Fans wave Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce cutouts in in Kansas City, Missouri.Sam Greene/Reuters
When a Taylor Swift relationship becomes public, it often invites the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for political figures who declare intentions of seeking a higher office. Think, for example, of Matty Healy, front man of The 1975, who was promptly cancelled by Swift’s fans soon after their relationship went public for racist comments he made on a podcast. Swift herself has written extensively about the unforgiving nature of the spotlight that comes along with dating her.
It’s a delight, then, to see Travis Kelce, Swift’s current boyfriend and star player for the Kansas City Chiefs, navigate the vetting with grace and humour and sincerity. He’s crying at concerts. He’s vibing to songs in the VIP tent at the Eras Tour. In interviews, he is loudly professing his admiration for his megafamous partner. And in doing all of this, he is rewriting the expectations we have of a much-maligned archetype: the bro.
Like other stereotypes, the “bro” descriptor is flat, a two-dimensional rendering of a person. The bro cares about his image, which is to say he cares about appearing carefree and competent and invulnerable and unbothered. Think Matthew McConaughey in How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days or McConaughey in Failure to Launch or … just think McConaughey in most of his early work, I suppose.
Everything is a little bit of a joke to the bro, except when it comes to his field of accomplishment, because then it’s dead serious. This is true regardless of your bro prefix of choice (crypto bro, golf bro, film bro, Zizek bro, etc). The point is: We don’t know what to do with the bro – admonish him for his shallow pool interests or admire him for his capacity to accomplish great things within a narrow band of activities (say, football)?
Enter: Travis Kelce.
Kelce’s star was rising outside the football field before he started dating Swift. The pair started seeing each other in the summer of 2023, but even before that, Kelce had already guest-hosted Saturday Night Live, and was flirting with Hollywood opportunities – all enough to necessitate a Vanity Fair profile that came out months before the relationship went public.
By now, the story of the beginning of his courtship with Swift is well-established: Kelce tried (and failed) to give Swift his number on a friendship bracelet at an Eras Tour concert. What has ensued since then has been a much-publicized romance – he used his NFL season break to attend Eras Tour shows in Argentina. (There, Swift changed the lines to her hit Karma from “Karma is the guy on the screen,” a reference to her actor ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, to “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs.” Kelce covered his face with his hands in delight.) Swift, in turn, began attending NFL games and brought new fans to the sport. Since then, Kelce has spent parts of his off-season attending Swift’s record-breaking tour – he has attended 13 shows in eight countries so far.
As public attention intensified on the couple, Kelce withstood public appraisal – from unearthed old tweets (my favourite: “I just gave a squirle a peice of bread and it straight smashed all of it!!!! I had no idea they ate bread like that!! Haha #crazy”) to people wondering if his Kansas house was good enough for Swift (he bought a new one).
But what makes Kelce an endearing subversion of the bro has been his willingness to directly engage with the torrent of attention that comes with dating Swift, knowing he is likely to always be the second-most famous person in the room. He seems to revel in letting her shine. He lets her, in Swiftie parlance, bejewelled. On a podcast, Kelce recently declared that “You want to keep things private, but at the same time, I’m not here to hide anything. That’s my girl. You know what I mean? That’s my lady. It’s like I’m proud of that.” The hosts swooned with him.
It’s worth noting that the podcast where Kelce made this declaration, Bussin’ with the Boys, is owned by Barstool Sports, perhaps the bro-iest media outlet available right now (the theme song for the podcast gently croons that “no woman’s gonna tell us what to do”). Kelce traverses the most bro spaces with ease, his credentials already established. Though his relationship with Swift has led to some corners of the bro internet lashing out (some have questioned his masculinity, calling him a “soy boy”), Kelce’s commitment to never pretending to be too cool to display affection for his pop star girlfriend has led to ESPN star and arch-bro Pat McAfee defending Kelce and Swift’s relationship.
Perhaps my favourite public moment that Kelce and Swift have shared so far happened recently at an Eras Tour stop in London. Swift brought Kelce out on stage for the introduction to I Can Do It With A Broken Heart. Kelce’s role was relatively minor, joining a brief onstage skit, but here’s what stuck out for me: He performed his duties without a hint of irony or isn’t-this-a-bit-silly detachment. Kelce was smiling, but he was taking it seriously. It’s easy to imagine any other bro in his place treating it as a joke. Kelce never did.
It’s not lost on me that there is a world where Kelce is primarily known as a three-time Super Bowl champion who has already long secured his legacy on the field. The conventional bro wisdom is to take that to the bank, spin it into your next career, use your bro bona fides to propel you into the next public stage. Just ask Tom Brady.
Kelce is far from the only bro to complicate his bro image by being willing to share interests outside his field. There’s NBA player Kevin Love’s appreciation of art, or fellow NBA star Jimmy Butler’s serious interest in country music. But what makes Kelce unique is his willingness to completely subvert what he is known for – his apparent comfort with headline after headline contextualizing him mostly as a character in Swift’s world.
After spending significant time on the road with Swift, Kelce has returned to training camp with the Chiefs. The people who wondered if the public profile of the relationship will affect Kelce’s football performance went silent after he won a Super Bowl while dating Swift. But they’ll almost certainly be watchful again this season. A traditional bro might succumb to the pressure to stop drawing attention to his relationship, to retreat into the expected nonchalance.
As Kelce returns to his bro-centric football world after a summer of Eras Tour-hopping, one hopes he remains publicly emotional and invested, disregarding whatever section of the bro code enforces nonchalance and indifference. As far as I can tell, he’s not too cool for any of it – and just through that, he expands our understanding of the bro, making a more tender performance of masculinity possible for everyone.