Taylor Swift's sexy image pivot has a powerful backstory.

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Taylor Swift is known for her eras and in 2025, she's bringing sexy back in a big way.

The pop star is sexier than she's ever been before. In a series of covers shared for her next album, The Life of a Showgirl, Swift is seen in commanding poses wearing an array of revealing costumes and bedazzled lingerie.

Obviously, she looks goddamn gorgeous, but from the moment I saw that the 'Shake It Off' singer had flashed her whole thigh, I felt a little scandalised.

The Life of a Showgirl: The Shiny Bug Vinyl Collection is available now on my site for 48 hours❤️‍🔥 https://t.co/WzZQh5mMOt

Album Producers: Max Martin, Shellback and Taylor Swift
📸: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott pic.twitter.com/O2eOys1v2r

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 18, 2025

Don't get me wrong, I have no issue seeing women's bodies — I love the shapes of all women, and support any and every body part they wish to display.

As a fan of Sabrina Carpenter, Megan Thee Stallion and Chappell Roan, I'm no delicate flower or prude. However, Taylor Swift's image has always been distinctly different from the pop women who followed her.

Watch the hosts of Mamamia Out Loud debate Taylor's next move. Post continues after video.

Breaking into the industry at the age of 14, Swift was raised in an era of purity rings, God-fearing rhetoric and sexual repression. Her pop music counterparts were fellow teen girls like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato, who put an early emphasis on their squeaky-clean Disney image.

Then there's the added layer of breaking into the country music industry — the music genre Swift got her start — which historically perpetuated religious and conservative values.

This version of the singer was endorsed by Swift's mother, Andrea, who was even filmed suggesting her daughter was dancing too sexy in one rehearsal during her early career.

"I'm not trying to be a prude here, but if I were the mother of a 10-year-old girl in the audience, I'd be [covers girl's face]…. you're not looking at that," she said during one rehearsal.

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A post shared by adry⸆⸉ (@taylorssthread)

As Swift matured and her music evolved into the pop space, the conversation shifted to the songs she had written about her ex-boyfriends — many of whom were famous in their own right.

The conversation reached a fever pitch ahead of Swift's biggest pop record to date, the seminal 1989 released in 2014. Online and in the tabloids, it was impossible to escape the nasty speculation about Swift and what potentially 'went wrong' in her rumoured relationships with Joe Jonas, Harry Styles, John Mayer and Jake Gyllenhaal.

At the 2013 Golden Globes, hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler even joked that they had to keep Swift away from Michael J Fox's son.

My all time favourite bit from all the #GoldenGlobes combined is from 2013, where Tina Fey and Amy Poehler had a go at Glenn Close, Taylor Swift, and RDJ. pic.twitter.com/JHTkN8IlsC

— 𝙨𝙪𝙟𝙤𝙮 •° (@9e3k) January 8, 2024

Swift alluded to this moment in an interview with Vanity Fair, lamenting there was a "special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

In an appearance on Ellen DeGeneres' show, the host showed the singer images of famous men, instructing her to ring a bell if she'd written a song about them, as Swift awkwardly played along.

This kind of commentary was the very topic that Swift addressed in several of her 1989 tracks, especially on 'Shake It Off' and 'Blank Space', which took aim at the slut-shaming she faced, making light of her 'boy crazy' reputation.

But the criticism continued. In perhaps the most notorious moment at the 2015 Grammys, an Entertainment Tonight reporter told Swift: "You're going to walk home with more than maybe just a trophy tonight… I think lots of men."

In a rare moment of defiance for the young star, Swift looked stunned as she replied: "I'm not going to go home with any men. I'm going to hang out with my friends, then I'm going to go home to the cats."

