Ellen Aim Is The Girl Millennial Men Wanted: We Got Taylor Swift Instead
- Frank Cervi
- Jun 25
- 9 min read
TJ Martinell is an author, writer, and award-winning investigative reporter from the Seattle area. He can be frequently seen roaming the Cascade Mountains.
Ellen Aim Is The Girl Millennial Men Wanted:
We Got Taylor Swift Instead
by TJ Martinell
A while back Frank Cervi wrote an essay about how Taylor Swift conveys in both her songs and personal life the dating journey of the typical single Millennial woman. Cervi conducted a thorough exploration of all the different psychological dynamics at play with the crypto-religious fervor surrounding Swift’s career, especially during her concert tour.
Another aspect of the Taylor Swift phenomenon that doesn’t get discussed enough is that this is what Millennial men got handed to them, both in terms of entertainment and music, but also with dating. I often wonder if a lot of Millennial men who dare to describe themselves as “Swifties” like her because she’s all they’ve ever known, as if we couldn’t have gotten something better.
In another time, another place, we could have, but we didn’t.
Millennials as a generation had a unique experience growing up due to the cultural, social, political, and technological transformations occurring simultaneously, but I think it gets even more distinct when you break it down between the sexes once we graduated from high school. Millennial men grew up thinking they were going to inherit the world they were raised in, even as it was falling apart, which included relatively healthy relations (comparatively speaking) between the sexes.
Instead, a hookup culture became the norm on college campuses that renounced any vestige of normal, sane dating rituals, followed by aging Baby Boomer managers and supervisors post-Great Recession selecting Millennial female peers via hiring and promotional preferences. As they took over the workforce and out-earned their Millennial male peers, Taylor Swift and other Millennial women were defining a culture in which their male counterparts were locked out in terms of influence.
I understand that there have been other female singers who have found success without the same messaging. “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer is a wholesome song of young love. Avril Lavigne’s breakout song “Sk8Boi,” was a warning to girls not to overlook boys with potential to become great.
But neither of these singers or groups have caught on like Taylor Swift, because unlike them she has acted as the voice of Millennial women, especially with regards towards men their age. The theme of her music expressed in songs like “Blank Space” is a pathological desire for “bad boys” whom she’s drawn to because she identifies with their toxic behavior.
It wasn’t until I recently watched the 1984 film Streets of Fire that I truly appreciated not so much what we lost, but what we wanted and were denied.
Set in “another time, another place” that combines 1980s aesthetics and sociology with 1950s motorcycle/car/song culture, Streets of Fire concerns an ex-soldier named Tom Cody rescuing his ex-girlfriend Ellen Aim from a motorcycle gang run by a very young William Defoe. Ellen Aim, played by (also very young) Diane Lane, is a gorgeous nightclub singer.
The film director was initially reluctant to cast Lane, who was just 18 at the time, but her emotional maturity and commitment to pulling off the part eventually won him over. He would have made a terrible mistake not picking her.
If there was an anti-Taylor Swift, Ellen Aim is it.
Virtually everything about Ellen Aim as a singer is in direct contrast with Taylor Swift, from her demeanor and femininity to her poise and the lyrics of her songs.
Although at one point very early on I enjoyed the occasional Swift song, I never found her appearance to be “my type” and, even in her prime, did not find her attractive.
The words that come to mind when I see her include “sterility,” “asexuality,” androgyny,” and “unsensual,” which are appropriate words for a generation of women who practically treated birth control like Catholics do the Eucharist, and view childbirth as something on part with that gut-bursting scene from Alien.
Taylor Swift is like a living, walking female doll that, while not ugly on a superficial level, doesn’t quite pass the Uncanny Valley test, because we sense there’s something amiss when you look deeper. As Cervi noted, she carries herself awkwardly, rather than with feminine grace and smoothness, which we see in music videos like “Delicate.” Other music videos like for the song “Look What You Made Me Do” have a slightly pudgy version of her prancing around amid satanic-inspired imagery while surrounded by a bunch of cross-dressing, gay black men in high heels. The aesthetics accurately reflect the dystopian Weimer-era we live in.
Contrast that with Ellen Aim singing at the beginning of Streets of Fire. The song is steeped in adrenaline, and I now blast it whenever I’m driving. Ellen Aim’s presence oozes estrogen energy that would have any masculine men spellbound. She’s scarcely a young woman, but she moves and holds herself with confidence that only comes from a woman comfortable in her own body. She dresses in an outfit that may be somewhat out of fashion in the year 2025 (which might be a good thing) but it complements her hourglass figure rather than hide an unsightly physique.
People can argue all they want about how good of a voice Taylor Swift has on a technical level, but to me it’s a moot point as far as I’m concerned. Louis Armstrong didn’t have a “good voice” and sounded like he was in dire need of a good throat clearing, but that voice had character. While Diane Lane did not do the singing, the two women that did (Laurie Sargent and Holly Sherwood) offer all the vibes of the 1980s energy, optimism, and momentum. Taylor Swift’s voice reeks of cattiness, arrogant entitlement, and privilege.
Finally, there’s the issue of men. What attitude do their songs communicate about them?
The totality of Taylor Swift’s career of songwriting conveys the quintessential mindset of Millennial women: A total lack of trust in men, but a desire for the worst of them and a need to control them collectively. Taylor Swift’s songs don’t scream sincere yearning for a true man in the sense that we men think of one.
There’s been all sorts of endless debates about what “muh real man” truly is for over a decade, but I think a good definition of a real man is one who deals with his problems rather than run from them or dump them on other people.
