Vipassana, Bootcamp Nirvana: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Satya Narayan Goenka’s brand of Vipassanā meditation "in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin" stems from Burma (today Myanmar), where Goenka was born, raised and trained. Vipassanā was supposedly lost by most of the Buddhist and Indian world and maintained only in the lineage of Yangon Burmese monks.

Since the 1980s, the Vipassanā movement has grown into a worldwide organisation that organises 10-day meditation retreats - free of charge to new students, sustained by donations accepted only from those who have already completed at least one 10-day course. Basic needs - food and accommodation - are provided for and students are asked to focus on nothing more than their work of meditation. A student wakes up at 4AM, begins meditating at 4.30AM, and continues throughout the day with intermittent breaks according to a strict schedule until bedtime at 9PM.

The first Vipassanā meditation centre outside of India was set up in Massachusetts in 1980, and the organisation now boasts 227 locations in 94 countries.

Beginning 22 December 2015, I signed myself up for one of these meditation retreats, after hearing endless praise for the beneficial effects of the course. A full disclaimer: I did not complete the course. I left on day 7 of the course, for reasons that I will explain below. Though I did not complete it, there were nonetheless some surprising and good takeaways that I discovered about meditation, myself, and the effects of voluntary confinement.

1. Bootcamp Nirvana is Hard Work.

Meditation is not easy - it is challenging both for the mind and the body. Sitting for 11 hours a day in some variation of the lotus position means you will have a lot of cramping in your legs, and you will want to move your posture a lot especially during the first three days. And then there’s the matter of trying to still your mind, trying to focus on your breathing and instead only being able to think about what’s on the menu for lunch.

Make no mistake - anyone who tells you that meditation is easy just because you're sitting there "not doing anything" has certainly never tried meditation before.

2. The first 72 hours will be the longest 72 hours of your life.

You are asked to focus on your breath coming in and out of your nostrils and pay attention to your breathing. Never mind 11 hours a day - after the first two hours you’re likely to start seriously questioning what you’re doing here. I mean, seriously guys, I’m breathing through my nose. Left nostril, right nostril, both nostrils, I get it. How long do you have to practice focusing on your breath?

3. Your mind is far stronger than it seems.

For the first three days, the course teaches Ānāpāna meditation, which is the practice of focus and concentration. At first it seems impossible that you are supposed to be doing this for three days, which is mindnumpingly boring and makes you want to quit almost immediately. But then you realise that it’s just a matter of bending your mind to your will, and slowly the focus starts to kick in - you start thinking less about lunch, less about the ASOS sale, and less about all the other things you could be doing with your time rather than being here for 10 days.

S.N. Goenka says several times that the untamed mind is your biggest enemy, like a ranging stampeding elephant, and that the tamed mind is your biggest friend. I am inclined to agree with him in this regard. Certainly if nothing else three days of Ānāpāna and the subsequent Adhiṭṭhāna (strong determination) sittings will prove to you that the mind is a malleable thing, and with enough focus it is most certainly possible to bend it to your will.

The website for Vipassana meditation, dhamma.org

Now that being said, although Vipassanā is hard work it is very doable. It’s not exceptionally difficult by any means - it does require mental strength and determination, but no more than the average human being should possess. But Vipassanā does have dropouts - myself being one of them - and just like everything else in life, Vipassanā isn’t for everyone. There were several things I felt uncomfortable with at the centre that led me to leave on Day 7 of the course.

4. Vipassana is undoubtedly a Buddhist tradition.

While Vipassana International (VI) claims they are non-sectarian, simply because your beliefs are non-conflicting do not make them any less Buddhist - make no doubt, this is a Buddhist meditation.

One of the first things you are told in the course is that “These are the teachings of Gautama Buddha”. That the practice of these beliefs does not require belief in a deity or god of any kind is irrelevant: to claim that you are non-sectarian and then preach Buddhist texts is false advertising, even if their advertising does not claim to lead to profiting revenue.

Now if VI had said from the start that they were going to be teaching and chanting Buddhist texts, then I would have been less bothered by this. But as it is, the entirety of Vipassanā’s foundation is Buddhist, relies on Buddhist metaphysics and is based on Buddhist ideology.

This is not nonsectarian meditation - this is clear and pure Buddhist meditation.

5. The practice of Vipassana is based on Buddhist metaphysics. 

This includes (but is not limited to) a belief in the reason and motivation for Vipassanā practice as being clearing Saṅkhāras (a kind of mental habit that leads one to behave in certain manner) to be for the reincarnation of a being’s next life. If you accept that and came to the course knowing that Vipassanā is Buddhist in nature, then this would be all fine and well - but for those who go to Vipassanā coming from a more critical mind, having previously been told that this is supposed to be "scientific" in nature, the metaphysics on which the practice is based are more than a little dubious.