@whynowmusic

As she should 👏👏 #taylorswift #tswift #swifties #interview #musician #clapback #swifttok #funny #baddie #singer #celebrity #taylornation #celebrityinterview #fyp #foryou #foryoupage

♬ original sound - whynow Music

As these conversations loomed, Swift's style evolved to become edgier than her country music era (she cut her signature long curly honey locks into a bleached blonde shaggy bob), but still far more conservative than some of that decade's biggest artists, like Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

At the time, Swift rarely acknowledged in interviews the discourse around her dating life. That was until a 2016 video interview for Vogue, where she warned her teen self that she was "going to date like a normal 20-something should be allowed to, but you're going to be a national lightning rod for slut-shaming."

In the prologue for 1989 (Taylor's Version) released in 2023, which included the vault song 'Slut!', Swift opened up about this time in her life.

She wrote how she had become the "target of slut shaming — the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticised and called out if it happened today."

She admitted that she shifted her behaviour because of it, saying she "swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponised against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era."

Taylor Swift was only 25 when she became a 'lightning rod' for slut-shaming. Image: Getty.

The hypocrisy between how the media reacts to men versus women is staggering. For instance, one of Taylor's exes, Harry Styles, has dated a number of women — famous and otherwise — but doesn't receive a fraction of the sort of commentary Swift endured.

After a high-profile relationship and split from Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, Swift was getting her groove back — until she was caught in her biggest controversy to date, courtesy of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

Swift's cancellation, off the back of some edited footage of a phone conversation between West and Swift being released by Kardashian, would then bring on Swift's divisive Reputation era.

It was a slightly sexier Swift, for sure, but it often came across as if the pop star was playing a caricature of herself, with snake symbols abounding along with 'the old Taylor is dead' supervillain energy. This didn't always translate as the singer being her authentic self.

But her seductive Reputation style was a far cry from her next era, where she shouted 'Spelling is fun!' on Lover's lead single 'ME!' and dressed up like a children's entertainer.

Brendon Urie and Taylor Swift perform onstage at 2019 iHeartRadio Wango Tango. Image: Getty.

If Swift had hinted at her sexier side for Reputation, she truly shut it down for Lover, which was an album largely written about falling in love with actor, Joe Alwyn, who she dated for six years.

Folklore and Evermore brought a folksy flavour to Swift's fashion sensibility. It was whimsical and serene, but sexy? Hard no.

But what this era did bring was a glimpse of the singer as her most uncensored self. She said 'f*ck' on a song for the first time in 'Mad Woman', and she hasn't stopped since, with swear words now loaded into Swift's tracks on Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department.

With Midnights, Swift embraced her 30s and her style began to shift with it. Then she kicked off her monumental Eras Tour, which saw the pop star embracing sexier choreography.

taylor swift realizing how hot she is is the best thing to happen to our world since the invention of the hot pocket pic.twitter.com/2bddwUlodQ

— mimi ⸆⸉ ❤️‍🔥 (@watchinwisteria) May 16, 2024

In particular, the songstress doing some raunchy chair choreography for 'Vigilante Sh*t' delighted her fans.

Of course, this isn't groundbreaking for most female pop stars who have sexiness at the forefront of their brand, but this was a significant shift for Swift.

@that.editor.hailey

I wonder how andrea feels about vigilante shit....#ts #speaknow #fearless #swifttok #taylorswift #theerastour #houstontheerastour #swiftie

♬ original sound - Hailey (Taylor's Version ) 💖

Her red carpet looks during the Midnights and TTPD eras were almost on the sexier side.

And musically, a track on TTPD called 'Guilty As Sin' was the first to explicitly detail the singer's sexual fantasies.

This brings us back to The Life of a Showgirl's cover art, which has fully embraced the many shades of Swift — especially her sexy side.

After enduring two decades of slut-shaming and being judged for literally every facet of her personal life, this is something worth celebrating for a woman who has spent too long having to censor herself to appease the masses.

As she succinctly stated in her anthem 'Anti-Hero': "I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I'm a monster on the hill."

This 'monster' is now ready to shed (and show) her skin, and if anyone has earned the right to be as sexy as possible — it's Taylor-f*cking-Swift.

Feature image: Taylor Swift/Universal.