In which a city full of Swifties gives us hope for the future...

....This year's biggest pop star shows the way to a strong girl future.

The closest we got to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was at a Dublin comedy club in late June. 

The emcee, as one does, was talking to some of the folks in the front row and asked one man how he and his new drinking buddy — both Americans — came to be there that evening.

“Our wives are at the Taylor Swift concert.”

Along with about 50,000 of their new best friends. There were another 50,000 the next night. And the next.

Dublin was inundated with Swifties that weekend. Sparkles, fringed mini-dresses and fuzzy cowboy hats were everywhere. 

Because the city has a decent public transit network, the tens of thousands of mostly young women, many with sisters or mothers in tow, could spend the day taking in the tourist attractions and cafes (many were too young for the bars) of the Irish capital and still easily make it to fill Aviva Stadium for the three-and-a-half hour evening extravaganza.

The DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) system was ready for them. There were special signs and announcements guiding people who weren’t necessarily familiar with the area as to which station to get off — or “alight” as transit services in Ireland and the UK so charmingly say — for the show.

Swift’s huge fanbase is overwhelmingly female, mostly young, and together they project a kind of feminine power that may have some real impact on the world of politics and policy, even help elect the first female U.S. president.

If we’re lucky.

The Swift ethos is undeniably feminine: jewelry and spangles and the color pink. Lots of pink. Short skirts, bare shoulders, dressing in a way that calls out to one another and makes them all feel stronger, a team. They make new friends, exchanging friendship bracelets with others standing in line.

They aren’t showing off to attract or impress men or boys, but to support each other. The feeling it gives is one of feminine empowerment. Less come-hither than “In your dreams, little man” — the theme of many of Swift’s songs.

Weeks later, when Joe Biden decided to stand down in favor of new Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, supportive internet images and memes that quickly sprang up were in the Swiftian style. 

They portray Harris as very strongly feminine, some in relatively low-cut necklines or slit skirts showing a lot of leg, in a determined, powerful posture. Or dressed and equipped as the Statue of Liberty, again with more skin showing. Or Harris in a tight-fitting Captain America costume taking on supervillain Donald Trump.

Apparently we are past the notion that a woman in power has to project a motherly or grandmotherly image, like Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Indira Gandhi or Golda Meir. 

Harris and another Democratic rising star, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — who, speaking of Captain America, has a 1940s film star Agent Carter look — don’t have to dowdy themselves down to be taken seriously.

The personal is the political, even if Swift didn’t set out for it to be that way.

There was an absurd commentary piece recently in what’s left of the once-proud Newsweek recently, “Taylor Swift Is Not a Good Role Model,” because she is 34, unmarried and childless.

She’s just the most popular pop star so far this century, selling out multiple nights at giant football stadiums all over the world, a self-made billionaire who donates millions to charities around the world and exudes affection and support to her zillions of young fans. In a way, she has millions of children, mostly girls. She loves them and they love her. 

As someone for young women to look up to, they could do a lot worse.

Meanwhile, someone dug up a TV interview with Ohio Sen. JD Vance, from before he became Donald Trump’s running mate, denouncing people like Harris and Swift as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

The tsunami of online reaction has been the rising of cat ladies across the world, not all of them childless, who want to know just who these people are who assume they are miserable just because they don’t live the way some white males think they should.

Vance is pushing the idea that parents should get an extra vote in every election, one for each child, on the grounds that only parents have any stake in the future because they have children to worry about.

That reveals a horrid view of humanity. The idea that each of us only cares about our own children and not about anyone else’s. Or everyone else’s. 

So clearly, the Republicans care about their own kids. Democrats care about everyone’s kids. The right wants to make sure their kids get in the lifeboat. The left wants to make sure the ship doesn’t sink.

Like Swift, Dolly Parton and other women who haven’t had their own children — for reasons that are none of your damn business — yet work and give tons of money to help children who need help. That’s how a society survives and thrives.

Time magazine reported that, when Swift was told she was going to be their Person of the Year and they wanted to schedule a photo shoot, her question was, “Can I bring my cat?”

You going to tell her she can’t?

This genii is not going quietly back into the bottle.

The Swift movement is not primarily political. But it is about personal empowerment, which has a political aspect to it.

Last year Swift launched a social media post urging her followers to register to vote — not suggesting who they should vote for — that led to a wave of new voter registrations online.

In the last couple of days the internet was rife with rumors that Swift was about to endorse Harris. She did back the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 and Democratic candidates in her home state of Tennessee, and says she regrets not supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016. She calls out Trump’s violent and autocratic statements and speaks — and sings — for women’s and LGBT rights. 

Swift’s lyrics, which millions of young women apparently can recite by heart, are not just about lost love and creepy ex-boyfriends — of which she seems to have had many. Her recent hits are about strength in the face of bad luck, unfairness and heartbreak — much of it caused by men. How to succeed by womaning up and working through it. 

[I didn’t know any Swift lyrics until I looked them up.]

“You know you’re good when you can do it with a broken heart.”

Or

…I’m so sick of running as fast as I can

Wondering if I'd get there quicker

If I was a man…

Or

“…control your urges to scream about all the people you hate

'Cause shade never made anybody less gay…”

[Not that this is all new. It recalls what was said about actress and dancer Ginger Rogers, best known to many as the on-screen partner of Fred Astaire in a series of 1930s musicals. Rogers did everything that Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.]

Yes, it’s all just this year’s big — really big — pop star come to town. It could all fade away in a few months. It could also be a social phenomenon that will have a deeper impact than anything we saw with Madonna, Elvis or even the Beatles. 

It all could keep going, in a wave of pink, all the way to the White House.