To be fair, S.N. Goenka does say multiple times that a belief in reincarnation is not strictly necessary to the practice of Vipassanā, and that one can practice Vipassanā without believing in reincarnation. However, if this is true, then it becomes no different from the churchgoer who prays for show rather than because of a true belief in worship: if one does not believe in reincarnation, Saṅkhāras, past lives or any of the related Buddhist metaphysics, then what is the reason for true Vipassanā practice?

The Dhama Giri meditation centre in Igatpuri, India.

6. Spurious claims to pseudoscientific quantum theory.

In the course, Goenka makes constant and repeated claims to the ever-changing nature of atomic flux as well as the phenomenology of kalapas. Kalapas in the Theravadic Buddhist tradition are defined as

the smallest units of physical matter, tiny units of materiality, tens of thousands of times smaller than a particle of dust, coming into existence and disappearing in as little as a billionth of a second or a trillionth of the blink of an eye.

Goenka claims that “Everything in the universe, all the subatomic particles, are made of just vibrations” and that “Western scientists come to the same conclusion as Gautama Buddha, but yet the Western scientists are not enlightened.”

Now superficially one might indeed see some resemblance between the notion of kalapas and the Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics, and indeed Goenka often uses this superficial similarity to describe "matter wave" - where all matter can also behave like a wave. However as we have seen multiple times before in all manners of New Age pseudoscience, this is merely cloaking unscientific thought in scientific language in order to garner some form of authority and repute.

Here is Wikipedia's first-line definition of science:

Science is a systematic enterprise that creates, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

None of which Vipassanā fulfils.

I do not doubt that Buddhism is one of the world’s few major organised religions where ontological core beliefs and modern science do not necessarily conflict. By this I mean that there is no fundamental conflict between the existence or non-existence of certain core beliefs of each camp; contrast this against, for example, several monotheistic religions where the world's creatures were either "created by an Intelligent designer" or "became as they are after millions of years of evolution".

However simply because there is no conflict, one cannot simply claim the achievement of the other. Science and scientific theories, unlike the ones made by S.N. Goenka, has been checked, peer-reviewed, and repeatedly proven to hold consistent under a variety of circumstances. They are superficially similar in the same way that water and hydrochloric acid are both clear liquids. They are not the same, and Vipassanā cannot piggyback on the advances of scientific achievement to say that they are as universally true as they claim.

7. Blind faith.

A recurring theme I have heard from those who claim to have seen beneficial results from Vipassana is that “After you do it you will see results” or “They tell you do something a certain way so you just do/follow/obey”, or that I should “just surrender”. Goenka insists from Day 1 that as long as we follow his method, things “Will become so clear.” Unfortunately for me, things did not get any clearer as the course progressed.

I was told several times that rather than questioning the intellectual integrity of the method or why a method works, I should just see the course through to its end, and then and only then make a decision. While I can accept that we are asked to give the method a ‘fair trial’, it seemed contradictory to me that we are both (1) on day one asked not to accept anything blindly, and (2) asked to simply follow the method without questioning why things are.

8. Chanting of Buddhist texts in Pāli.

Expect chanting. A lot of chanting - morning, afternoon, and evening. It came as a shock to me the first time I heard the chanting come over loud speakers and completely filling the entire meditation hall - especially given that in all of my research and in everything that I had been told by friends who had completed the course, not once had the subject of chanting come up.

The disclaimer outside the meditation hall tells us that the chanting consists of “Truths and good wishes”, but it fails to convince that their proclaimed truths are in fact so. At times it can feel very cult-like, with the constant repetitions of Buddhist texts and “Bhavatu Sabba Mangalam” and the crowd’s “sadhu, sadhu, sadhu” response. Goenka’s droning voice and his constant “May all of you find real peace, real happiness, real peace, real happiness” felt like some form of brainwashing; I did not have a good reaction to it.

9. Saṅkhāras.

Quoting from Wikipedia because it's easiest, Saṅkhāras are:

In the first (passive) sense... conditioned phenomena generally but specifically to all mental "dispositions". These are called 'volitional formations' both because they are formed as a result of volition and because they are causes for the arising of future volitional actions.

In the second (active) sense of the word, saṅkhāra refers to that faculty of the mind/brain apparatus (sankhara-khandha) that puts together those formations.

Beginning on day 4 of the course, one is introduced to Vipassanā meditation proper, and the concept of Saṅkhāras. Each physical sensation in your body is claimed to be a Saṅkhāra rising from your ‘backlog’ of accumulated Saṅkhāra, and through constantly merely observing these sensations and not responding to them one is able to clear their mental backlog of accumulated habit and trauma. One is encouraged not to confront or face these Saṅkhāras, but merely to let them arise, observe, pass, and slip away in accordance with the law of nature, the Dhamma, in which “everything is constantly changing”.