Taylor Swift, and so many of her female fans, want a man who will deal with her, because as she so explicitly put it in one song, “I'm the problem it's me." The conundrum with that is the only men who will deal with girls like her are men who are also the problem in their own lives that they won’t deal with, because they too are the problem.
Overall, it’s an incredibly poisonous mindset that views relationships and men as things to manipulate and control, rather than cultivate and cherish. It’s a celebration of mutual codependence between two broken humans who are brought together by their common flaws they don’t want to resolve.
Not only is it poisonous, but it’s also childish, as Cervi writes:
Taylor may be mid, but she is clever.
All of her albums, when you put them together in chronological order, are a timeline of the modern female experience that runs parallel to their youth, looks and fertility.
They do the lovey dovey thing in high school, then they start their party years playing the field because they are in their prime sexual years and can get Chad, but more importantly, they never ever truly want to grow up.
No greater contrast can be offered than the ending scene to Streets of Fire, in which Ellen Aim gets back up on stage after coming to terms with her ex-boyfriend. Tom Cody gives one of the best lines this side of the classic film noir right before she begins singing “Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young,” an incredibly beautiful anthem that is also now on my music list.
The way their relationship concludes is the precise opposite of anything remotely like Taylor Swift, either in life or in song; Tom Cody acknowledges that Ellen Aim is bound for great success and fame, but he’s not one to “carry your guitar cases for you. But if you ever need me, I’m there.”
You can watch the ending scene here, or you can simply read some of the pertinent lyrics from the song below:
But I don't see any angels in the city
I don't hear any holy choirs sing
And if I can't get an angel
I can still get a boy
And a boy'll be the next best thing
The next best thing to an angel
A boy'll be the next best thing
I've got a dream 'bout a boy in a castle
And he's dancing like a cat on the stairs
He's got the fire of a prince in his eyes
And the thunder of a drum in his ears
I've got a dream 'bout a boy on a star
Lookin' down upon the rim of the world
He's there all alone and dreamin' of someone like me
I'm not an angel but at least I'm a girl
One can argue the lyrics are cheesy but imagine if a girl like Ellen Aim got up and sang this song in front of a group of young men today.
What reaction do you think she would get?
Conversely, how would a crowd of Swifties react to her?
Can you imagine the look on the face of a typical Millennial woman listening to that kind of sentiment?
When James Bond films first came out, there was a saying that after the movies ended, all the girls walked out desiring to be with Bond, but every boy and man walked out a little taller.
That’s exactly what a singer like Ellen Aim would have done, had we had one for our generation. The lyrics are inspiring. “I can’t get an angel, but if I can get a boy that’s the next best thing. I’m not an angel, only a girl - will the boy want to be with me?” Ellen Aim is not singing about dysfunctional relationships that “last for a weekend,” but a boy with “the fire of a prince in his eyes.”
I understand that neither Diane Lane or the two female singers wrote the song lyrics, and they were in fact written by a man, but to me that really doesn’t matter. Not every member of the Beach Boys who sang the songs wrote them. A lot of people love Quiet Riot’s rendition of “Cum on Feel the Noize,” even though theirs was a cover version and their lead singer, ironically, tried to cover it so poorly their studio wouldn’t release it.
Would it matter that we found out Taylor Swift wrote none of her songs, and they too were written by a man? Or that she didn’t even know how to sing?
Taylor Swift didn’t drive or define the cultural zeitgeist we have now.
The songs, and her personal life, articulated it.
As Cervi writes:
This is why I say she is more a reflection than the cause. Whether conscious of it or not, Taylor Swift has perfectly catered to the modern female condition. The majority of her fans have literally moved with her through her Twenties and now early Thirties. And each album and songs reflect the very same stages that women experience through their early years, party years, and now their epiphany years.
In a similar manner, the rise of the “Manosphere” or “Red Pill” section of the internet during the 2010s was the product of the same cultural changes that Taylor Swift championed. People could and can hate what was written all they want, but these online spaces discussed real issues young men at the time faced as they were forced into survival mode within the world of dating. Insofar as dating was concerned, the “Manosphere” wasn’t about what men wanted in a woman, but what women offered and what men had to do to get it.
The extent to which relationships between the sexes has been rendered too often hostile by default makes it difficult for men to acknowledge this, but female beauty expressed and manifested in many forms inspires men to do great things. Helen of Troy’s face may not have literally launched a thousand ships, but if the underlying premise wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be a myth that’s lasted for millennia. During World War 2, U.S. military officials protested the attempted censorship of Vargas pinup art girls by the federal government, because the presence of a beautiful girl’s picture boosted morale among the troops. Some soldiers were even found dead clinging to a pinup girl’s pic.
Men will build civilizations and die for an ideal woman, even in the abstract.
That’s what Millennial men wanted: An beautiful face and voice that inspired greatness as we entered the 21st Century. The kind of woman who openly craved a man she could admire and look up to. The kind of gal that Ellen Aim represented as a singer.
But it wasn’t meant to be.
Instead, we got Taylor Swift, who symbolizes the way in which poor female dating choices inevitably leading to modern, subsidized spinsterhood have been enabled, rationalized, and coddled within mainstream culture. Her songs are battle hymns of a gender war she didn’t start, but one she has aided and abetted through her career.
Ellen Aim and Streets of Fire are a reminder that it didn’t have to be this way, and one can only hope that in “another time, another place,” some lucky young bastards find that out in the best way possible.
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