close friendships with people firmly inside of those MAGA circles, namely Brittany Mahomes, who is an avid Trump supporter. Nelson praises Swift of her success and seems to think people looking down on her is wrong, while also saying that ‘pop music; it ain’t poetry’. Nelson criticises misogynistic threat and remarks, while also calling Swift a ‘serial dater’, a term that even I know has been used against Swift as a way to dismiss her, and a term that would never be used when discussing a man.
The worst of it all, though, is when Nelson writes: ‘Nor does Swift’s work bear, as Plath’s infamously does, traces of some of the worst historical catastrophes on record – namely, the Holocaust, with its incinerating violence, and its chaotic landscape of victims, perpetrators, collaborators and bystanders. […] These differences are accidents of fate, personality, epoch and medium; it is not a moral contest.’ and critically misses the mark. Here Nelson draws their similarities: both young women creating; both during catastrophic genocides. Only, one of them is silent—how can this be reduced to an accident of fate? Or an accident of any kind?
I came into this with an open mind. I thought this was going to be an examination of music, art & how being a woman makes those things more challenging, of how it is harder to be taken seriously, of all the hurdles women in art face that simply do not exist for men—while also holding Swift accountable. I think there is an interesting conversation to be had around misogyny and the alienation and ridicule of women, and how this opens the door for them to become, in Taylor Swift’s sense at least, selfish and abandoning of morals in pursuit of recognition. Nelson touches on how women are held to a higher standard than men, but does so in a way that suggests she thinks Swift should not be held accountable of anything she has done wrong simply because of these double standards.
Instead of a fair and considered essay, The Slicks is a jumbled and half-hearted array of thoughts that all boil down into the sentiment that ‘if a woman is doing something then that makes it feminist’. The whole thing is very out of touch, surface level and to me at least seems at odds with everything else Maggie Nelson has published. This paired with how thoughtless The Slicks seems makes me think that this is really just a piece of work trying to capitalise on Taylor Swift’s name—there is no criticality, no nuance, and quite honestly nothing of any importance being said.
Nelson highlights how Swift’s success is poorly perceived because she is a woman with power, and how this resentment is particularly strong in ‘MAGA/incel circles’ but fails to mention Swift’s close friendships with people firmly inside of those MAGA circles, namely Brittany Mahomes, who is an avid Trump supporter. Nelson praises Swift of her success and seems to think people looking down on her is wrong, while also saying that ‘pop music; it ain’t poetry’. Nelson criticises misogynistic threat and remarks, while also calling Swift a ‘serial dater’, a term that even I know has been used against Swift as a way to dismiss her, and a term that would never be used when discussing a man.
The worst of it all, though, is when Nelson writes: ‘Nor does Swift’s work bear, as Plath’s infamously does, traces of some of the worst historical catastrophes on record – namely, the Holocaust, with its incinerating violence, and its chaotic landscape of victims, perpetrators, collaborators and bystanders. […] These differences are accidents of fate, personality, epoch and medium; it is not a moral contest.’ and critically misses the mark. Here Nelson draws their similarities: both young women creating; both during catastrophic genocides. Only, one of them is silent—how can this be reduced to an accident of fate? Or an accident of any kind?
August 21, 2025
Poet and cultural critic Maggie Nelson offers up a series of reflections on the uneasy relations between women and fame:
“…the voyeurism and sadism, idolatry and demonisation, which characterise our treatment of the famous, especially famous women – and especially those women who traffic in making the personal public, however medicated or anaesthetised.”
Nelson’s title’s taken from an entry in Sylvia Plath’s diary in which she vows to break into “the slicks” – these were glossy, upmarket magazines, highly prestigious spaces that writers were desperately competing to enter. Partly inspired by Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department album, Nelson traces a series of possible links between Swift and quintessential ‘tortured poet’ Plath – Swift’s directly referenced Plath in her lyrics and sometimes aspects of her self-presentation. Both have been vocal about their desire for fame.