Of course, in order for this to actually happen, one must accept that merely observing sensations (which has been the ultimate goal of the course) is enough for one to learn to not react and clear a backlog of habit. It is this non-reaction that helps to achieve liberation and freedom from the condition of suffering; observing a physical sensation somehow brings peace to the mind.

The problem, once again, is that this physical-to-mental chain just isn't obvious, and when I asked further about this problem I was told to "just do it" and that I would understand the more I practiced. See point 7 above.

10. The meditation teacher is just that: a meditation teacher.

Do not expect your guru to hold the answers to why aspects of the method are a certain way - his/her role is that of a meditation teacher and nothing else. He/she is not a philosopher and will not give you philosophical answers. He/she can give you tips on how to improve your posture, how to make meditation more comfortable, how to meditate and clear your mind better, but he/she is not trained to tell you how any of the methodology of Vipassanā works.



Now, maybe some of these doubts I have are clarified in an old-student’s course, or maybe they are more robustly defended by other traditions and scholars of Buddhism and purposely watered down for ease of consumption to a more general audience. if this was the case, it certainly did not show during the 7 days that I spent before leaving. In the end, I felt uncomfortable accepting charity from others while not buying their pitch; I felt morally inclined to leave rather than continue accepting their charity in food and accommodation while knowing I did and could not believe their methods.

In the end, I decided that Vipassanā wasn’t for me. Not because of anything wrong necessarily that the centre was doing, but because I felt uncomfortable being a part of a course where receiving charity is necessary to the fulfilment of the course objectives, while at the same time not subscribing to the same ideals and objectives that S.N. Goenka claims.

My experience has been that with the growing popularity of Vipassanā there has been a stark divide and almost a sense of moral superiority between those who are "ready" (those who have completed the 10-day course) against those who are "not ready" (those who did not complete or have not been on the course).

The Vipassanā experience is something profoundly individual. I do not doubt that those who practice and serve Vipassanā courses are well-intentioned, if a little misguided. It is the prerogative of every person to find out what methods lead them best to happiness. If Vipassanā is not the universal road to happiness that it claims to be, is that then just the overenthusiastic failing of yet another mere human?

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Johor Bahru and Endless Food

It's taken me a really long time to realise why Singaporeans are so in love with Johor Bahru, the Malaysian city just a skip away from Singapore, but since Veronica suggested we go there on an afternoon whim I've been obsessed.

There's so much to do in Johor Bahru. And everything's so much more affordable than in Singapore - Singapore numbers but in Malaysian ringgit instead of Singapore dollars. It's perfect for budget people (like me!) and the crazy amount of food that Malaysia stuffs itself with is more than perfect for foodie Singaporeans.

And the best part is that JB is as cheap as $1.90 from Singapore, via a bus from Newton; or $5 via the KTM train service. There's lots of other ways to get to JB too. I was lucky that the immigration gods were kind to me and I was in and out of immigration in under 5 minutes!

Veronica took me to The Replacement, where I was introduced to my first taste of churros with a salted egg (!!!) dip and also a very indulgent chocolate ganache dip. The Replacement is veritably tailored-for-Instagram, with picture-perfect minimalist settings and artfully placed copies of Kinfolk ready for picture props.

 

There's so much in Malaysia that's different, yet the same as Singapore. Jalan Tan Hiok Nee reminds me somewhat of Haji Lane, with the graffiti on the walls, but you won't get pillars painted with old-school Milo tins and Milkmaid cans in Singapore. It's like everything has so much more life, so much more natural and organic and beautifully chaotic - so unlike our clean everyday Singapore.

But some things don't change, whichever side of the Causeway you're on. Here we are at the Faculty of Caffeine, which looks like it could be right at home in any Singaporean setting - beautiful industrial chic, good coffee and a fun place to hang out only a few minutes walk from the border.

Veronica introduced me to what she thinks is (and I agree) the best prawn aglio olio ever at Maco Vintage. Huge juicy portions of prawn and a spiced garlic oil toss in al dente spaghetti. If that read like a Ramsay Gordon-esque food description, it's because this was worth it, and at only RM18 - that's SGD6, everyone. It's a kept secret that deserves some airtime.

So. Good.

Jalan Tan Hiok Nee knows how to make an impression. Quiet, peaceful and yet unicorn-level colourful, Veronica and I spent an evening sitting at the window of the second-floor converted shophouse café, Bev C, watching the rain pour down onto rainbow-coloured pavements.

