The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Updates Are Starting to Get Weird

I'll be honest: I ship these two. That said, a few recent eyewitness accounts have thoroughly convinced me that it’s time for us to leave these people alone.

By Kylie Cheung | October 17, 2023 | 5:35pm

Celebrities

The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Updates Are Starting to Get Weird

I ship Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. I can’t help it, truly—there is something so appealing about a hunky star athlete very publicly expressing interest in and courting possibly the most famous woman in the world, with none of the timidity and shyness of her exes. Early on, I ravenously consumed the iterative, continuous updates about Swift and Kelce—from when The Messenger first reported they were “quietly hanging out” to who picked up the tab at the after-party following the first Chiefs game Swift attended that one fateful, overcast afternoon on Sept. 24.

But now, a month or so into their relationship, coverage of Swift and Kelce is getting a little weird. It started, perhaps a couple of weeks ago, when we received the first pap snaps of Kelce appearing to leave Swift’s apartment in Tribeca one morning—the morning before the Chiefs’ game against the Jets in fact. The headlines were not subtle and basically said: Look at these 33-year-old adults who just fucked. That was followed by photos of Swift’s car outside Kelce’s Kansas City mansion—also a little uncomfortable! And Jenna Bush Hager really got the pot stirring Monday morning on Today by revealing that “a friend from Kansas City texted me there might be news” Swift and Kelce are “buying a house” a month or so into their relationship. (Oh, to be young and rich and in love…) And on the Today show on Tuesday, sportscaster Erin Andrews insisted Kelce has a newfound “glow” to him, specifically since he started dating Swift: “That’s a glow-up, girls. He looks fantastic.”

Most Popular

Still, nothing could have prepared me for the coverage of their highly visible date nights in NYC this weekend, with supposed eyewitness accounts of the two at a Saturday Night Live afterparty that has thoroughly convinced me it’s time for us to leave these people alone. I give you this paragraph in a dispatch on said afterparty from People:

Although Swift and Kelce “mingled separately,” the pro athlete “kept going over to her and checking in on her every little while, like, ‘Are you good?’ ” the source says. “He was going over and touching her, putting his hand on her lower back or putting his hands on her waist and then they would do a little kiss and then they would go back to talking to whoever they were talking to. He gave her space to talk to other people in the room, and he talked to a ton of people in the room too.”

I am suddenly transported back to being 12 years old and reading One Direction fanfiction about Louis and Harry on Wattpad in my childhood bedroom.

Sure, there are some cute nuggets of coverage of Swift and Kelce from this weekend, like how he supposedly told her security guard to take the night off because—at 6’5”, 250 pounds—he’d “take it from here.” *swoons* But I just fundamentally don’t think I or anyone needs to read the words “touching her, putting his hand on her lower back or putting his hands on her waist and then they would do a little kiss” about two real-life, nonfictional adults.

Swift and Kelce are both legends in their own respective worlds, though Swift is quite undeniably a legend in all worlds. But they are still real people and eyewitness dispatches that either allude to their sex life or graphic accounts of their PDA feel a little invasive and a lot weird. Maybe we semi-needed the obsessive, minute-by-minute, iterative updates about Swift and Kelce when the world was still confused about what was going on between the two—but we’ve now seen enough photos of them holding hands and walking about town to know what we need to know. They are together!! They are in love (or something like it)!! I am ready to leave it at that.

That being said: Long live this ship! To quote a certain, four-time indicted, former president, “I wish the best for both of them. I hope they enjoy their life, maybe together, maybe not—most likely not.” And wherever this relationship does or doesn’t go, unlike that one Barstool podcaster, I am, personally, all good on any more updates on when and where they’re fucking.