Nelson’s particularly fascinated by the ways in which so many of Swift’s and/or Plath’s critics have essentially followed the same script in their attempts to cut these women down to size: the underlying violence, the patriarchal, sometimes ‘feral misogyny’ that these efforts represent. Much of which connects to what Nelson terms “the derision of the personal” in women’s writing, often dismissed as “uncooked confessional.” Nelson’s exploration draws extensively on Anne Carson’s essay “The Gender of Sound” which is preoccupied with the policing of women’s mouths/voices. Nelson’s approach is, as always, compelling, deftly combining discipline with passion. But don’t go into this expecting a neatly rounded-off piece. This is more a thinking-through, at times close to a call to arms, stirring associations, raising talking points. And if, like me, you’re both a Swiftie and a fan of Plath's poetry it’s well worth seeking out.
Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Fern Press for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
“…the voyeurism and sadism, idolatry and demonisation, which characterise our treatment of the famous, especially famous women – and especially those women who traffic in making the personal public, however medicated or anaesthetised.”
Nelson’s title’s taken from an entry in Sylvia Plath’s diary in which she vows to break into “the slicks” – these were glossy, upmarket magazines, highly prestigious spaces that writers were desperately competing to enter. Partly inspired by Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department album, Nelson traces a series of possible links between Swift and quintessential ‘tortured poet’ Plath – Swift’s directly referenced Plath in her lyrics and sometimes aspects of her self-presentation. Both have been vocal about their desire for fame.
Nelson’s particularly fascinated by the ways in which so many of Swift’s and/or Plath’s critics have essentially followed the same script in their attempts to cut these women down to size: the underlying violence, the patriarchal, sometimes ‘feral misogyny’ that these efforts represent. Much of which connects to what Nelson terms “the derision of the personal” in women’s writing, often dismissed as “uncooked confessional.” Nelson’s exploration draws extensively on Anne Carson’s essay “The Gender of Sound” which is preoccupied with the policing of women’s mouths/voices. Nelson’s approach is, as always, compelling, deftly combining discipline with passion. But don’t go into this expecting a neatly rounded-off piece. This is more a thinking-through, at times close to a call to arms, stirring associations, raising talking points. And if, like me, you’re both a Swiftie and a fan of Plath's poetry it’s well worth seeking out.
Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Fern Press for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
August 22, 2025
I will slave and slave until I break into those slicks~ Plath on her commitment and desire to get published in the women's glossy magazines ('slicks')
This is a short thought piece on women, ambition and fame that uses Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift as two examples separated by generations but both publicly castigated for daring to dream big and achieve 'unfeminine' success.
This isn't an academic researched piece - it's freewheeling and intuitive, making connections in Nelson's mind and perception rather than being tied down to textual and other evidence. At times Nelson draws on e.g. Anne Carson and Judith Butler; at others she's making associations that are personal and subjective. What comes over is her love for both Plath and Swift, without putting needless pressure on 'highbrow'/popular culture categories or snobbish distinctions.
Important points about the way women's writing is so frequently dismissed as 'confessional', 'personal' etc. are not new, of course, nor is the trope - going back to classical Greece and Rome - that a woman who puts herself into public space is a 'whore'. But one of the takeaways for me is the way Swift's Eras tour might be conceived as a female epic, a heroine's journey rewritten by her - a triumphant, positive image to set against Plath's 'Lady Lazarus' rising from the dead.
November 14, 2025
If ever you find yourself writing "sure, as far as we know Taylor Swift has never experienced suicidal depression or referenced the Holocaust in her lyrics" you should close the Google Doc and put the biggest magnet you can on your laptop
January 28, 2026
An historic miss from Maggie Nelson, one that leaves a seriously nasty taste in your mouth. There isn’t a single real point being made here —mostly a lot of garble, like how critique of Taylor Swift on the anti-capitalist front doesn’t matter because it’s pop music (???). The overbearing whiteness of this text cannot be ignored (shoving all Black poets into a parenthetical, addressing critique of Plath as people painting an image of a “sad white woman” without engaging with Plath’s racism, acknowledging MAGA but not Taylor Swift’s MAGA ties) and detracts from any points Nelson was trying to make. I also don’t think it’s very effective to do a litcrit piece on a pop star and a poet and then constantly talk about how they’re really different, actually, pop music and poetry are Different, no i won’t elaborate. Huh??? Not to mention (because she doesn’t) that the culture of fame in Plath’s era is entirely different from that of the current era. I completely agree that Plath’s dream of control and “becoming God” stems at least in part from a real-life lack of agency as a mentally ill woman. But how the fuck is that anything like Taylor Swift releasing fifty versions of the same album a year to girlbossmaxx and bump off any other women who dare to make an album? I don’t think the Eras tour was a “feminine epic,” like Nelson thinks, I think it was a racket from an intellectually broke pop icon to stretch her brand as far as possible for as long as possible for the sole purpose of gaining capital. And it’s okay if you don’t think that, but I would love some sort of, i don’t know, argument about it. It’s so frustrating how Nelson waves off even trying to engage with that because she wants to think about how Clara Bow is sad AND catchy. I’m tired, man. Who let her write this?
