“Well,” a friend said breathlessly as we sat down for a drink during the summer. “Did you get any tickets?” After registering my visible confusion, she rolled her eyes and muttered, with more than a hint of venom: “Oh, I forgot — you don’t like Taylor Swift.”
It was just one variation of a conversation I’ve had more times than I can count over the last few years. In case you hadn’t noticed, Swift’s superstardom has reached dizzying new heights: when she cancelled a performance in Rio this weekend after a fan died before her concert, it was headline news. And as a 24-year-old woman, with friends who are mostly also 24-year-old women, it is hard to overstate the extent to which I feel like a pariah because I’m not a fan.
