Felicity, Taylor Swift, and Celebrating Joy

What if we stopped compromising ourselves?

I started rewatching Felicity recently.

I loved this show when it came out in 1998 with young Keri Russell, Scott Foley, and Scott Speedman. The premise: On a whim, brainy and introverted Felicity Porter follows her high-school crush Ben to college in New York City all because of what Ben writes in her yearbook. They never talked in high school but Ben writes something that makes her feel seen—like someone actually noticed her all those years. She turns down her acceptance at Stanford to attend “The University of New York”, not to be confused with NYU, of course. Her parents are pissed because who turns down Stanford?

My brother and sister used to tease me about this series, not just because of the melodramatic teen/college angst and love triangle storyline. They used to joke that Felicity was really about me. Like Felicity, I was supposed to be a premed student at Stanford but after my freshman year, I transferred to Columbia to study art history. My sister was convinced there had to be a guy involved because who leaves Stanford? Stanford is like the promised land, more country club than college campus. People usually leave Columbia, not the other way around.

There’s an episode from Season 2 called “The List.” It’s Felicity’s sophomore year and she and Ben have started seeing each other—finally! But it’s early days and she agrees to keep things casual in order to keep Ben happy.

But casual isn’t Felicity’s style and she doesn’t want to compromise herself just to be with Ben so they break up. She says:

“I’m an emotional person. I feel things and I need to be able to get upset and to talk about how I’m feeling. I mean, that’s just—that’s who I am and I can’t change it. I don’t want to. And the thing is, you knew that. You knew it and you still pursued me.”

I’ve been thinking about that scene and those lines.

About the way that Felicity doesn’t apologize for who she is.

About all the ways in which people, women in particular, have been forced to compromise, to shave off pieces of ourselves—parts of our personality, habits, emotions, things that we love, our literal bodies—in order to become acceptable, lovable, successful.

About how the parts that we often cleave in order to become more acceptable or cool are the things that we’re embarrassed by. The dorky things. The “guilty pleasures” (although I had that phrase and the notion that pleasure has to be guilty). The silly dances and sing-alongs that you used to do with your friends at sleepovers.

About how we do this more and more as we get older and that sometimes it feels like you’re just left with a sliver of yourself by the time you emerge in middle age.

About how most often, the things that we leave behind are the things that bring us joy.

Photo by Stephen Mease on Unsplash

I was thinking about this again as I watched the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie over the weekend.

I was surprised by how emotional I was when the movie started. I mean, I love Taylor Swift but I’m not a hardcore Swiftie. It was weird and unexpected but I realized it was in part because I was in a space where I could just enjoy what I wanted to enjoy. I could dance in my seat and sing out loud. I made of point of not constantly checking in with my 14-year old son to see if he was bored. (OK, I did a few times.) I could take joy in this thing that made me happy and made me feel a little more like me.

And maybe it was also watching Taylor masterfully cycle through each of her eras. The old Taylors aren’t actually dead. They’re alive and well because she wouldn’t be where she is today without the younger versions of herself, even the cringey ones. She plays up the earnest, who-me, expressions during “The Man” and the silly faces during the cabaret-style set for “Vigilante Shit”. She doesn’t try to play it totally straight and cool and she’s not embarrassed by who she is and what she’s accomplished.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner sums it up in a recent story for The New York Times Magazine.

“Maybe that’s what Eras really is: the acknowledgement of girls as people to memorialize, of who we are and who we were, all existing in the same body, on the same timeline. You are your sluttiest version, your silliest version, your most wholesome, your smartest, your dumbest, your saddest, your happiest—all at once.”

Because what if we didn’t compromise ourselves? What if we didn’t feel shame about who we are when we’re alone or with our closest friends? What if, instead of slicing our life and ourselves into separate eras and keeping them distinct we just recognize that they’re all part of the whole?

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Seeing the joy and happiness in the theater, in the packed stadiums, on stage, on the giant screen, across social media felt really important.

Kayla Kleinman

reminded me that women are so often shamed for the things that we love. (See guilty pleasure reference above.)

But this was an unapologetic space. Seeing that happiness and hope and pleasure celebrated felt like validation and permission to stop cleaving parts of ourselves, to stop apologizing for the things that make us happy.

Maybe I’m in the midlife portal of crisis or change of transformation where I’m trying to figure out what I really want out of life, what I want to make of the years I have left.

Maybe I am like Felicity. I don’t want to change who I am anymore and I want to feel all the emotions, especially the joy.

Right now, the things that bring me joy are Felicity, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, romance books, walking without crutches, writing fiction, crisp fall weather, the neighborhood Halloween decorations, apple pie.

I’m also itching to play with watercolors? Maybe it’s that I want to create and be creative in a way that doesn’t involve words or staring at a screen. What I do know is that I don’t want to justify this urge to paint.

What brings you joy?

What I’m Reading

• This was such a good piece on Britney Spears, exploitation, and bodily autonomy.

• How cycle syncing trades on biological essentialism and diet culture.

• Ahh the thighmaster and its enduring legacy.

• Looking forward to reading Caster Semenya’s book.

Plus, I was a guest on the Burnt Toast podcast last week! I’m a huge fan of Virginia’s work and it was an honor to talk to her about all the misogyny in sports and science.

"We Have Only Recently Acknowledged That Female Athletes Need to Eat."

Thanks for being here. More soon.

Christine