If you stepped foot into my private, all-girls, Episcopalian high school, you’d hear Taylor Swift, followed by chapel hymns. As with many of her fans, my peers assumed a cult-like gravitas surrounding the singer. 

Consumed by her raw lyrics, familiar rhythms and a myriad of countdowns to small Easter eggs for upcoming work, I watched many classmates revolve their lives around Swift with themed class government campaigns and chapel speeches, late-night listening parties and the constant influx of her music being pumped through every school speaker. 

To critique Swift was the equivalent of slaughtering their most beloved pet, or placing an age-old curse over their firstborns. I enjoyed Swift’s early work at one point but eventually turned away as the art shifted to excessive product pushing, marketing tactics, and monotonous lyricism. 

Swift and her posse of bootlickers often overrun such opinions, many of whom are initially mesmerized by the glitz and glamour and later wrapped into her parasocial web, blinded by her victim complex and false advertising as a down-to-earth, relatable figure.

One must begin at the surface level to peel back the layers of Swift’s perfect visage of innocence. Personally, when I think of Swift, there’s a quick rabbit hole from her radio hits, to the essential SNL Swiftamine skit, to her fans crying on TikTok over cardigans and other paraphernalia. 

It is impossible to think of Swift without marketing, and perhaps even music marketing itself without Swift. The most recent incidence of her calculated publicity stunts occurred on Aug. 26 and might just be her greatest yet: her engagement. 

It does not come as a surprise. With the official reveal of her newest album being Aug. 12 and the release date set as Oct. 3, there’s quite a wide gap when the excitement of a new project loses momentum for fans. So, she gets engaged to Travis Kelce — at least publicly, some speculate. For Swift, maintaining relevance even in the off-periods between projects is nonnegotiable. 

Breaking the internet and her cult’s minds with the engagement, the amount of speculating and theorizing that will follow is enough to bridge that gap. In another effort to draw out excitement, seven variants of the upcoming album were released over the span of a few days, each one presenting one of three album covers, with a different colored record inside. 

While retailing at around $30 per vinyl, six of the seven variants are considered “limited edition.” This lights a fire under the die-hards to collect the full set before the album comes out, even if it comes down to selling a kidney for the full set on eBay for an easy $850. Better start polishing your piggy bank for the 14 variants we’ll see of the divorce album. 

In all seriousness, there is nothing wrong with enjoying multiple copies of the same product like this. In Swift’s case, however, a trick like this only takes away from smaller artists who make most of their funds through merch sales. 

The vinyl industry operates at a slow pace, considering it was dead for so long and only recently revived. For a music mogul such as Swift, album variants are going to take precedence in vinyl orders, considering she can pay for more to be processed. This pushes smaller artists who may have ordered only so many copies closer to the bottom of the waitlist, possibly working their way back up just in time to be met with a re-recording by Swift. 

Of course, other artists have followed similar paths when it comes to physical music collections; however, this isn’t Swift’s first time stepping on the toes, or should I say gown, of smaller artists. Vinyls aside, Swift has been known to release variants of songs when another popular female artist is about to release a big project. 

This began all the way back in 2017, when Swift re-released her music catalogue onto Spotify after removing it in 2014, claiming that “music should not be free” since “music is art, and art is important and rare.” Rare, of course, unless you’re Swift, who seems to have an unlimited supply of musical backwash she keeps dumping onto the charts. This coincidentally occurred on the same day Katy Perry released her new album, “Witness.” 

The same pattern followed later in 2024, when three versions of Swift’s album “The Tortured Poets Department” were released alongside Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft.” The same year, Swift dropped a UK-exclusive variant of the same album at the end of the charting week, blocking Charli XCX’s “Brat” from the No. 1 spot. 

The music industry is competitive, but this repetitive behavior is downright greedy and feels like a cash grab. It is common practice to release an album or EP’s worth of remixes and alternative versions of previous work, but Swift chops her existing work up and repurposes a handful of monotonous remakes to push herself to the top and downplay the success of her fellow female artists.

Again, it is not surprising that star feminist Swift plays the field better than Kelce can. With another layer of her public persona peeled back comes more deception: Swift plays sides, hard. She attempts to make her life digestible to fans, curating a polished image of a righteous feminist role model. Forming parasocial relationships by interacting only with those who will go to war for her, she even goes as far as to invite a select few mega fans to her home to bake cookies and listen to a new album before release. 

Not only does this incite her mob to back her up on any given issue and continue to rapidly consume the never ending sludge of product she creates, it also opens doors to darker subjects. 

Politically, we see Swift as a liberal figure, speaking out against Trump’s presidency, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and out-of-nowhere queer themes in her album, “Lover.” Fast forward to the present day, and her associations with Kelce have found her hanging around prominent “Make America Great Again” figures such as Taylor Lewan and Will Compton. Her lackluster endorsement of Harris in 2024, following the circulation of an AI photo of her endorsing Trump, along with her seeming abandonment of gay ally as a personality trait, further undercuts her image. 

Of course, people change, but this is the same woman who did not address when a group of white supremacists claimed she was part of the Aryan agenda until much later, but did threaten a lawsuit against the blogger who called it out in a post. To this day, she chooses not to speak out on important social and political issues, but goes to chant her exes’ names in a mirror and watch Swift appear with a cease and desist like attorney Bloody Mary. 

Now that she’s had a tremendously successful Eras Tour, a cult-like following, and bought her masters back, Swift can fit snugly back into her right-wing pocket, counting her dollars while we count her carbon emissions.

You can’t put it past Swift to whine about her haters when she finds herself in hot water — or even just a lukewarm puddle. Being “for the girls,” her music is obviously made for women, yet many of her big hits are dominated by her experiences with men. 

Any critique of this male centeredness during Swift’s transition to being a “girl’s girl” was immediately shot down, even when done in a lighthearted manner, such as Amy Poehler and Tina Fey at the 2013 Golden Globes joking that she should take time for herself before finding another celebrity to date. Swift is quoted replying, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” which was also incorrectly credited to Katie Couric. Seems a bit harsh of a response to a good natured joke, but for a self-declared feminist, it seems like Swift only employs feminism when she feels threatened. 

The exact same scenario repeated in 2021 with a joke from the show “Ginny and Georgia.” The jab that Georgia goes through men faster than Taylor Swift was quickly shut down, Swift responding, “2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back.” More recent instances also include her supposedly demanding songwriting credit on Olivia Rodrigo’s “Deja Vu,” which Swift claimed copied her bridge on her song “Cruel Summer.” Not to mention her association with Matty Healy, who’s well known for being particularly degrading to Black women. 

I would be amiss to not mention her song “Bad Blood” tearing down Perry as well, or her misinterpretation of a tweet by Nicki Minaj, later followed by a reactive response assuming a comment regarding systemic issues in the music industry was aimed at her.

Many women in show business are vilified for behaving exactly as a man would under the same circumstances. I don’t hate Swift for sharing her art and seeking love, success and wealth along the way, but her actions are distinctly greedy and borderline narcissistic at times. 

If you adore her music, good for you, but considering the toss-up in her stances, her misuse of feminism and her weaponization of her adoring fans that enable her to dodge taking accountability, it is clear Swift has lost the plot of authenticity. She has sold out, recasting herself as a victimized billionaire, packaged as your feminist icon, best friend and jetsetting high school English teacher.