Oh, it’s Greywolf press, Greywolf press let her write this. It claims to publish “risk-taking, visionary writers” — i ask, what risks are being taken here? Swift’s cultural dominance hardly needs defending. Neither does Plath’s, if we’re being honest. There’s no law against writing a puff piece about your favorite artists where you constantly remark how lyrics from one remind you of the other, wow isn’t that interesting, but save that shit for substack and don’t lower yourself to publishing it like it’s actually literary criticism. Boo! Tomato! Tomato!
Oh, it’s Greywolf press, Greywolf press let her write this. It claims to publish “risk-taking, visionary writers” — i ask, what risks are being taken here? Swift’s cultural dominance hardly needs defending. Neither does Plath’s, if we’re being honest. There’s no law against writing a puff piece about your favorite artists where you constantly remark how lyrics from one remind you of the other, wow isn’t that interesting, but save that shit for substack and don’t lower yourself to publishing it like it’s actually literary criticism. Boo! Tomato! Tomato!
January 26, 2026
From the day this was announced I couldn't stop thinking about it and could not wait to read it, knowing proof had arrived that not only is Maggie Nelson cooked but she's also pickled. RIP queen, you changed my reading life and I'll always be grateful for that, but everything about this was not only a mess it was also soooooo embarrassing. I apologize to you if you like Taylor Swift or believe she needs to be canonized (again) by way of literary criticism but I am sick of the exaltation of mid and I think as a whole, everyone involved needs help. Watching Maggie constantly bob, weave, dodge, and digress her way around any potential criticism of her subject in order to insist upon Taytay's legacy and impact helped me understand that Taylor Swift is the trolley problem for white women. I am a hater and I know that and for some reason once I found out about this book I needed, on a carnal level, to read it in order to go back to living in peace. Here we are I guess.
Also Sylvia Plath is a fine writer, but reading this also helped me see how strange it is that we are culturally obsessed with her. Just read The Bell Jar and move on.
Also Sylvia Plath is a fine writer, but reading this also helped me see how strange it is that we are culturally obsessed with her. Just read The Bell Jar and move on.
November 24, 2025
Yeah I’m not convinced sorry!! Editing to add that I can’t stop thinking about this book and am still failing to grasp what the point was or why this half developed idea had to exist in book form at all. I just don’t understand how we got to a place where loving Taylor Swift is supposed to be radical and morally superior while any critique of her means you hate women. Lol. I love Maggie Nelson’s writing but this kind of felt like the print equivalent of clickbait. I’ll ponder it some more though maybe a Taylor loving future me is right around the corner🫡
January 24, 2026
barely 50 pages long and the argument here is confused, tenuous at best, and refuses to engage in any kind of complex discussion abt white capitalist feminism at all. let alone mention taylor swifts maga ties or plath’s racism.
i find that really disingenuous to blanket praise both of these women while ignoring their whole lived realities. it’s okay i guess for maggie nelson to like both of these people but like. you don’t have to make me read about it or pretend it’s anything more intelligent than it is. or insist that it’s misogynist to not like them and dismiss valid criticisms just like that. very weird and juvenile.
