Exploring the Affective Animation of 'Female-centered Third places': The Eras Tour Phenomenon

Abstract

The 2023-2024 Eras Tour by Taylor Swift became the most-attended solo artist musical tour ever. Existing studies have researched Swift, her fans and her tour in the context of economics, musicology and politics, but less attention has been granted to the way the space of the Eras Tour was affectively animated and how this is reflected in attendee experiences. This thesis hypothesizes the Eras Tour as a “female-centered third place”, drawing on the sociological concept by Ray Oldenburg from 1989. This is done in order to illuminate the affective specificity of such a space and to examine the differentiated treatment third places are subject to when animated by ‘feminized affects’. This thesis investigates what publicly expressed affective attendee experiences of the Eras Tour concerts and responses to this are able to tell us about the specificity of the concept of third places and the gendered behavioral norms surrounding femininities. This is done through a close reading and feminist media analysis on TikTok posts which center around affective experiences in relation to the case study, their accompanying comments and written and published attendee accounts such as the ones in the essay collection T.S.: 13 writers on Taylor Swift. The analysis reveals a relation with the term girlhood and more broadly, femininity, manifested in specific affective experiences surrounding joy, freedom, community and safety. This specific affective occurrence is termed the Eras Tour Phenomenon within this research project. Additionally, reactions and responses to this phenomenon have been analyzed, drawing again from relevant TikTok posts and their comments and written attendee accounts, as well as one example from Dutch mainstream media. This analysis found a divide between destructive comments based on femmephobic mechanisms, as well as responses rooted in misogyny, expressed through benevolent sexism and protective paternalism. This thesis contributes to feminist affect studies by exploring notions surrounding regulations of affective expressions through the lens of femmephobia in order to illustrate of the effects of marginalization and diminishment of feminized affects on behavioral norms in third places.