thinking about how the desperate attempt to cling to her childhood with speak now elicited mixed responses (scott telling her she couldn’t have a fairytale-inspired title like enchanted, romantic relationships with older men who took advantage of her inexperience vs the need to be america’s sweetheart), which led to a pivot to try to slowly grow up (hence a noticeable aesthetic change, more mature themes and sounds in her music, etc), only for that to be confronted with even more criticism (sit-downs over leaving the cursive fonts of her early albums behind, constraints to her sonic experimentation, scott generally doubling down on his control of her music because, in her own words, her success in pop with IKYWT/WANEGBT made him see her as a woman which felt threatening, a global slut-shaming campaign, the paula of it all). no wonder it led to the feeling that she had to double down on her maturation arc with 1989 to truly feel in control for the first time, which, in turn, tainted her memory of her previous two albums because they both felt constraining and slightly embarrassing compared to her newfound sense of liberation.