Taylor Swift’s Fertility, Caitlin Clark’s Agility

Writ-large, we still expect women in some way to “perform” for us.

Unless you’re all-in on the Cowboy Carter album or you’re a big political/ideological person and think this is the moment of Kristi Noem or someone, it would be hard to argue that the two biggest female names in pop culture over the last six to 12 months are Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark, for almost utterly different reasons. (In a nice little twist, apparently Clark is a late bloomer to the Tay-Tay fandom relative to her age bracket; she went to Eras Tour in Minneapolis, but I believe she’s said in interviews that it was her first Taylor concert.)

We adore these two women (or talk shit on them) for different reasons, although both come down ultimately to performance. Taylor is famous because she writes songs well, is a keen businesswoman, and performs three-hour shows that make people cry. Caitlin is famous because she performs well (screw the lack of a title) and drills deep balls better than Steph Curry and Dame Lillard, which has to mean something.

The idea of valuing a woman for a performance is not new. We’ve valued both men and women for performance for generations. It’s probably more pronounced for women, I.e. “Are you a mom yet?” or “Are you a girl boss yet?” Women seem to constantly live…