also it’s just really embarrassing to see plath’s poetry compared to swift’s lyric writing back to back, regardless of everything else they’re not even in the same creative league…
really not worth your time. i can’t stress how simply not thought out the comparisons are or how weird the tangents are in here. what do you mean were talking about what emily dickinson would think about apple tvs!? bye
i find that really disingenuous to blanket praise both of these women while ignoring their whole lived realities. it’s okay i guess for maggie nelson to like both of these people but like. you don’t have to make me read about it or pretend it’s anything more intelligent than it is. or insist that it’s misogynist to not like them and dismiss valid criticisms just like that. very weird and juvenile.
also it’s just really embarrassing to see plath’s poetry compared to swift’s lyric writing back to back, regardless of everything else they’re not even in the same creative league…
really not worth your time. i can’t stress how simply not thought out the comparisons are or how weird the tangents are in here. what do you mean were talking about what emily dickinson would think about apple tvs!? bye
December 2, 2025
hmmmmm….I enjoyed some of her reflections on fame and femininity and the links between Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift but overall, it fell a bit flat for me. I don’t feel like she said anything that new?
Also - I assume this was written before Taylor Swift was engaged to a trump supporter and before the release of her most recent album. Some parts of the essay already feel a bit outdated…I feel like Maggie Nelson might feel differently about some things now.
I did really enjoy her thoughts on the song, Clara Bow (IYKYN).
Also - I assume this was written before Taylor Swift was engaged to a trump supporter and before the release of her most recent album. Some parts of the essay already feel a bit outdated…I feel like Maggie Nelson might feel differently about some things now.
I did really enjoy her thoughts on the song, Clara Bow (IYKYN).
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December 5, 2025this could’ve been a LitHub article
December 4, 2025
Maggie girl why...
January 11, 2026
Hat mir ein paar brauchbare Zitate für meine Thesis geliefert, war mit aber alles in allem zu oberflächlich. Es wird einfach viel genamedropped und Fremdwörter benutzt bis zum get no. Hätte einige Gedanken gerne weiter ausgeführt bekommen und mich beim querlesen erwischt. Sad.
November 13, 2025
Can young women embrace fame amidst the other cultural expectations of them? Nelson attempts to answer this question by comparing two figures who turn(ed) life into art. The link between them was strengthened by Swift titling her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department. “Plath … serves as a metonym – as does Swift – for a woman who makes art about a broken heart,” Nelson writes. “When women make the personal public, the charge of whorishness always lurks nearby.” What women are allowed to say and do has always, it seems, attracted public commentary, and “anyone who puts their work into the world, at any level, must learn to navigate between self-protectiveness and risk, becoming harder and staying soft.”
Nelson acknowledges a major tonal difference between Plath and Swift, however. Plath longed for fame but didn’t get the chance to enjoy it; she’s the patron saint of sad-girl poetry and makes frequent reference to death, whereas Swift spotlights joy and female empowerment. It’s a shame this was out of date before it went to print; my advanced copy, at least, isn’t able to comment on Swift’s engagement and the baby rumor mill sure to follow. It would be illuminating to have an afterword in which Nelson discusses the effect of spouses’ competing fame and speculates on how motherhood might change Swift’s art.
Full confession: I’ve only ever knowingly heard one Taylor Swift song, “Anti-Hero,” on the radio in the States. (My assessment was: wordy, angsty, reasonably catchy.) Undoubtedly, I would have gotten more out of this essay were I equally familiar with the two subjects. Nonetheless, it’s fluid and well argued, and I was engaged throughout. If you’re a Swiftie as well as a literary type, you need to read this.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Nelson acknowledges a major tonal difference between Plath and Swift, however. Plath longed for fame but didn’t get the chance to enjoy it; she’s the patron saint of sad-girl poetry and makes frequent reference to death, whereas Swift spotlights joy and female empowerment. It’s a shame this was out of date before it went to print; my advanced copy, at least, isn’t able to comment on Swift’s engagement and the baby rumor mill sure to follow. It would be illuminating to have an afterword in which Nelson discusses the effect of spouses’ competing fame and speculates on how motherhood might change Swift’s art.
Full confession: I’ve only ever knowingly heard one Taylor Swift song, “Anti-Hero,” on the radio in the States. (My assessment was: wordy, angsty, reasonably catchy.) Undoubtedly, I would have gotten more out of this essay were I equally familiar with the two subjects. Nonetheless, it’s fluid and well argued, and I was engaged throughout. If you’re a Swiftie as well as a literary type, you need to read this.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
December 4, 2025
Shoulda stayed in the Notes app fr
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January 10, 2026I’ve been thinking a lot about women and greatness recently.
