Miss Americana and Feminism: the Perception of Malaysian towards Taylor Swift's Feminism

Tan, Jian Cheng (2022) Miss Americana and Feminism: the Perception of Malaysian towards Taylor Swift's Feminism. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Feminism in Malaysia is still a rather underexplored concept, as most Malaysian still think that feminism is a Western concept and it is improper in the country. This has caused several problems such as Malaysians are lacking the knowledge towards feminism and also unfair laws towards women being prevalent in the country. Thus, this paper analyses the perception of Malaysian towards pop icon Taylor Swift’s feminism. Specifically, to determine how much feminism elements being shown in Taylor Swift’s media content and to find out the perceptions of Malaysian towards the feminism elements potrayed by Taylor Swift in her media content. To answer these two research questions, the researcher has utilised three media content of Swift, which are a music video, a speech, and a short film to conduct content analysis. Also, the researcher has created an online survey questionnaire using Google Forms in order to collect responses from 400 respondents. The results revealed that the three media content chosen for content analysis displayed a high amount of feminist messages, frequently displaying elements that are explainable with the theories such as the Feminist Theory and Psychoanalytic Theory. The abundant of feminist content in Swift’s media content indicated that it is relevant to women in the society, and to a greater extent, influencing Malaysian women as well. Meanwhile, the second objective is also achieved as the researcher found that Malaysian are highly supportive towards the feminist messages portrayed in Swift’s songs; highly approving of the changes of portrayals in feminism throughout Swift’s career, as well as depicting positive perception towards her as a feminist icon in general. It is found that most respondents perceive Swift as a great feminist icon in Malaysia. Therefore, the researcher has recommended some suggestions directed to four different parties which include universities, government, Swifties, and feminist organisations in order to tackle the issues mentioned above