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What do Red, Reputation, The Tortured Poets Department, and The Life of a Showgirl all have in common? Not just Taylor Swift, but Taylor Swift's enduring bangs.
In her efforts to avoid being pigeonholed in an aesthetic that would eventually expire, reinvention has become Swift’s brand. This concept was a focal point in her 2020 documentary, Miss Americana: “The female artists that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists,” she said. “They have to. Or else you’re out of a job.”
Swift has explained that this pressure from the music industry and society in general is one of the main reasons she operates in “eras.” And so far, it’s working. Assigning each of her albums its own tightly curated (and nostalgia-primed) visual code, she made the Eras Tour—the highest-grossing tour in history—possible. The recipe is simple: With each new album comes a shiny new Taylor, complete with a new wardrobe, new special interests, new favorite colors—but somewhat inexplicably, the same blunt, thick bangs.
As the Swiftie lore goes, Taylor Swift first cut her bangs on the eve of her 22nd birthday, while shooting her 2012 Vogue cover. In a behind-the-scenes interview, she explains that the beauty team on set suggested using extensions to create a faux fringe. To this, she replied, “Just cut it. This is Vogue, why not?” And with that, a choice that most women vex over for weeks was made for her—and so, apparently, was a lifelong commitment.
“So, I have bangs now,” proclaimed a Red-era Swift, with uncharacteristic nonchalance. Flash forward 13 years, and while they’ve been bleached, slicked, side-swept, and curtain-parted, they’ve never left her forehead. More than that, Swift’s bangs have become inseparable from her iconography. They were born during the fringe-heavy Tumblr twee movement of the early 2010s but long survived the trend. They stuck around in full force when Swift cut a chin-length bob, and survived into the pastel-dipped Lover period. Although the Reputation cover—cultural reset that it was—gelled the bangs back, Swift took them on tour in full force, framed by edgy, crimped waves.
We saw Swift’s bangs naturally curly during the woodsy Folklore and Evermore eras, then moody and ’70s-coded for Midnights. She began every Eras Tour set with long, straightened hair and classic straight-across bangs to match, and ended most shows with them stuck to her forehead in sweaty waves. She’s shoved them under Chiefs beanies and pulled them out of peppy ponytails as she found her NFL WAG style, and presumably, she’ll take them down the aisle to Travis Kelce.
Swift’s bangs fit right into the Tortured Poet aesthetic, but the promotional imagery for The Life of a Showgirl, which dropped on October 3, 2025, has us asking: Does it really make sense for a showgirl, with her feathered headdress, glittering glam, and relentless performance schedule, to have girl-next-door bangs?
I’ve pledged my undying allegiance to Taylor Swift since I was seven, but my relationship with bangs has been much more complicated. In college I impulsively cut Swift-esque bangs for the first time since kindergarten, and I revived them during a light postgrad identity crisis. Both times I started the grow-out process two weeks after the novelty wore off, and the reality of daily styling, sweaty workouts, and constant hair in my eyes set in. My experience aligns with the majority: Bangs are usually a phase, an “era” for the everywoman.
Taylor Swift has dedicated dozens of songs to the process of navigating identity from adolescence to adulthood, and has spoken on the subject at length—always with an emphasis on constant evolution. It’s ironic, then, that her most enduring, defining beauty choice is one that most people try on for a bit, then outgrow.
“Will Taylor be doing something different with her hair this era?” one user submitted to the anonymous celebrity gossip source Deuxmoi this week. Although she’s showing more forehead than usual in the Ophelia-influenced album cover of The Life of a Showgirl, it looks as though the bangs are here to stay. If she survived her grueling Eras Tour training circuit with a thick fringe, she’ unlikely to forsake them in the name of finite Vegas authenticity.
Through every aesthetic metamorphosis, Swift has clung to core beauty choices that have become the common through-line of her brand: her iconic red lip, her stage-ready cat-eye liner, and most consistently of all, her bangs. In Miss Americana she opened up about the pressure she feels to constantly “reinvent [her]self—but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting but also a challenge.” Her haircut turns out to be the comfort in question. As she leans into more character-driven projects, her strict beauty formula is a reminder that the same relatability-devoted, spotlight-raised, self-proclaimed English class dork is still at the center of the Swiftiverse.
Whether you have a sentimental admiration for Swift’s bangs era, or you’re dying for her to mix things up, you have to admit: She’s impressively committed to making them work. And while a major hair transformation to usher in the new album feels unlikely—especially with bridal looks to consider—we have our glitter at the ready for an era’s worth of showgirl beauty inspiration.
Grace McCarty is the associate beauty editor at Glamour.
