What makes Taylor Swift cool?

The answer is cheating on your boyfriend.

Jul 02, 2026

It happens again and again. In my neighboring but very different social circles—Dimes Square, the millennial media class, normal people—new friends are shocked that I am a diehard Swiftie. It is more surprising, I think, that I refuse to spend very much time justifying it. I present it early in any relationship as a key tenet of my character, and I don’t qualify: “I really just love 1989,” or “it’s kind of ironic.” It isn’t ironic, and the singular album I don’t like is the only one I could so easily select from her discography; I can’t pick a favorite. As a celebrity, I am moved by her boldness. As a songwriter, I am entertained by her stories and feel affirmed by her passions. She is very often right about how culture will move in the future, how money works, and why people like her. And she knows it. I like that.

New friends always respond with some version of “Taylor Swift is not cool.” The reasons presented are always pretty similar, e.g. she’s childish, makes music for children, dresses like a high schooler, doesn’t fuck. There is really no two ways about it: saying or thinking these things is a sign of inferior critical thinking skills. People have been lazily lobbing these insults for Swift’s entire career, so, almost my entire conscious life. They were once based in kernels of truth, as Swift herself was a child who dressed twee-ly and children liked her music. She was very buttoned up, and didn’t visibly party or get in real trouble. But Taylor Swift is now 36 years old and it is 2026. To me, Taylor Swift is a chronic cheater who has huge boobs and drinks a lot, pouring the spoils of these affairs into harsh and haunting lullabies. I don’t know what reality these other people live in.

Such are the trials of being the most famous entertainer in the Western world. Such are being a lady. For the first part of her career, Swift was lampooned quite seriously for having many boyfriends. Now, she is ridiculed for not having sex enough, not having sex appeal. Beyond my thinking she is beautiful, I will tell you a story. I have had a boyfriend constantly for my entire adult life, each nearly or literally overlapping with the next. People have called me interesting words throughout my life, like “insane” and “pornographic,” and I have never been very happy about any of it. In my evaluation, what makes me interesting to men is that, while I long to follow my deathdrive of fun, I need to make them happy in order to live. What keeps me interested in myself, however, is an unwavering acceptance of boredom and moving on. Other kinds of people seem to like this, that I am harsh and honest. At work, I have always succeeded because I believe in others and defend them fiercely, while also carrying a genetic fluency in how the world—and money—works.

A very central element of Taylor Swift’s public and narrative personas is that she has very much sex appeal, meaning she likes and captures sexual attention, which swirls with her drive to be the best and to crack the story. She is oft compared to her peers, who are said to make sexier pop anthems, most of which are essentially novelty tracks or spoken-word pornography. I like some of them. But Taylor Swift wrote a song seemingly about cheating on a middling actor with a rockstar because the actor was so boring it made her want to kill herself—at the very height of her gratuitous fame.

Allegedly, tomorrow Taylor Swift will celebrate her wedding to American football player Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden. In terms of logistics, BDM has illustrated throughout “Taylor Swift Studies” that nobody really knows what Taylor Swift’s songs are “about,” insofar as their 1:1 correlation to real life people and events. I’d like to lend this framework of her music to her celebrity; no one knows how many “weddings” Taylor Swift has had or will have at her many properties around the world. Not unless she tells us. And even then we won’t know.

The affair is and will be criticized for its grandiose tackiness, perhaps not unlike Swift’s now-iconic corseted tops and platform heels. That is to say the MSG wedding is both perfectly expected and functionally meaningless, in terms of her greater mythos. It is a royal wedding in many ways—sure, I’m excited to see what dress she’s chosen—but as a diehard Swiftie, I don’t really care. I want her to be happy and have fun; getting married to a giant man at Madison Square Garden would make me happy, and I would have fun doing it. I also want her to make detractors mad that she is the God of popular culture; my high school bullies would really hate if I were a billionaire. Something tells me, however, that this will not be her final wedding.

By this I mean what you think—Taylor Swift has tens of songs about cheating on and/or getting bored of many famous and powerful men—but I also just mean that this wedding is not her magnum opus as a celebrity. She can still run an Oscar campaign, something she’s never really done before. She wanted to make a movie. Maybe she will return to country (actually) or get canceled (actually). The way Taylor Swift manipulates her public image suggests to me that she knows all of this, and that, like going on her boyfriend’s podcast or introducing any one of them to her father, this wedding is just something that’s fun for her this month.

Paul McCartney has been married twice since Linda. Mick Jagger has had six public life partners. Rockstardom isn’t just being cool within particular aesthetic parameters, but radiating something unnamable that people are drawn to, and abusing that power. It makes me sound stupid and basic—why my new friends always resist my love for Taylor Swift. But I do wonder if we just don’t know what it looks like when a woman is cool, by virtue of doing whatever she wants.