In the first minutes of “Miss Americana,” Taylor Swift is wearing overalls and surrounded by her journals that she has kept from age 13 to now at 30, browsing through her words and discussing her journey through moral codes, writing with pencil vs. quill and ink and “a need to be thought of as good.”

“Obviously I’m not a perfect person by any stretch, but overall the main thing that I always tried to be was just a good girl,” she states as a montage of scratchy home videos of a young Swift appears on-screen. 

“I was so fulfilled by approval that that was it,” she voices, “I became the person who everyone wanted me to be.”

This desperate need for approval permeates every corner of director Lana Wilson’s new documentary highlighting everything from the loneliness to the political awakening of Taylor Swift’s late-career. Released on Netflix on Jan. 31, the 90-minute film manages to do something no one thought was possible—showcase a side of Swift that hasn’t yet been exposed. 

Whether it be through her characteristically personal and take-no-prisoners songwriting or her status as the world’s biggest pop star, Swift has lived her seemingly lavish life without one basic privilege—the privacy of shadows. Every insider-look, pop star documentary possesses some kind of “the ugly side of fame” narrative that tends to make audiences roll their eyes. Feeling bad for people who have achieved every one of their wildest dreams and live in mansions doesn’t always seem like a fun activity. Even so, “Miss Americana” proves different. 

It’s an amazing feat to remain so normal when you’re music’s biggest star. Swift has never turned to drugs or alcohol or shaving her head. Yet, “Miss Americana” captures her often crippling loneliness and self-destructive tendencies that she has never been public about in a life so devoted to transparency. 

Early on in the film, Swift sits in a pale pink pajama set as she hears via speakerphone that she has not been nominated for the big 2018 Grammy categories (Album, Record and Song of the year) for her album “reputation.” Her stomach-dropping hurt is tangible as she tears up and repeatedly interjects, “I just need to make a better record.” When she hangs up the phone, she is alone, reinforcing a recurring theme in her life. 

 

However, this documentary proves that even when Swift was at “the mountaintop” winning her 2016 Album of the Year Grammy for “1989,” she was still isolated. 

“I didn’t have a partner that I climbed it [the mountain] with that I could high five,” Swift expressed, “I didn’t have anyone to talk to that could relate… I had my mom? But I just wondered, ‘Shouldn’t I have someone that I could call right now?’”

With her signature “girl gang” that has accompanied her since her 1989 era, comments like this actually prove shocking to the audience. Can’t she call up one of her famous friends and then pop champagne at an after-party? With the absurd level of fame that Swift has acquired—the type of fame where she is awkwardly and unknowingly used as a pawn in a surprise marriage proposal or bombarded by massive crowds of fans and paparazzi every time she leaves her apartment—audiences are thrust into a realization of just how bad wanting to chase your dreams can get, and the often evil repercussions of people liking you. 

Taylor Swift likes being liked—a lot. Not only does she say this herself at multiple points in “Miss Americana,” but it is evident in the way she overanalyzes simple everyday activities. However, this documentary shows that through her struggle she has arrived, fully scarred yet still happy, at the pearly gates of powerful feminine strength. 

Swift is a wildly inspiring woman and fierce feminist: she is in control in all of her studio sessions with male producers, she has all the ideas for her male-directed music videos, she is the one giving other male pop stars directions. 

Her constantly negative encounters with men are piercingly evident throughout the film. This is palpable in one of “Miss Americana”’s major storylines about Swift’s coming-out about one of the most American things—politics. 

In a room with her mom and three other white, older men (including Swift’s father), Swift cries as she faces backlash from the men in the room as they laughably tell her that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby never got involved with politics so she shouldn’t. In perhaps the most powerful scene in the film, Swift passionately speaks out against Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn because she votes against fair pay for women, the Violence against Women Act and LGBTQ rights. Swift eventually putting her support behind the two Democratic candidates for the 2018 midterm elections in her home state via social media became a mere catalyst for her highly involved political activism since then. 

In lieu of these strong feminist undertones that weave throughout the film, Swift discusses her 2017 sexual assault court case in which a radio DJ had groped her backstage during her RED tour back in 2013. Swift won. “Miss Americana” shows Swift reflecting on her anger at the process, how the details had been twisted and how often things like this happen to women. 

“You don’t feel a sense of any victory when you win because the process is so dehumanizing,” Swift states. 

Audiences see Swift as someone completely new in these integral parts of her private life that have been made so public and misconstrued in the past. In another part of the documentary, Swift discussed a never-revealed eating disorder while driving as a passenger of an armored SUV. The documentary also effectively swerves and neglects to really comment on the 2016 Kanye West scandal, merely focusing on the pain she felt when #TaylorSwiftisoverparty was No. 1 trending on Twitter. For someone who likes approval to such an intense degree, fans turning on her is the sincerest form of horror. 

However, through all of its heavy subject matters, Wilson did not shy away from showing the happy parts of Swift’s life. Shots are weaved together of cheeky videos of her cat walking across her piano as she plays, sipping white wine with best friend Abigail Anderson, and her long-term and very private boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, hugging her after a show with his face hidden. 

“Miss Americana” is a look at a multifaceted woman with a multifaceted life: a woman who has had her life planned years in advance since she was 18, who has struggled through her mom’s cancer, who nonchalantly looks at her phone while chatting about how some guy broke into her apartment and slept in her bed a few months ago. As polarizing as opinions about Swift can become, this documentary succeeds in offering some well-warranted understanding into who the object of everyone’s scrutiny is when she’s not under anyone’s. 

“I want to still have a sharp pen, and a thin skin, and an open heart,” Swift says. She’s not the same as she was 15 years ago singing country music at Nashville coffee shops, but she still has that—a true Miss Americana.