TIME Magazine named Taylor Swift as the ‘Person of the Year’ of 2023. This made Taylor the first woman to appear twice on a Person of the Year cover since 1927. Taylor was also named Person of the Year by TIME magazine in 2017. At that time, she was recognized as a silence-breaker. She was known to inspire women to speak up for themselves and about sexual misconduct.
Taylor as Person of the Year also marks various firsts for the TIME franchise. This began around a century ago as a method to capture the year via an individual, a group, or any concept that has created an influence on society or the world in the last 12 months, be it for good or bad.
Taylor Swift is the first person to be selected for 2023’s Person of the Year. The reason behind it is her achievement in the field of the arts. Also, she is the fourth individual to be born in the last 50 years.
She is the first woman to be selected for this more than once. Taylor joins a small group of designers, along with various US presidents and influential world leaders.
The history behind the TIME franchise
The franchise was earlier named ‘Man of the Year’ until 1999. The male people who were chosen for this were mostly global leaders, CEOs, or those in positions held by men.
Before 1999, only three women were able to get the title of ‘Woman of the Year’ individually. They were Wallis Simpson in 1936, Queen Elizabeth II in 1952, and Corazon Aquino in 1986.
However, in 2015, almost after 30 years, Angela Merkel, who was then German Chancellor, was named the first individual woman as Person of the Year.
After that, environmental activist Greta Thunberg was named Person of the Year in 2019. In 2020, TIME magazine created 89 new covers to shed some light on the influential women who were unknown throughout the years.
The women that were highlighted ‘were the drummers, to whose beat a century of people marched but even without knowing’, according to the former editor-in-chief Nancy Gibbs.
Getting to know their stories was like an act of discovery and rediscovery where possibilities would come when people looked at and listened to the world made differently by these women.
Taylor Swift is no different in breaking records and creating history.
