"Can You See Right Through Me?" Examining the Impact Of Taylor Swift's Discography On College-Aged Women Through TikTok

Women in college experience a variety of mental health concerns from eating disorders to maladaptive perfectionism to loneliness. Many college-aged women use artist Taylor Swift’s songs to express their mental health concerns and create a community with one another. I created a dataset from the social media platform, TikTok, using a methodology which allowed me to select TikToks based on hashtags, audio sounds, and trends, using the platform’s “Search” feature. Through a process of thematic coding, I concluded the primary themes were fear of failure, rejection, perfectionism, the role of the eldest daughter, first-generation guilt, and parental relationships. I argue that through Swift’s rhetoric and melodies, college-aged women have created a social media community about a journey through identity reformation from internal and external pressures. In this thesis, I explore how each of the themes is important to college women and how they express the themes through social media.