I’ve been reading Patricia Highsmith’s diaries on and off for months (more to come on that when I finally finish them), and I have been finding it fascinating and rare how utterly convinced of her own genius she is. This self-aggrandizing attitude is a hallmark of the male artistic genius archetype, and it’s often positioned as distinctly unfeminine.
When I watched Marty Supreme last month, I found myself feeling a little tired of narratives around young and hungry American men in pursuit of greatness, ruining the lives of everyone around them for a chance at fulfilling some perceived higher purpose. Could stories like this exist about women? What might they look like?
I think Jen actually said to me, when I expressed this to her about Marty Supreme, that Taylor Swift is the cultural example we have of a woman doggedly in pursuit of greatness—obsessed with herself and her legacy above all else. A capitalist, a billionaire, flying her private jet around the world without shame. Obsessed with the project of continually becoming Taylor Swift, regardless of carbon emissions or other unintended consequences.
I like what Maggie Nelson had to say about Plath and Swift as these two different manifestations of intense female ambition. It’s an interesting contrast. More than that, though, I like that Maggie Nelson is also thinking about this question of what it means to be a Great woman, or to try to be one.
That said, I think I often find that, when I have seen a topic discussed at length on the internet since I was twelve years old, I actually don’t get that much out of cultural criticism attempting to tackle said topic (I’m thinking also of Claire Dederer’s Monsters here, which asked the question “what do we do with good art made by bad people?” — 2014 tumblr’s favourite question). While her reflections on Plath were newer to me, Maggie Nelson’s observations about Taylor Swift often felt like things I’d already read online or talked about with my friends. Taylor Swift as a descendent of the confessional school? I have definitely had that chat before.
And some of Nelson’s comments on Swift also already feel dated, given how vastly different Life of a Showgirl is from The Tortured Poet’s Department. While TTPD is probably the most vulnerable album she’s put out, Life of a Showgirl might be the least. Life of a Showgirl is also a turn to a more politically conservative aesthetic that doesn’t always gel with Nelson’s arguments.
The connections between TTPD and Plath are relevant, but TTPD itself is not relevant — it has already disappeared into that endless well of “eras.” Maggie Nelson writes about how fame constructs an identity around a person’s name, separate from who they really are, but I’m not sure she was prepared for how fast Taylor Swift’s name gets deconstructed and reconstructed. This is, as Maggie Nelson points out, part of what makes Swift so good at being famous—but it also makes her hard to pin down in a book.
As a Maggie Nelson fan, I will say I was not wowed by this essay. My overall feeling is that this was mildly interesting. Had it been published in the New Yorker a week after TTPD was released, I might have felt differently. But I am sort of shocked that it is being sold for twenty dollars (although perhaps this is Maggie Nelson’s way of pursuing greatness—so I won’t linger on it).
I’ve been reading Patricia Highsmith’s diaries on and off for months (more to come on that when I finally finish them), and I have been finding it fascinating and rare how utterly convinced of her own genius she is. This self-aggrandizing attitude is a hallmark of the male artistic genius archetype, and it’s often positioned as distinctly unfeminine.
When I watched Marty Supreme last month, I found myself feeling a little tired of narratives around young and hungry American men in pursuit of greatness, ruining the lives of everyone around them for a chance at fulfilling some perceived higher purpose. Could stories like this exist about women? What might they look like?
I think Jen actually said to me, when I expressed this to her about Marty Supreme, that Taylor Swift is the cultural example we have of a woman doggedly in pursuit of greatness—obsessed with herself and her legacy above all else. A capitalist, a billionaire, flying her private jet around the world without shame. Obsessed with the project of continually becoming Taylor Swift, regardless of carbon emissions or other unintended consequences.
I like what Maggie Nelson had to say about Plath and Swift as these two different manifestations of intense female ambition. It’s an interesting contrast. More than that, though, I like that Maggie Nelson is also thinking about this question of what it means to be a Great woman, or to try to be one.
