After two years of dating, Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce are officially engaged. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” Swift wrote on Instagram, where she posted photos of her and Kelce embracing in a garden, and her finger bejeweled with an engagement ring estimated to cost $550,000.
Swifties met the news with cheers, overjoyed to see their favorite pop star reach another milestone after she announced her upcoming 12th album The Life of a Showgirl earlier this month and bought back the rights to her catalog in June. Celebrities like Rachel Sennott, Sabrina Carpenter, and fellow Chiefs couple Patrick and Brittany Mahomes celebrated the news on social media. Even U.S. President Donald Trump wished Swift and Kelce luck, despite Swift being a registered democratic voter.
It truly seems like the stars are aligning for Miss Americana, but not all fans are happy.
Living a Lie
Enter the Gaylors: a pocket of the Swiftie population dedicated to proving that Swift, who has only ever been in relationships with men her whole public life, is a closeted bisexual or lesbian. They also believe that instead of dating women in public, Swift leaves clues and easter eggs about her sexuality in her music.
Gaylors’ reactions to Swift’s engagement are mixed. Some are “happy for her” and her “golden retriever man,” while others find ways to explain her engagement in the context of her supposed queerness.
“She’s in black and white stripes… like she’s in jail,” said a Redditor.
Under a thread about the engagement, a user said, “I mean, it’s just the next step in having a beard.”
“For all we know, she just wanted an excuse to wear the actual wedding ring she got from her actual WIFE!” another Reddit user said, before writing in parentheses, “Somebody please just put me away at this point.”
In a separate thread, a Redditor said, “I just want to let those of you who are not thrilled about this news know that your feelings are valid to me… It doesn’t matter if you think she’s bi, lesbian, straight, or whatever; you’re allowed to be disappointed or feel misled.”
Conspiracy Theories
At face value, the Gaylors seem to function in the realm of conspiracy, which, like the concepts of flat earth and the Illuminati, always lean unserious. It’s also just disrespectful to speculate on one’s sexuality. But is there any merit to the Gaylor theory?
Rumors that Swift liked women started in the early 2010s, when Swift wrote friend and actress Dianna Agron’s name in the liner notes for her song “22” off the album Red, leading fans to speculate that the two were secretly romantically involved. Agron, however, denied dating Swift, telling Rolling Stone in a 2023 interview, “I mean, there have been many stories about my dating life that are so wildly untrue. That’s funny.”
2014 saw the rise of another ship: Kaylor, or Taylor and supermodel best friend Karlie Kloss. Rumors of the two dating started when a photo of two women that looked like Swift and Kloss enjoying a The 1975 concert appeared on the internet. It didn’t help that it looked like they were making out. But like Agron, a representative of Swift told ET that year that the rumor is “crap.”
So what spurs the Gaylors on? Is it the rainbow-splattered “You Need to Calm Down” music video, which showed Swift expressing her allyship and support for the LGBTQ+ community? Is it “betty,” from her seminal pandemic album folklore, where the singer seemed to implore a girl to forgive her for her infidelity (even though the song was written in the perspective of a fictional “James”)?
Maybe The Life of a Showgirl will spawn new theories about her romantic persuasions. For now, we congratulate Swift and Kelce for what will no doubt be the most watched and tweeted celebrity wedding of the century.
