I have a confession to make: I am obsessed with Taylor Swift…as in, I have a Tumblr blog dedicated to her (which she follows!), I know the lyrics to every single one of her songs (even the unreleased ones), and I’ve been to concerts at two of her worldwide tours.

So keep in mind that I’m probably not the most impartial person when it comes to Taylor Swift. However, my fangirling over T-Swizzle means that I have kept up to date on all the news related to the famous singer over the past five years.

Five years ago, it wasn’t cool to like Taylor Swift. She was, to the general public, the pretty but vapid singer who only wrote about boys and heartbreak. Forget about songs like “Tied Together with A Smile,” which she penned for a friend suffering from anorexia, or “Never Grow Up” an ode to the pain of leaving your childhood behind and getting older. To the world, Taylor Swift wasn’t a gifted songwriter—she was the girl who dated, dumped, and then gained millions by writing award winning teen anthems. In short, despite brilliant lyrics and catchy tunes, Taylor Swift was seen as the punchline of a joke.

Swift also previously declined to be called a feminist, saying that she “didn’t think about things as guys versus girls.” She slut-shamed another girl in one of her songs, “Better than Revenge,” where she wrote of an actress who stole her boyfriend and was “better known for the things that she does on the mattress.”

Flash-forward five years and Swift hasn’t just switched from country to pop—she’s changed her tune concerning feminism, as well. Swift now calls herself a proud feminist, and told the Guardian that when she was a teenager “[she] didn’t understand that saying you’re a feminist is just saying that you hope women and men will have equal rights and equal opportunities.” She also apologized for the lyrics of “Better than Revenge,” admitting "I was 17 when I wrote that. That’s the age when you think someone can actually take your boyfriend.”

Swift has since amassed a large group of female friends, including Karlie Kloss, Lorde, Selena Gomez, Zendaya, and Gigi Hadid. She also took a break from dating for a while, telling Glamour that she felt “shamed into it." When the interviewer asked her what she meant by "shamed," she explained, “What else is it when you have two boyfriends in one year and everyone’s calling you 'boy crazy,' making jokes about you at awards shows? That’s public humiliation. And I don’t think it’s fair.”

Since she gained widespread fame, Swift has had to endure more than her fair share of public humiliation. However, she shook off the hate and has grown into an even more accepting person than she was before. She openly supports gay marriage and wrote in her song “Welcome to New York” that “You can want who you want; boys and boys and girls and girls.”

I loved Taylor Swift even before she reached her more liberal enlightenment. My hero and idol was amazing even though she wasn’t perfect. I love her even more now that she’s a self-proclaimed feminist, for sure, but I still realized that she was a skilled song writer and singer even when I disagreed with her views on feminism and other issues. Swift has the gift of making people feel like they’re living her story and experiences through every song that she sings, and that to me was why she was so popular.

When “1989,” Taylor Swift’s most recent album, came out in Oct. 2014, it sold more than 1 million copies in the first week. Her worldwide tour sold out rapidly (The Chicago tour sold out in less than three minutes!) and is still making headlines. One can’t go a day without seeing something related to Swift in the media and, for a short time, the entire world seemed to become "Swifties." Everyone who was anyone was listening to 1989 nonstop, including celebrities such as John Green, Ingrid Michaelson, and Abigail Breslin.

Yet somehow, in the past couple of months, the general public opinion of Swift has somehow shifted once again. People are now calling Swift annoying, greedy, and boy-crazy: All the insults that were so popular in the past.

I can’t control whether the general public finds Taylor Swift annoying or not, but I certainly can dispute the ideas that she’s greedy and boy crazy. Taylor Swift may be rich, but she’s also one of the most giving celebrities—she was named the most charitable celeb for the third year in a row in 2014. She donated all the proceeds from her song “Welcome to New York” to NYC’s public schools, and she has long supported causes such as Stand up to Cancer.

As for boy-crazy, I could tell you all about how Taylor Swift has only dated one guy in the past year, but instead I’ll just say this: Why don’t we, as a society, decide now to stop judging girls by the number of boys they date?

To me, Taylor Swift is more of a role model than ever, but people insist on finding something ‘problematic’ about her and seem more determined than ever to hate her. Swift, most likely influenced by the death of Cecil the Lion and the awareness it raised regarding poaching, decided to film the music video for her single “Wildest Dreams” in Africa and donate all her proceeds to wildlife conservation efforts. Instead of gaining praise, the video was criticized by those who completely ignored her charitable actions and instead were angry that she "decided to film a music video in Africa without casting anyone from Africa."

It’s true that it’s unclear in the video which country it was filmed in (some argue that this perpetuates the stereotype that Africa is one homogenous place with no cultural diversity) and it’s also true that there’s no obvious point where people from Africa are featured in the video. Some even go so far as to claim that Swift’s latest video, which takes place in the 1950’s, supports colonialism.

These claims, to me (and, to be honest, to most people who actually watched the video) are absolutely ridiculous. First of all, Swift may have filmed her video in Africa, but the premise of the music video is that she’s a fifties actress on a movie set who falls in love with her co-star but, since they can’t be together, he will only see her again in his wildest dreams. The video focuses on the two main characters, and its ambiguous setting is solely because it’s not set in a major city, it’s set in the African savannah.

