Modern Art Analysis - The Life of a Showgirl (Through the Lens of the Rococo Period)

On October 3rd, 2025, Taylor Swift released her highly anticipated album Life of a Showgirl, the album that promised to bring a fresh, extravagant sound drawing from emotions built up over her titular Eras Tour, the very tour that brought many fans together in cult-like fashion, and possibly the biggest moment in her career. Many Swifties were on the edge of their seats, and 38 album variants released and 1.4 billion streams later... Fans were left sorely disappointed.

While we could talk about the recycling of her older pop hits, the corny references, awkward usage of AAVE slang, and the continued obsession over exes, I’m much more interested in the themes of the album itself and performing a comparison, treating the album as an art and a commodity through the lens of an art history nerd. 

Yes, loves. Today we’re going to be analyzing Taylor’s Life of a Showgirl, through the context of art history, and I know the perfect period that encapsulates the themes of the album. So with that, lets dive into the rivetting life of a showgirl.

Starting with the obvious, the album title The Life of a Showgirl suggests a grand, performative life, with the “showgirl” role a very feminine one. While lyrically it's questionable, the ideas explored are ideas of love, the fear of never finding love, and failing to perform, with playful sensuality and sexual innuendo mixed in. 

Taylor Swift, a well-known billionaire, shares throughout her songs how she wants a boring and "domestic" life, and how, while everybody else wants frivolous things, this life she wants is so quaint but so out of reach to her, which might be because of her popularity and the spotlight she finds herself under, which is anything but her choice. But throughout the album, we see the issue in how these wants are unbalanced with her enjoyment of her more frivolous style.

While many of her songs repeat themes, like "The Fate of Ophelia", "Honey", and "Opalite" speak about her feelings of love and romantic fantasies, while "Father Figure", "Eldest Daughter", and "CANCELLED!" talk about how gritty and cutthroat her rich and performative lifestyle is, the songs i'm particulary interested in are “Wi$h Li$t”, "Wood" and "The Life of a Showgirl", as I find these to be the holy trinity of popular Rococo themes and issues.

As a quick overview The Rococo Period, a style originating in France from 1715-1774, is described as overtly feminine. A soft style that depicts playfulness, immature love, and whimsical fun. And if this is sounding familiar, you’ll know the most famous aspect of the Rococo Period is how truly out of touch its nobility was. So let's start with our first song.

WI$H LI$T

Wi$h Li$t is a fascinating song, as whether purposeful or not (which, the conclusion is leading towards not), it's a walking contradiction. The song describes this yearning for domestic life, while everybody else seems to want a "yacht life".

The album, though painful, tries its hardest to paint Taylor's struggles, but does it in a way that comes off.. Tone deaf. Rather than a deep reflection it feels more like a flaunting of commodity- and a rich woman lamenting how she can't have a "basic" lifestyle, when unlike many people who cannot afford housing or the "driveway with the basketball hoop" she speaks of, her situation is admittedly self-afflicted.

"Wi$h Li$t" is her wish list for everything she wants, and how quiet and quaint it is compared to whatever everybody else wants, which is the "rich" lifestyle. The assumption made in the song is that these are all normal things that everybody wants and that everybody is as superficial as "balenciaga shades" and "an oscar on the bathroom floor". The lack of acknowledgment of current modern-day issues, which many of her fans deal with every day, completely contradicts the escapist reality she's created in Wi$h Li$t, as the average American can't even afford housing, let alone half the things she's saying people want.

In her lists of wants she describes a driveaway, three kids, and especially a house and the song portrays it as painfully out of reach. She who has literal billions, but finds herself unable to obtain them as well.

If it's attempting to be relatable, it misses the mark and shows how out of touch she is, and the song almost sounds like it punches down when she mentions in her lyrics, "They want those three dogs that they call their kids", when for many people, pets being their pseudo kids is their reality.

"Wi$h Li$t" I feel captures the out-of-touch nature of the Rococo period and their nobles, and feels more like a flaunting of wealth and all things unattainable to anyone who isn't rich and talented, especially when we hear targeted lyrics like "They want a contract with Real Madrid", being a normal thing that everybody wants.

It feels similar to Marie Antoinette, with her portrait depicting her in muslin —or "peasant clothes" clothes. While that was inappropriate for many different reasons at the time, it represents the out of touch nature and the idea of a noble "putting on peasant's clothes" is an idea we still see today.

