Make the Content You Wish to See in the World

-Gandhi, probably.

You may know Taylor Swift as an influential pop cultural sensation, or as the Video Music Awards Artist of the Decade. Perhaps you know her as the sole songwriter of the 2010 chart-topping album, Speak Now. But, do you know she would absolutely have been a prefect of Slytherin house?

Here's my case for why Taylor Swift is a Slytherin, through and through.

Slytherin House values ambition, cunning, leadership, and resourcefulness, and tend to represent the wizarding world's elite.

Ambition: If putting out seven albums over 13 years isn't enough, remember that Taylor has at least a partial songwriting credit on every single song she has published.

“"When I was 18, they were like, She doesn’t really write those songs.” So my third album I wrote by myself as a reaction to that. " -Taylor for Rolling Stone (2019)

You can see that she responds to criticism by going above and beyond, a true marker of ambition. When she is told that she can't, she absolutely does. This attitude is not only evidence of ambition, it is the driving mentality that defines the ambitious.

Resourcefulness: This one is pretty straightforward. From a young age, she was leveraging her relationships within the industry to catapult herself to stardom. Since achieving it, though, her resourcefulness has only increased. According to Business Insider, Taylor is one of very few artists still using the long-lead album release schedule, meaning, dropping singles weeks apart during a three month buildup to an album release. Swifties absolutely eat this up. During the promotion cycle prior to her latest album, Lover, Taylor put extra emphasis on the "easter eggs" in each music video--leveraging her fans to generate PR on her behalf.

"Ok, NOW there are five holes in the fence." Taylor, after realizing how deep in the rabbit hole her fans were.

"Five holes in the fence" is kind of a deep cut, don't worry about it. Or read about it here.

Seriously, you would not believe the number of Buzzfeed articles I read with titles like "Here Are All The Clues Taylor Swift Has Dropped About Her Upcoming Album That You May Have Missed" (yes, that one's real). Work smarter, not harder folks. A classic Slytherin motto.

Leadership: Taylor is considered an industry leader, by all accounts. Take for instance her open letter to Apple, speaking up about their decision to distribute music without paying any royalties for the first three months after the debut of Apple Music.

"We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation." -To Apple, Love Taylor (2015)

Her willingness to stand up for her own values is decisively a Slytherin trait. This also leans toward a trait that is implied throughout the Harry Potter series, but never formally spoken: self-preservation. Although this pushback against a giant corporation had a positive impact for everyone in the industry, that includes Taylor. Now, this is not to say that she is not selfless or thoughtful, nor that Slytherins do not posses these qualities. She simply understands what she deserves and will not settle for less.

Cunning: Though cunning generally has a negative connotation, due to it being defined as "having or showing skill in achieving one's ends by deceit or evasion" I think there is a distinctly positive way to read it. Branding. Deceit in this case, means creating a public-facing persona for herself while continuing to live a private life. She has skillfully crafted the idea of who "Taylor Swift" is in the public eye. She successfully rebranded that idea over the years to shift from being "America's Sweetheart" to "Global Pop Powerhouse".

"I think the only time we obsess over our reputation is when it doesn't match up with who we are." - Reputation Tour (2018)

The overarching theme of her most recent stadium tour (meticulously planned and rehearsed until it reached perfection) was explicitly stating that her image is made up only of information she has deliberately chosen to make public. In her songwriting and select interviews she shows vulnerability, but the point of her sixth album, "reputation", is that we only see a person for who they show themselves to be, and sometimes, that is a calculated choice. "There will be no explanation, there will only be reputation." - T.S.

Ultimately, Taylor fits every definition of a Slytherin to a T. Perceptions of those in Slytherin house in the Harry Potter canon can lead one to believe Slytherin is the house for the "bad guys", but that is not a nuanced perspective. It fails to take in to account that nearly all students who are sorted have qualities of each house, and in fact, the house qualities greatly overlap. How is leadership really that different than courage? Ambition versus hard working? What is comes down to is what that person values most. Taylor values receiving credit for her successes. She values accepting opportunities that put her in a position of power, and uses that power to stand up for her beliefs.

And hey, all the snake branding helps, too.