Abstract
This essay argues that cool operates not as an aesthetic preference but as a feeling rule—a socially enforced constraint on which emotions are permissible in public life. Drawing on Thornton's concept of subcultural capital, Goffman's dramaturgical framework, and Hochschild's theory of feeling rules, the paper identifies three structural requirements of cool: distinction in the mode of appreciation, performative concealment of effort, and emotional constraint. Taylor Swift violates all three. Through analysis of the Eras Tour, Swift's songwriting, her public persona, and the ritual practices of her fandom, the essay demonstrates that Swift's cultural significance lies not in her popularity but in her accessibility—her fandom's refusal to deploy interpretive sophistication as a gatekeeping mechanism. The essay concludes that the extraordinary emotional energy generated by the Eras Tour reveals the suppressed demand for spaces where the cool feeling rule is suspended, and that the social cost of cool—the labor of performed indifference—is higher than the culture acknowledges.
Recommended Citation
Lively, Kathryn J.
(2026)
"We’ve Been Dying From Trying: Taylor Swift, Earnestness, and the Collective Repudiation of Cool.,"
The Manuscript: Journal of Taylor Swift Studies: Vol. 1:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
Available at:
https://orb.binghamton.edu/jotss/vol1/iss1/6
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