There are two types of people in this world: those who will spend the weekend furiously replaying The Life of a Showgirl, and those who will dismiss Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album as just the latest set of songs from “Boring Barbie.”

Yes, I’m talking about “Actually Romantic,” the feverishly discussed seventh track that fans have already decided is about Charli XCX. It’s easy to see why. First, there’s the fact that the seventh track on Brat is “Everything Is Romantic”—Swift famously has a penchant for numerical synchronicity—and second… well, have you listened to the lyrics? “High-fived my ex and then said you’re glad he ghosted me / Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face,” Swift sings, adding: “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave.”

Some have argued that the fond tone of “Almost Romantic,” which positions its subject as such an obsessed rival it turns Swift on (“it’s kind of making me wet”), is a sign Taylor has taken the high road. Others argue there is no rift at all, pointing to Charli’s comments in New York magazine last year: “That song is about me and my feelings and my anxiety and the way my brain creates narratives and stories in my head when I feel insecure, and how I don’t want to be in those situations physically when I feel self-doubt,” she said of “Sympathy is a Knife.”

Personally, I think whether or not there’s a real rift between these two women is irrelevant. What’s more interesting is that “Almost Romantic” follows an already well-trodden path for Swift—one that tells us more about her than it does about any other artist who may have inspired it. Sure, she might have a hard time letting things go (Brat was released more than a year ago), but it seems to me that her fixation is not so much on individual women as it is on internalized misogyny as a whole. It’s a consistent theme.

Take her alleged, almost decade-long feud with Kim Kardashian, whom Swift appeared to reference in The Tortured Poets Department bonus track, “thanK you aIMee”—see what she did there?—after having already dedicated several songs on her 2017 revenge album Reputation to the rift. Then, also on TTPD, there was “Clara Bow,” which many insist is about Olivia Rodrigo, who some believe is also the subject of new song “Father Figure.” Before that, there was “Bad Blood,” which is widely believed to be about Katy Perry.

It would be easy to dismiss all of this as headline fodder; fans famously spend an inordinate amount of time unpacking the minutiae of Swift’s lyrics. Who she is—and is not—firing shots at has become part of the fun. But the subject of female rivalries exists in her music even without alleged celebrity ciphers. Take “You Belong With Me” from 2008’s Fearless, in which she compares herself—the humble geek who never gets the guy—with his male-gaze-coded girlfriend: “’Cause she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts / She’s cheer captain, and I’m on the bleachers.”

Swift’s 2010 record Speak Now gave us “Better Than Revenge,” a song so snipey about another woman that the star—by now more astute on the subject of slut-shaming—changed the lyrics when she re-recorded the album in 2023. “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress” became “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.”

Like any famous woman, Swift has been the target of misogyny—both internalized and otherwise—throughout her career. So perhaps she has earned the right to examine the ways in which she has been pitted so relentlessly against her peers. Who could blame her for a fixation she’s essentially been forced into having? But given Swift’s standing in the industry today—her globe-spanning Eras extravaganza was the first concert tour to gross $1 billion—it’s hard to see anyone as even capable of being her rival.

With those earlier albums, it might’ve worked for Swift to present herself as the underdog. Her songs still allowed us to relate to her, and feel a certain kinship—at least on an emotional level. But now, as a bona fide billionaire who’s about to marry her beefy jock boyfriend in what will presumably be a multi-million-dollar wedding with an A-list guest list, it might be a little harder for her to establish lyrical common ground.

There have been moments of apparent pettiness, too: the week that Brat was released, Swift issued six UK-exclusive deluxe reissues of TTPD, a move (coincidental or not) that prevented Charli’s album from debuting at No. 1. Whether or not Charli will issue a response to “Actually Romantic” remains to be seen—although the prospect of a “Girl, So Confusing”-style rapprochement between these two is a tantalizing one. What we do know is that, like anything Swift releases these days, The Life of a Showgirl is bound to break records, rack up millions of downloads, and shape the cultural conversation—for better or worse.

No one could really compete with that, including female stars who happen to be wildly successful in their own right. So, when it comes to the internalized misogyny of it all, perhaps it’s time for Swift to just… shake it off.