That said, I think I often find that, when I have seen a topic discussed at length on the internet since I was twelve years old, I actually don’t get that much out of cultural criticism attempting to tackle said topic (I’m thinking also of Claire Dederer’s Monsters here, which asked the question “what do we do with good art made by bad people?” — 2014 tumblr’s favourite question). While her reflections on Plath were newer to me, Maggie Nelson’s observations about Taylor Swift often felt like things I’d already read online or talked about with my friends. Taylor Swift as a descendent of the confessional school? I have definitely had that chat before.
And some of Nelson’s comments on Swift also already feel dated, given how vastly different Life of a Showgirl is from The Tortured Poet’s Department. While TTPD is probably the most vulnerable album she’s put out, Life of a Showgirl might be the least. Life of a Showgirl is also a turn to a more politically conservative aesthetic that doesn’t always gel with Nelson’s arguments.
The connections between TTPD and Plath are relevant, but TTPD itself is not relevant — it has already disappeared into that endless well of “eras.” Maggie Nelson writes about how fame constructs an identity around a person’s name, separate from who they really are, but I’m not sure she was prepared for how fast Taylor Swift’s name gets deconstructed and reconstructed. This is, as Maggie Nelson points out, part of what makes Swift so good at being famous—but it also makes her hard to pin down in a book.
As a Maggie Nelson fan, I will say I was not wowed by this essay. My overall feeling is that this was mildly interesting. Had it been published in the New Yorker a week after TTPD was released, I might have felt differently. But I am sort of shocked that it is being sold for twenty dollars (although perhaps this is Maggie Nelson’s way of pursuing greatness—so I won’t linger on it).
October 15, 2025
This should have been a dream book for me. I liked parts of it, especially when she talks about what it is to be a poet and poetry as an art form. However, I found the links made between Plath and Swift a little loose and that they carried little weight. I wasn’t madly thrilled by the prose either.
December 12, 2025
maggie nelson surely wrote this for me personally and i am immensely grateful because it is perfect and it fills me with hope that art and criticism and culture like this exists lol
January 19, 2026
My boss gave this to me and asked me “if I would be open to reading it” because that is how often we talk about my disdain for Taylor Swift. I told him I would because I love Sylvia Plath. So I did. This sucked.
I think it raises interesting points about the pacification of women more generally, but does little to address the glaringly obvious problem between comparing Plath and Swift; the resoundingly different quality of their work. This difference is plainly obvious in the Swift lyrics vs Plath lines the author pulls out. Whereas Swift’s lyrics read like metaphors written by a 10 year old who just learnt what they were, Plath’s lines require a level of inward analysis of its readers. It’s a show me don’t tell me difference.
This also does nothing to address the reasons why many people, myself included, actually dislike Taylor Swift: the white mediocrity; the self-serving “feminism”; a willingness to use her money and power to sue anyone she feels like; and, dare I say it, the just plain bad music.
And before anyone says it, I will save you the breath (and typing time). Disliking Taylor Swift does not make me a bad feminist. It does not have anything to do with her being a woman. I think she sucks as a human and makes shitty music. To suggest that I can only dislike her because I have rejected my femininity undermines my own agency as a woman. And that is bad feminism.
I think it raises interesting points about the pacification of women more generally, but does little to address the glaringly obvious problem between comparing Plath and Swift; the resoundingly different quality of their work. This difference is plainly obvious in the Swift lyrics vs Plath lines the author pulls out. Whereas Swift’s lyrics read like metaphors written by a 10 year old who just learnt what they were, Plath’s lines require a level of inward analysis of its readers. It’s a show me don’t tell me difference.
This also does nothing to address the reasons why many people, myself included, actually dislike Taylor Swift: the white mediocrity; the self-serving “feminism”; a willingness to use her money and power to sue anyone she feels like; and, dare I say it, the just plain bad music.
And before anyone says it, I will save you the breath (and typing time). Disliking Taylor Swift does not make me a bad feminist. It does not have anything to do with her being a woman. I think she sucks as a human and makes shitty music. To suggest that I can only dislike her because I have rejected my femininity undermines my own agency as a woman. And that is bad feminism.
