Taylor doesn’t force you to choose, because she is both The Lucky One you want to be, and every bit the Anti-Hero you are inside. Like Taylor, she dresses to be pretty and cool (and sometimes, for revenge), but inside, she is in all kinds of pain. She finds in Taylor Swift an actual hero who meets her where she is but also shows her the badass place she could get to — so intoxicating precisely because it is within reach. “What would Taylor Swift do?” is a refrain among certain patients in my practice. Taylor Swift articulates not only the treachery of bullying but also the cruelty just shy of it that is even more pervasive: meanness, exclusion, intermittent ghosting.

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Persons: —, It’s, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Taylor, she’d, Romeo, Taylor Swift