Taylor Swift is the most successful musical artist in the world right now, and that fame brings rumors and innuendo with it. In a new interview, the star talks about the additional scrutiny she faces as a prominent female artist.

Swift has faced charges that she writes about her ex-boyfriends too frequently, and even internet rumors that she doesn't write her own songs. In a cover story for Time magazine, she brushes those aside.

"I haven’t heard any of the people I respect in the music industry or in journalism, saying that they think I don’t write my own songs," she points out, adding that if you listen to her entire body of work, it's obvious all of the lyrics were written from the perspective of the same person.

"And it’s not a ghostwriter," Swift adds. "It’s not some weird, you know -- everyone’s got those weird Shakespeare theories that someone else did all his stuff for him. Not to ever compare yourself to Shakespeare. But people need to poke holes in things because of their own stuff. It’s not about me."

The superstar says it's a feminist issue.

"My friend Ed [Sheeran], no one questions whether he writes everything," she notes. "In the beginning, I liked to think that we were all on the same playing field. And then it became pretty obvious to me that when you have people sort of questioning the validity of a female songwriter, or making it seem like it’s somehow unacceptable to write songs about your real emotions -- that it somehow makes you irrational and overemotional -- seeing that over the years changed my view. It’s a little discouraging that females have to work so much harder to prove that they do their own things."

The singer-songwriter thinks the way successful women have their looks picked apart in the press is just one more sign of that double standard.

"If we continue to show young girls that they are being compared to other girls, we’re doing ourselves a huge disservice as a society," Swift states. "I surround myself with smart, beautiful, passionate, driven, ambitious women. Other women who are killing it should motivate you, thrill you, challenge you and inspire you rather than threaten you and make you feel like you’re immediately being compared to them."

Adds the 'Red' hitmaker, "The only thing I compare myself to is me, two years ago, or me one year ago ... You just try to lead by example, and you hope, someday, that if we talk about feminism enough, maybe we’ll start to actually see it make a difference in the way young girls perceive themselves and each other."

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