One of my closest friends hates Taylor Swift and keeps sending me TikToks of people criticizing her. That the carbon dioxide from her private jet is going to kill the planet, that she’s blonde and hegemonic, that she has no talent, and so on. It’s a projection of ethical perfection that people demand from a pop star, yet nobody lives up to in their own lives, let alone demands from their governments. And I can’t help but find it funny. I wonder if the multinational brands my friend wears make their clothes ethically, without enslaving people or harming the planet.

Meanwhile, to paraphrase her, while her haters hate hate hate, Swift is far from all this noise. On August 13, she appeared on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s podcast and said that social media terrifies her, adding that she only goes online to look up information about sourdough, her latest obsession. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, woman whose life is under constant public scrutiny, and who is criticized for what she does or doesn’t do. So she goes on sewing, painting, and sending loaves of sourdough bread to her friends.

As I write this article, she has just announced her engagement to Kelce. The announcement has become one of the most-liked posts in the history of Instagram. It’s heartwarming to see fans’ emotional reactions, saying they feel happy for her as if she were a personal friend. Messages like “Where were you when you found out Taylor got engaged?” She has built a community around her work that speaks to our shared experience of being human in this world. You don’t need to be a teenage girl to feel the pain of heartbreak or the joy of a love that makes you dance in a storm in your best dress.

What interests me about reflecting on Taylor Swift is how people project onto her issues that have nothing to do with her or her work, but with systemic inequity and our own contradictions. You may or may not like her music—that’s another matter. Thousands of millionaires use private jets, and I don’t see TikTokers dragging them daily. For instance, questioning Leonardo DiCaprio for attending Bezos’s wedding. DiCaprio has directed several documentaries about the climate crisis, and Bezos’s company is one of the biggest polluters. At least he was criticized for being poorly dressed—a “fear” that weighs over any woman at any public event.

A selective or contradictory feminism emerges in Swift’s case. At age 19, in the middle of the MTV Awards ceremony, Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech, shouting that Beyoncé deserved the award. At that time, West was a very powerful figure in the U.S. music scene and later married influencer Kim Kardashian. Eventually, West and Swift reconciled, and she even joked about it publicly. But the truce broke when West, in his album Life of Pablo, included the song Famous, where he says Taylor Swift owes him sex because he made her famous. He went even further, using a naked replica doll of Swift in the music video. And further still, when Kardashian released a video showing West speaking with Swift, in which she seemed to agree to a line suggesting they should have sex, but West never revealed the rest of the lyrics. This led to Swift’s public cancellation, despite the evidence being clear.

Even though it happened 15 years ago, this act alone is not enough for some sectors of feminism to defend Swift. A very young artist, insulted and humiliated by an older, very powerful man. A man who spoke in utterly retrograde terms, implying that women must repay “favors” with sex. And let’s be clear: West did her no favors—he simply exposed and demeaned her, protected by his own fame. What made Swift famous was her music and her talent. So then, what are we standing for? Feminism, classism, or racism? Because it seems that if you’re rich and white, you don’t deserve sympathy when attacked for being a woman.

She’s criticized for “white feminism,” and I wonder: when did she ever say she wanted to be a feminist icon and change the entire system? What would the solution be? That because she’s blonde, white, and blue-eyed, she should stay out of the spotlight and just write songs? When she did that too, it went well—for instance, the hit she co-wrote with Calvin Harris for Rihanna, This Is What You Came For. We demand more from Taylor Swift than from the State. And she laughs at us in her songs, like in The Man.

Swift runs her business; she doesn’t theorize about feminism—or rather, she writes about her experiences and the strength she needed to become who she is. She is a full-fledged entrepreneur: producer of her work, director of her videos and audiovisual productions, songwriter of her songs, and since May 23, owner of her masters. But the crowd was chanting "More". Since announcing her engagement, fans and detractors alike are speculating about her future children (because, of course, a woman only marries to become a mother, right?) and whether the engagement ring is good enough. Thankfully, she’s making bread.

It seems some people just want her to overthrow the system itself, to be a Che Guevara dressed in Vivienne Westwood. To fight the very system that makes some people famous and others not. All these demands piled on a pop star, voiced through iPhones made with slave labor in China, on social networks that damage everyone’s mental health—but no, of course, the problem is Taylor Swift, because she sings about the men she’s dated instead of taking on “serious” power. She is a powerful woman, yes, but she plays the men’s game to her own advantage. She aspires to nothing more—and nothing less.

The argument that all of Swift’s music is about her exes is just as baseless. That’s what the press highlights, but it’s not all she writes about—any one of her albums proves that. To cite just one example, in Folklore and Evermore, she takes her storytelling to another level. In Folklore, beyond the well-known triangle of Betty, James, and August, she tells the story of Rebekah Harkness (The Last Great American Dynasty) and recalls a childhood friendship that is both tender and disturbing, given that it’s clearly about a child in a violent family (Seven). In Evermore, in two songs, she narrates a lesbian relationship from both perspectives (’Tis the Damn Season and Dorothea).

She is tough on her exes, but as she herself said, people who don’t want their bad actions exposed shouldn’t treat others badly. A pretty fair and obvious premise, I’d say. She even makes fun of her fans when they get overbearing. Swifties once wrote her a letter asking her to dump Matty Healy because “he was bad for her.” And in But Daddy, I Love Him, she calls them sanctimonious moralists who claim to want the best for her while ignoring her own desires.

In June 2025, photos came out of her, her boyfriend, and two American podcasters aligned with Trump’s politics. Swift has repeatedly made clear that she’s on the opposite side, but her detractors took those photos as “proof” that she secretly supports Make America Great Again. Strangely, someone who guards her public image so carefully would agree to that photo, but claiming it's evidence of her hidden Trump sympathies is nothing more than a conspiracy theory. In her documentary, Miss Americana, we see her arguing publicly with her own team about politics and why she is against Trump. Quentin Tarantino has openly said he doesn’t believe Polanski is a rapist—I’d say that’s a bit more serious than a photo with two fleeting right-wing celebrities. Again, Swift is held to a different standard.

By the time this article is published, her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, will already be out. The title is interesting because it reminds us what she is: a showgirl, a performer. Swift explained that her goal with this album is to show the B-side of fame, what it means to sustain the Eras Tour. Something she began to express in her previous work, The Tortured Poets Department, in songs like Clara Bow or I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.

When you Google her name, a shower of confetti appears and a heart saying, “and, baby, that’s show business for you.” And that’s what we mustn’t forget: what we see is just a show and business, not the seed of a revolution.