Having taken a few months off from music to wind down after her exhaustive 1989 World Tour, Taylor Swift seems to be back with a vengeance in the new issue of Vogue magazine. Not only has she debuting a new look, she’s got a score to settle with the media about their perception of her love life.

Basically, she’s upset at the popular portrayal of her as some kind of serial man-eater with her alleged attachments to Harry Styles, Jake Gyllenhaal and others in the years before she settled down with current boyfriend Calvin Harris.

This is my favorite cover I've ever gotten to be a part of. Thank you @voguemagazine and @mertalas!!

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on

“You know, I went out on a normal amount of dates in my early 20s, and I got absolutely slaughtered for it,” the 26 year old star told the fashion magazine, for which she is the May edition’s cover star. “And it took a lot of hard work and altering my decision-making. I didn’t date for two and a half years. Should I have had to do that? No.”

However, for all that, she adds that it is fun and surprisingly easy to run rings around the media and make them seem foolish.

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“There are a lot of really easy ways to dispel rumours,” she reflects. “If they say you are pregnant, all you have to do is continue to not be pregnant and not have a baby. If the rumour is that you have fake friendships, all you have to do is continue to be there for each other. And when we’re all friends in 15 years and raising our kids together, maybe somebody will look back and go, ‘That was kind of ridiculous what we said about Taylor and her friends’.”

She and Scottish DJ Harris recently celebrated their one year anniversary, and Swift recently gave him a shout out when she cleaned up (yet again) at the iHeartRadio Awards last month. She described him as “the most amazing person to come home to when the spotlight went out.”

Asked about how things were going, and whether wedding bells might be on the horizon, she remained tight-lipped. “I’m just taking things as they come. I’m in a magical relationship right now. And of course I want it to be ours, and low-key… this is the one thing that’s been mine about my personal life.”

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