December 24, 2025
i’m gratified to see maggie nelson thinking deeply about taylor swift and yet. something about this struck me in a kind of odd way. this essay is written in reaction to TTPD. i know im reading the slicks too late, and this is influencing my takeaway, but all the same: i think id be more interested to hear nelson’s take now, post engagement photo shoot and disney plus multiple part miniseries and podcast album reveal and the song “wood”. 3.5?
December 14, 2025
I really don't understand this book. feels like a chat gpt comparison or a middle school paper
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July 31, 2025АААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААААА
November 8, 2025
This really makes me want to read the Ariel poems again and maybe even listen to some Taylor Swift songs. Thank you Random House UK and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
December 9, 2025
Opin eilen, että Maggie Nelson on Taylor Swift -fani. Tämä oli pieni ja (itselleni) kiinnostavaa essee Sylvia Plathista ja Taylorista. Maggie Nelson osaa kyllä kirjoittaa.
Jäin miettimään sitä, miten Nelson asettaa vastakkain MAGAn naisvihan ja naistähtien menestyksen. Koska essee oon kirjoitettu ja julkaistu ekan kerran jo vuonna 2024, minulla herää kysymys, mitäköhän Nelson mahtaa ajatella Taylorin viimeisimmistä toimista (tai niiden puutteesta), jotka ovat menestyksen mittaluokan takia täysin politisoituneita. Minusta Nelson kirjoittaa Taylorista tämän oman narratiivin mukaisesti ja ohittaa monia mutkittaita aiheita, kuten Taylorin hyvin valkoisen feminismin, hetkittäisen uhriutumisen sekä ylenmääräisen vaurauden ja sen tuonan vastuun tai velvollisuuden. Taylorin tarkastelu kunnianhimoisena kirjoittajana, joka käytttää henkilökohtaisia kokemuksiaan polttoaineena, on toimiva, joskin läpikoluttu. Sanottakoon, että Plathin kanssa tarkasteluun tietysti sopiva.
Enpä tiedä, tekee mieli lukea jotain Sylvia Plathia.
Jäin miettimään sitä, miten Nelson asettaa vastakkain MAGAn naisvihan ja naistähtien menestyksen. Koska essee oon kirjoitettu ja julkaistu ekan kerran jo vuonna 2024, minulla herää kysymys, mitäköhän Nelson mahtaa ajatella Taylorin viimeisimmistä toimista (tai niiden puutteesta), jotka ovat menestyksen mittaluokan takia täysin politisoituneita. Minusta Nelson kirjoittaa Taylorista tämän oman narratiivin mukaisesti ja ohittaa monia mutkittaita aiheita, kuten Taylorin hyvin valkoisen feminismin, hetkittäisen uhriutumisen sekä ylenmääräisen vaurauden ja sen tuonan vastuun tai velvollisuuden. Taylorin tarkastelu kunnianhimoisena kirjoittajana, joka käytttää henkilökohtaisia kokemuksiaan polttoaineena, on toimiva, joskin läpikoluttu. Sanottakoon, että Plathin kanssa tarkasteluun tietysti sopiva.
Enpä tiedä, tekee mieli lukea jotain Sylvia Plathia.
January 10, 2026
I mean, this feels like a book made for me - I’m a Maggie Nelson and Sylvia Plath stan, and I have mixed feelings about Taylor Swift.
‘The Slicks’ is an essay that compares the works, attitude and reception of two female artists who have generated significant amounts of controversy as well as fame.
I particularly enjoyed the exploration of Sophrostyne, a term I hadn’t heard before. I am fascinated by the disdain that we as a society feel towards women who openly seek abundance, economic growth, and recognition (this is not to say that I think billionaires are an acceptable concept, even if female).
I think there were a few parts that I would have loved to be fleshed out a little more, although perhaps that it because I continually crave more words from Maggie Nelson.
‘The Slicks’ is an essay that compares the works, attitude and reception of two female artists who have generated significant amounts of controversy as well as fame.
I particularly enjoyed the exploration of Sophrostyne, a term I hadn’t heard before. I am fascinated by the disdain that we as a society feel towards women who openly seek abundance, economic growth, and recognition (this is not to say that I think billionaires are an acceptable concept, even if female).
