I hate Taylor Swift

It’s a secret I’ve kept for nearly eight years. Eight years of lying to my friends, family and most importantly myself.

I hate Taylor Swift.

In 2008 the world was graced with the joyous human being that is Taylor Swift, and in the eight very long years since, people have been obsessed with her. Love Story, which I can admit is my jam even though I hate myself for saying it, jumped immediately to number one, and no school disco or year eight sleepover was complete without everyone singing along. Of course I know all the lyrics since it was literally slammed down my throat for a good two years.

I can’t lie. I did initially like her. I’m a big fan of country, and her unique blend of country white girl pop was very appealing to me. Then in walked, actually ran, Kanye West. The year was 2009. The stage the MTV video music awards. The problem? Single Ladies lost to You Belong With Me for best female music video. In fairness, all my issues with Taylor and You Belong With Me aren’t to do with Kanye, but I could see why he was pissed. Single Ladies was a jam, and a mediocre white girl and had just snatched it away from Queen Bey. I’mma let you finish, but we’re all pretty well-versed with what happened next.

Thus began Taylor’s reign of playing the victim, and oh how well she’s played it. Every guy she ever dated got a catty song written after them, when they broke up, in which she sang about how much boys sucked and how her heart had be broken again. But behind the scenes Taylor was looking like more and more of a bad friend, not a heartbroken victim. She was slammed by Katy Perry, but quickly restored peace with Kanye. They became friends, he sent her flowers, it was iconic. Babe please.

And then, once we had all settled down, and the waves had calmed, rap and pop had been restored to harmony again, in walks life of Pablo, and all of sudden poor little Taylor swift, was once again playing the victim. She accepted a Grammy and made a typical superior speech slamming Kanye. Kim K, my queen, had had enough. How dare this girl say she didn’t know about the lyrics when she was there when he asked her? How dare she slam her precious Kanye? She literally blasted Taylor to kingdom come and now I can finally say my piece without getting attacked by 12-year-old trolls on the Internet.

I hate her.

The hate started small, initially I just thought she was a bit fake. She preached all these messages about how girls should support each other, and yet most of her songs that were about girls were either about how she was better than them because “she wore t-shirts”. Honestly what kind of lyric? Do only cool, weird girls wear t shirts? Can you be popular and wear one? On Bad Blood – widely regarded as a dig at Katy Perry for something as trivial as stealing her backing dancers – Taylor showed how privileged, sheltered and petty she really was.

Swift is a bad example to women purely because of her constant need to play the innocent victim. Even when she was called out on her own lies she continued to act as though nothing’s wrong, or as though she’s 15 and got in the wrong crowd at school. But Taylor Swift is 26. She’s a grown woman.

Taylor swift does have some good messages – she’s not bad through and through. But the problem is she doesn’t practice what she preaches. Her PR campaign seems hellbent on a bizarre mission to make her look like a good role model for young girls – but she doesn’t act like one. If she was a normal person, someone at your university, rather than a celebrity, she’d be the girl who talks about “not being like other girls”.

Bad Blood is the peak of her artistic range, and she should have stopped swiftly at that point.