Taylor Swift’s ‘Actually Romantic’ might be sapphic, but its outdated misogyny is sad

“No man has ever loved me like you do,” Taylor Swift teases to an unnamed female foe on the last line of the chorus to “Actually Romantic”, a lyric that has will no doubt has Gaylor truthers up in a twist and sapphic shippers across fandom already penning love-hate NSFW song-fics. As queer as the track can be interpreted – Death of the Author and all that – the undeniable truth is that it cannot escape its outdated misogyny repackaged for the boss girl era.

The song, the 7th track on Swift’s 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl, which dropped on Friday (3 October), is allegedly a Charli XCX diss track and a response to the Brat hitmaker’s song “Sympathy is a knife”, in which Charli XCX spoke of feeling deeply inadequate compared to an unnamed female that she was thrust into close quarters with.

Many assumed the unnamed woman to be Swift, with Charli XCX’s lyrics “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show/Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick” being a nod to Swift’s short-lived relationship with The 1975’s Matt Healy, who is bandmates with her now-husband George Daniel.

“I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave,” Swift’s “Actually Romantic” opens, with her appearing to take a swipe at Charli XCX’s 2000s rave culture inspired album – which courted controversy for glamourising drugs – before continuing: “High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me/ Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face.”

Later on, Swift queries: “How many times has your boyfriend said/ ‘Why are we always talking ’bout her?'”

“But it’s actually sweet,” Swift goes on to sing in the chorus, “All the time you’ve spent on me/It’s honestly wild/ All the effort you’ve put in/ It’s actually romantic/ I really gotta hand it to you, ooh/ No man has ever loved me like you do.”

Swift’s delivery to almost sickly saccharine, teasing the listener the same way she is teasing the intended audience (Charli XCX) before shifting in the final third of the song to something more malicious, more mean-spirited, more openly conscious of what this track is at its heart: an attack on another female artist – because the music biz and public sure don’t do that enough to women already.

“You think I’m tacky, baby/ Stop talking dirty to me/ It sounded nasty, but it feels like you’re flirting with me/ I mind my business, God’s my witness that I don’t provoke it,” she insists, before dragging out audible, faux-orgasmic high of “It’s kind of making me wet (Oh)”.

Now, there is no denying it, if you listen to “Actually Romantic” without any of that context, its a pretty gay sounding song. Compulsory heterosexuality, rivals-who-secretly-want-each-other-carnally, falling into the closet and landing in Narina levels of deep repression, kind of gay.

It’s the sort of song one (me) might like to imagine House of the Dragon‘s Alicent Hightower would listen to in a sombre bath high up in the Red Keep, long after the water has gone tepid, thinking about her terrible life choices and that maybe she should have runway with Rhaenyra on dragon-back to see the great wonders across the Narrow Sea, and eat only cake.

If “Actually Romantic” had come out a few years earlier then SwanQueen, Clexa and Villianeve shippers would use it in longing, edited videos posted to YouTube of their respective OTPs who, whilst foes, have some pretty undeniable chemistry.

My God, if it dropped when Glee was still going Ryan Murphy would have absolutely had Rachel and Quinn perform the most heart-wrenching version of it to each other in the choir room over Finn, because their mashup of “I Feel Pretty/Unpretty” wasn’t sapphic enough as it is.

Now, my first listen to “Actually Romantic” didn’t just set my sapphic spidey senses tingling and plenty of other folks on the web (see what I did there?) were having similar thoughts.

Unsurprisingly members of Gaylor – that being an amalgamation of the words ‘Gay’ and ‘Taylor’ and a reference to a subsection of Swift’s fans who believe she is secretly queer – were quick to dissect the lyrics as as deeply homoerotic symbolism.

“Actually Romantic is about toxic yuri idk what you’re talking about,” one user on X, Twitter, wrote.

“But Actually Romantic is interesting to me because she picked up on how obsession with another woman, especially out of insecurity or bitterness gets homoerotic at a certain point,” another noted.

“Actually Romantic is so homoerotic i’m cryingg welcome back regina george and janis,” a third joked.

Gaylors dont know if they want to call actually romantic homophobic or proof that gaylor is real pic.twitter.com/VE1il5Uoxz

— sage (@moonsmaidens) October 3, 2025

toxic yuri or whatever https://t.co/YnSIdYsn53 pic.twitter.com/HpSiayAlu7

— helena 🪓 (@birthagod) October 5, 2025

taylor and charli in actually romantic pic.twitter.com/4S7nWzc3r8

— sevyn ⋆˚꩜ (@sativalor) October 3, 2025

As fun it might be to interpret and repackage the sapphic subtext that seems to inhabit “Actually Romantic” for our own means, it is difficult to distance the content from its context.

If, indeed, it is a diss track about Charli XCX then it is very much just another song playing into tired old misogynistic tropes that women need to tear each other down to succeed and be seen as successful. Yawn.

Female feuds in showbiz are nothing new: Bette Davis vs Joan Crawford, Britney Spears vs Christina Aguilera, Sarah Jessica Parker vs Kim Cattrall. Indeed, Swift had her own, very public, rivalry in the 2010s with Katy Perry. As far removed as the glitz and glamour of Hollywood can seem from our own lives, the parasocial relationship we have with celebrities thanks to social media and fandom culture means the rivalries TikTokers love to speculate over say more about us than it necessarily does about the celebs in question. 

As Sophie Gilbert noted for Service95, contemporary pop culture is “in thrall to the idea of women fighting and will fan the flames of conflict whenever possible”, explaining: “Influencers form girl gangs with their own ornate hierarchies. Trends such as ‘Pick Me vs Baddie’ and ‘That Girl’ underscore the idea that women exist in permanent opposition to one other, and must bring each other down in order to thrive. These dynamics naturally trickle down to the rest of us: we are left comparing our imperfect faces, bodies, relationships and lives to the more perfect versions we peer at online; seeing only flaws in need of a fix, or rivals in need of a reckoning.” 

It’s ironic really, given Swift is the biggest artist in the world and constantly breaking her own records – no one is coming for that crown anytime soon – her Eras Tour became a big love-in to the power of shared girlhood one friendship bracelet at a time, and her 2019 hit “You Need to Calm Down” decried: “We see you over there on the internet, comparing all the girls who are killing it.”

I’m not really sure what Swift set out to achieve with “Actually Romantic”, if I am honest. A gotcha’ moment to Charli XCX? A track to keep Gaylors on side post engagement to Travis Kelce? An attempt to be a sharp-tongued, unbothered girlboss even if that means performing misogyny? 

Actually Romantic? Actually, its all just a bit sad.