I think there were a few parts that I would have loved to be fleshed out a little more, although perhaps that it because I continually crave more words from Maggie Nelson.
January 19, 2026
A truly disappointing book from an author whose work I have otherwise consistently enjoyed. This read like the sort of self-indulgent fluff piece someone might post on their substack, not a[n] (ostensibly) professionally edited work by an experienced and well-respected literary critic. I like Taylor swift, I like Sylvia Plath, and I love and respect Maggie Nelson. But this book had absolutely nothing to offer me.
Insubstantial analysis strung together to form paragraphs that amount to nothing more than a collection of sentences. Vast generalisations, sloppy argumentation and vague comparisons make up the bulk of what feels like a painfully long 80 pages.
I truly don’t know what to say. As other reviewers have stated this book is so shit that it undermines the credibility of everything else she’s written. How did we get from the Art of Cruelty to this? How is it that the author of Something Bright, Then Holes has nothing of substance to say for a whole 55 pages about subjects on which the most jaded Pitchfork writer can wax lyrical? Is this satire? Is someone taking the piss? At $23 for something the length of a takeout menu, it feels like the joke is on me.
Insubstantial analysis strung together to form paragraphs that amount to nothing more than a collection of sentences. Vast generalisations, sloppy argumentation and vague comparisons make up the bulk of what feels like a painfully long 80 pages.
I truly don’t know what to say. As other reviewers have stated this book is so shit that it undermines the credibility of everything else she’s written. How did we get from the Art of Cruelty to this? How is it that the author of Something Bright, Then Holes has nothing of substance to say for a whole 55 pages about subjects on which the most jaded Pitchfork writer can wax lyrical? Is this satire? Is someone taking the piss? At $23 for something the length of a takeout menu, it feels like the joke is on me.
January 3, 2026
Underbaked. Made me roll my eyes.
November 14, 2025
It was what it said on the tin - nothing revolutionary for those of us who spend our time thinking a lot about Taylor Swift but good and interesting all the same.
November 26, 2025
Goodness even with the easiest targets lined up, it still whiffs like a loser supreme: an antiquated theoretical base propped up by arguments too thin to hold anything together.
September 21, 2025
Maggie Nelson, please come back. I want another 200 pages of this. It was too short to delve into all the avenues you opened up! I picked this up because I was interested in reading what a mind like Nelson's had to say about Taylor Swift. Like her, I find myself constantly in the defensive: I love Taylor Swift, but I feel like I shouldn't and while I interrogate that emotion all the time, I can't escape it. And like Nelson too, I have always been fascinated and drawn in by how much Taylor Swift wants fame and does not hide it. Despite it, the Taylor Swift sections felt a bit underbaked. Some of the songs and lyrics that she used as examples were not the most convincing, although there were flashes of interesting ideas here and there.
However, what Nelson has to say about Sylvia Plath (perhaps because I knew less about her, perhaps because Plath is such a tragic figure, a tragedy that has been exploited) and her desire for fame was much more productive. I think the problem was space: there was so much more to say about the appeal of the personal and our fear of it, and I wanted Nelson to say more about why she is unconvinced of the arguments against the personal that she (rightly) points out tend to re-emerge under new guises every decade.
However, what Nelson has to say about Sylvia Plath (perhaps because I knew less about her, perhaps because Plath is such a tragic figure, a tragedy that has been exploited) and her desire for fame was much more productive. I think the problem was space: there was so much more to say about the appeal of the personal and our fear of it, and I wanted Nelson to say more about why she is unconvinced of the arguments against the personal that she (rightly) points out tend to re-emerge under new guises every decade.
December 17, 2025
A strange experience reading Nelson deride “inequity and autocracy” while glorifying a ‘billionaire feminist’ girl-boss who “dominates”; adopt a progressive stance on climate change while ignoring Swift as the most consistent celebrity carbon emitter; and warn of the MAGA threat while Swift—unlike other artists—allowed her music to be used by the Trump administration.
Embarrassingly unenjoyable. Nelson writes clearly, but here language strains to polish a conceptual turd.
Embarrassingly unenjoyable. Nelson writes clearly, but here language strains to polish a conceptual turd.
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