Here are a few things that you could mention when writing about Taylor Swift: her Eras tour is the first to ever gross over $1 billion. She’s beaten two Billboard chart records previously held by the Beatles. She’s recently become the world’s largest contributor to eradicating food poverty per capita. And the V&A has just announced they are hosting an exhibition about her.

 

 

But instead, writing in Newsweek, American conservative John Mac Ghlionn chose to focus on Swift’s suitability as a ‘role model’ to ‘our sisters and daughters’ because, ‘at 34, Swift remains unmarried and childless.’ He went on to condemn her dating 12 men ‘in a few years’, asking what message she was sending to young women about ‘stability, commitment, and even love itself.’

There are not enough friendship bracelets in the world to spell out the stunning levels of hypocrisy Swift faces as the world’s biggest pop star but it’s worth mentioning to those unfamiliar with Tayvis that Travis Kelce, Swift’s boyfriend and NFL star, is also 34 and childless, and yet no one seems to be considering locking away their brothers and sons in fear of what will happen if they watch too many games. Commentators reducing Swift to her dating history and using it to both cast moral judgment and generate clickbait is nothing new, and perhaps one the reasons why there is nothing more Swiftian than how she catches criticism with one hand and throws it back out into the universe as a pop masterpiece with the other.