Taylor Swift's Desire to Be the Modern Elizabeth Taylor and the Wedding of the Century

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This past weekend was the 4th of July. Or, it was for everyone who wasn't obsessively watching social media for news of the biggest event, presumably, of the century: the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. There were various types of wedding watchers online: Those cared about it very much, those who posted that they didn't care about it at all, those who posted "jokes" about being at the wedding or were content to spread misinformation and AI slop under the guise of "exclusive" photos.

My social media feed became littered with TnT commentary but mostly I saw a lot of class commentary between those who felt the wedding was a gross example of billionaire overconsumption, and those who felt that Swift was being unfairly blamed for the wrongs of men who had far more money than her. At the end of the day, most of us still know little about the actual wedding (or, hell, if a wedding even really took place this weekend), but lots of people had opinions about it and, by extension, Swift herself.

And those things fascinate me as well, but I'm more interested in a pervasive comparison Swift herself keeps making, and that popped up over this weekend: her desire to emulate actress Elizabeth Taylor.

A few stray Taylor comparisons have popped up so far, the main one being Swift's decision to have Madison Square Garden as her wedding venue. As reported by Architectural Digest, MSG was the site of a massive party hosted by Taylor's third husband, Mike Todd, to celebrate the release of his film Around the World in 80 Days in 1957. Taylor was "was in attendance and cut a 14-foot-high cake during the soirée." That's alongside stories that Swift's dress was allegedly modeled on Taylor's 1950 Helen Rose-designed gown she wore to her first marriage to Conrad Hilton. (Now, I'm not saying their situations are similar but not sure I'd want connections to a marriage that lasted eight months and ended with allegations of abuse.)