WOOD

Wood is... Special. Special in the way that it's the most vulgar innuendo-wise in the album, but special in the way that it genuinely feels like the frivolous, playful love of the Rococo period. From the immature title in reference to her fiancé's genitalia, as well as the consistent references to it through euphemisms and clever worldplay, it truly is Fragonard's The Swing, incredibly tame.

Throughout the song, she references superstitions and says how she doesn't have to "knock on wood", in reference to both the superstition of knocking on wood and her partner.

There isn't much to say about the song, but there's playful lines like "forgive me, it sounds cocky" (get it?) "Redwood tree", and "I don't need to catch a bouquet to know a hard rock is on the way."

It's a simple song that touches on simple themes, but nonetheless it matches this world of romantic fantasies and immature fun that many Rococo art works were about.

THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL

This final song we'll discuss, I feel, is the penultimate of the album, as well as the themes we're discussing- mainly on the attitude of the wealthy aristocrats and how art was not only used for their pleasure, but also as a way of propaganda.

The Life of a Showgirl is from the perspective of a fictional character named "Miss Kitty", a famous showgirl who took the eyes of many, which later in the song we find this character to represent Taylor (and in proximity, Sabrina Carpenter, who featured on the song).

Miss Kitty describes how difficult it is to be a showgirl and how difficult a rich life is, and how behind the spotlight her life is disappointing and miserable.

I find this song to be, next to Wi$h Li$t, the most tone deaf. Lyrics include lines like "You don't know the life of a showgirl, babe. And you're never, ever gonna.", and how even discussing the struggles of her family background, the worst that was said is that her father "whored around" and her mother "took pills and played tennis", which in regards to modern society, playing tennis is often linked to a retirement full of leisure and fun, rather than something the poor or middle class do.

In an attempt to paint herself in a sympathetic light that people wouldn't understand how difficult it is, this wraps around to telling a song of an upper-class woman and her commitment to performance- her pain hidden by "lipstick and lace" but exemplifies how much she enjoys this life, being particularly catty in her warnings of the life of a showgirl.

The song loops around to this idea when Taylor undergoes her lyrical transformation into being Miss Kitty, the showgirl, rather than speaking to Miss Kitty. We see it in the following lyrics:

I took her pearls of wisdom, hung them from my neck

I paid my dues with every bruise. I knew what to expect.

Do you wanna take a skate on the ice inside my veins?

They ripped me off like false lashes and then threw me away.

And all the headshots on the walls

Of the dance hall are the bitches

Who wish i'd hurry up and die.

But I'm immortal now, baby dolls.

I couldn't if I tried.

So I say.

"Thank you for the lovely bouquet"

I'm married to the hustle

And now I know the life of a showgirl, babe.

And I'll never know another.

The Life of a Showgirl, like its inspiration and intended theme, is a feminine commodity. It's a story of Taylor's struggle to balance her capitalistic endeavors with a more modest, quaint lifestyle. How she desperately hates the spotlight but loves it oh-so-much, and as the final and title song of the album, I find that The Life of a Showgirl captures so many different ideas. From Rococo levels of escapism, immature and youthful love, and countless attempts to paint herself as a more sympathetic person who cares and has normal wants like a house and three kids, which she, the billionaire with no reported health issues other than a repeated broken heart, struggles to have.

To me, at least, the album is a Capitalist art piece, one that paints just how out of touch Taylor is as an upper-class white woman, and her outdated references to 50 Cent and slang reminiscent of the early-to-mid 2000s bring us so much closer to understanding how the French lower class felt about Marie Antoinette and similar French aristocrats.

While the songs are okay when the lyrics are ignored, they are at best generic. But for better or worse, Taylor wanted her cake and to eat it too, and Swifties have been left with the crumbs.

WORKS CITED

Dalugdug, M. (2025, October 13). Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” shatters US sales records, dominates singles chart. Music Business Worldwide. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/taylor-swifts-the-life-of-a-showgirl-shatters-us-sales-records-dominates-us-singles-chart/

Love, I. (2021, August 26). French Rococo: The Iconic Works of this Movement. TheCollector. https://www.thecollector.com/iconic-works-french-rococo-art-movement/

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Taylor Swift (Ft. Sabrina Carpenter) – The Life of a Showgirl. (2025). Genius. https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-the-life-of-a-showgirl-lyrics

Taylor Swift – Wood. (2025). Genius. https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-wood-lyrics

Taylor Swift – Wi$h Li$t. (2025). Genius. https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-wi-h-li-t-lyrics

Victoria and Albert Museum. (2024). V&A · The Rococo style – an introduction. Victoria and Albert Museum. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-rococo-style-an-introduction#slideshow=74976771&slide=0

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