I’ll admit that it is frustrating to me that the male leads in all of Swift’s music videos so far have been white (Scott Eastwood, who was in “Wildest Dreams” was the latest). However, to call Swift racist based on her video completely misses the point of the story—which, as one Facebook commenter pointed out, was that the setting was really just a film set which was as flimsy as the relationship that Swift’s character was in. Swift’s video focused on the savannah and the animals because it was built to support conservation efforts, and it focused on the two main characters because it was their love story which was meant to take center stage. To call the video (and its’ creator) racist and colonialist is to blatantly disregard its story and its message, and it’s an insult that Swift, who lost millions of dollars when she chose to donate the videos’ proceeds, certainly does not deserve.

The “Wildest Dreams” video is only the latest in a saga of people misinterpreting Swift’s methods and attempting to make her seem like a bad person. It’s frustrating to have to defend Taylor Swift all the time, because really, her actions should speak for themselves. She’s charitable, she supports other women, and she writes catchy and meaningful songs. Yet, people are determined to scrutinize Swift’s every action, and she ends up insulted far more times than she ends up praised. This constant dissection of Swift’s actions and messages helps bring to light a bigger question: Why are people determined to hate Taylor Swift?

People may be jealous of her success, but that’s an unlikely reason for all the hate: other successful celebrities, like Jennifer Lawrence, are consistently praised by the general public. Some say the hatred Swift receives is because she’s too perfect. Physically, she has it all (or, to put it more directly, all the Western beauty standards that are deemed beautiful): the body and the height of a Victoria’s Secret Model, golden hair, and flawless skin. Before they were friends, Lorde stated that “Taylor Swift is so flawless, and so unattainable, and I don’t think it’s breeding anything good in young girls [who think] I’m never going to be anything like Taylor Swift.” Lorde later went on to clarify her comments, saying that she ‘only meant that there’s a lot of importance placed on physical perfection in the music industry, and that she wished her favorite stars didn’t look perfect because fans have feelings of worthlessness and feel that they’ll never be as pretty/talented.’

So, is the reason people are determined to hate Swift because they’re jealous of her ‘perfection’, not only in her physical appearance and fashion choices, but also in her career choices? It’s possible, but there’s also another explanation: that some feel that Swift’s level of perfection is so unattainable that it must be fake.

It’s true that Swift has never partied or done drugs, and she only drank when she was 21—parents feel that she’s a good role model. However, she’s been accused of "cultivating a good-girl image," and some tabloids have even accused her of "having fake friends." Essentially, some of the people who are determined to dislike Swift believe that many parts of her life are fake and a lie.

It’s entirely likely that at least some of the actions that Swift has done are to help her image, but to go as far as to say that her friends are fake and her values are fake is both extreme and preposterous.

Others argue that they hate Swift because she’s greedy. I already mentioned the various charities which Swift donates to which disprove this statement. Swift has also repeatedly, including in an open letter to Apple, explained that the reason that she doesn’t stream her music is not for her, but because she’s trying to support new artists who can’t live off free streaming.

Swift’s neither greedy nor fake, and from there, the reasons that people hate her only get stranger. The New Yorker published an article about how her show was laden with B.D.S.M imagery (possibly the weirdest thing that I have ever read—I don’t understand how the author got that from a Swift concert that was mostly populated with pre-teens). These outlandish reasons why people dislike Swift are both amusing and infuriating.

So, why exactly do so many people hate Swift? Everyone has a different explanation, but I believe that the hatred of Swift represents something about our society as a whole—our treatment of teenage girls. This society laughs at teenage girls—their crushes on bands such as One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer are absurd and funny, their obsession with romance and love is cheesy and amusing, and their hero-worship of Taylor Swift is because they don’t have anything better to do. (These are obviously not qualities all teenage girls share, but I am basing this description of teenage girls off a depiction of the ‘stereotypical teenage girl’).

When she was a teenager, Swift was the embodiment of all the qualities that are typically seen as the most laughable in teenage girls—the extreme emotions, the insecurity, the wanting to find love. Extreme emotion is a quality that, in my opinion, is extremely valuable for teenage girls to have—it fuels their imagination and the passion that they put into everything that they do. The insecurity that so many teenage girls experience is directly related to the media’s perception of women and that unattainable beauty standard that so many teenage girls feel that they can never achieve. The wanting of teenage girls to find love is understandable—although more and more celebrities (including Swift and Hailee Steinfeld) are trying to help teenage girls understand that they can be happy without being in a relationship.

Swift had all the qualities that make up the description of a stereotypical teenage girl, and because so many people are quick to dismiss teenage girls and fail to take them seriously, it explains why teenage Swift was shamed for her dating and for the emotions which she expressed during her songs. However, the hate has continued even though Swift is now an adult, which is explainable by the fact that some people view Swift as someone who has never grown up. She launched her career at the age of 17 and was richer at the age of 20 than most people will be in their entire lifetime. She continues to write about boys and relationships and openly shares her emotions in her songs. Even though Swift has changed in so many ways, people still view her as the emotional, boy-obsessed teenager that they thought she was.

Let’s be clear: There is nothing wrong with being an emotional, boy-obsessed teenager. Yet Swift was relentlessly bullied by a media who saw her as such, and she continues to be hated on by so many people today because—even though Swift is one of the most powerful women in the world—they still see her as that teenage girl.

The persistent dislike of Swift represents a bigger problem: The dislike of the qualities and emotions that are seen as "shallow" or "vain" or "annoying" in teenage girls. It’s unlikely to end anytime soon, but Swift and her fans (including me) don’t care: We’ll just keep shaking it off.