WATCH: Taylor Swift Becomes A Man – Literally – In Music Video ‘The Man’ That She Directed

Taylor Swift is the man behind her latest music video. Literally, she gender swaps and dresses up as a man. 

Swift’s latest single from her studio album Lover contemplates what her career would have been like had she been born a male.

In the music video, Swift uses prosthetics and makeup to become the archetype of a hyper-masculine alpha-bro. He gets away with aggressively yelling at his co-workers, he marries a much younger lady, he does a line of cocaine off a woman’s stomach at a club, he pees in public and then gets lauded as “world’s best dad” for spending minimal time with his child. 

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“The Man” is Swift’s solo directorial debut. She previously co-directed the music video, “You Need to Calm Down” with Drew Kirsch. It is fitting for Swift to direct the video for a song written about gender inequality in the year 2020, where there were more male winners than female nominees during this year’s Oscars.

“I loved the months of prep, meetings, location scouting, set design, mood boards, deciding every detail down to the wardrobe each actress/actor wore + working with them on set,” Swift wrote. 

The gender-swapping music video concept is not ground breaking. In 2017, Selena Gomez dressed up as multiple characters, male and female, in the music video for “Bad Liar.” In 2011, Lady Gaga dressed as her male alter-ego, Jo Calerdone, in her music video for “You And I.” Also, Beyoncé wrote a very similar song way back in 2009 titled, “If I Were A Boy.” Nonetheless, many fans applaud Swift for creating a visual representation of the critiques often voiced amongst women. 

“I could never figure out exactly how to phrase it. I’ve wondered several times, ‘If I had been a man instead of a woman and had lived my life exactly the same way, what would people have said about me? It’s about perception. It’s not, what would I do if I were a man? It’s about how I would be seen if I’d done exactly the same stuff,” Swift previously stated.