Faculty of Caffeine
106, Jalan Trus, Bandar Johor Bahru
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The Replacement Lodge and Kitchen
33 Jalan Dhoby, Bandar Johor Bahru
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Maco Vintage
Jalan Ibrahim, 80000 Johor Bahru
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Bev C'afe
54 Jalan Tan Hiok Nee, Bandar Johor Bahru
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After the Paris terror attacks, what next?

Image from StateofMind13.

On November 13, Paris was the scene of a brutal coordinated attack, with bombings and six mass shootings at restaurants, bars, the Bataclan concert hall, and the Stade de France stadium where a France-Germany football match was taking place.

Scenes of Paris post-attack were chaotic, with the wounded and traumatised covered in thermal blankets, ambulances, medics and emergency police at every corner. The attack was the deadliest on French soil since World War II. 129 victims have been confirmed dead.

After declaring a state of emergency and closing the nation's borders, President Francois Hollande declared the attacks an act of war, and that in response France would "lead a war which will be pitiless." Two days later, Al-Raqqah in Syria, the Syrian headquarters of Daesh (also known as IS, ISIS, and ISIL) was bombed in retaliation, in an escalation of the ongoing Opération Chammal.

As politicians put out their prepared statements expressing grief and solidarity with the French people, one particular United States presidential wannabe made the show all about him, hijacking the conversation to turn it to gun control.

More guns, more vows to end terrorists, more calls to war against Daesh and religious extremism.

It's almost as if we believe that the combined efforts of the United States, Britain, and France since 2001 have been effective at all. Almost as if we believe that the only way to stop the escalating violence and wars is to, well, fight back with more violence and wars.

Almost as if we believe that each time fighting hatred with hatred has not resulted in the creation of even more radicals and terrorists.

In many parts of Europe, xenophobia is rampant, and there is a steadily escalating atmosphere of fear. Everywhere there is an increasing guardedness of anyone who associates themselves with Islam, even though numbers tell us that the estimated 80,000 Daesh militants constitute only 0.00005% of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims.

France has always had a complicated relationship with its Muslim population. Some of France's imams were already being expelled, and the backlash to the Muslim community was immediate after the November 13 attacks. These attacks will do nothing to quell rising fear and suspicion. Muslims in headscarves praying for victims at Parisian shrines find themselves the subject of insult.

Paris is only one symptom of a larger problem, the one most familiar and therefore the one we pay the most attention to. But what happened in Paris has happened - and is still happening - to so many countries and so many people who are unfortunate enough to be born and live in the wrong place.

Syrian refugees to Europe are fleeing from the very people who perpetrated the Paris attacks. To them, attacks like those in Paris are a common occurrence. Western media reports the "latest" attack in Beirut as though they have become the norm. Just another Middle Eastern attack claimed by Daesh, unnamed victims, buried in the centrefold of the World News section.

The unfortunate fact: No one pays attention until it happens to you.

On 31 October 2015, Metrojet Flight 9268 crashed in northern Sinai after departing from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt en route to Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members, and the crash killed all on board. It is thought that the cause of the crash was a planted explosive device, with baggage handlers suspected of being involved. Daesh claimed responsibility.

Islamophobic sentiment in Paris will only rise in the wake of these terror attacks, which follow the January attacks to Charlie Hebdo. They are not likely to be any more welcoming to the influx of Syrian refugees, especially now that fears about Daesh militants and sleeping agents travelling into Europe alongside refugees can be confirmed.

And yet, recall that this is the organisation that al-Qaeda kicked out for "notorious intransigence."

What happens now that the Daesh fight has been brought to Western soil? A few things, to start off with: anger, solidarity, upcoming analyses, stories of narrowly escaping survivors, claims of unfair media attention, promises of more action.

And then there are these guys, who sum up all our thoughts and feelings better than the New York Times ever will.



Praise be, John Oliver. Praise be.



Just like Waleed Aly says, Daesh (or ISIL, or ISIS, whatever your chosen name is) is trying to start World War 3. What is frustrating is that it seems almost they're succeeding - there isn't simply global condemnation, but there are outright declarations of war. And indeed, war in the Middle East has been going on for a long time now.

Or does this not count because this time the enemy is not a western power?

When I asked this question on Facebook, someone responded no:

States aren't in a state of total war. In ww2 multiple states were in total war. In other words, all of its economy and production are optimised for the war effort.

And while I agree that there has been no outright declaration of total war, we cannot deny that Daesh is trying to steer things that way. Frighteningly, Daesh is winning the war of fear - the suspicion of Muslims from non-Muslims, the increasing alienation of Islamic communities.

What do you think happens to people who feel alone? They go to find places where they feel understood, places they think they belong. Somehow they stumble upon Daesh, and before you know it there has been another unwitting subversive radicalisation.

It may not be anything new, but it needs to be said all the same. Hatred begets hatred.

Unless we learn to accept people for who they are, groups like Daesh will keep growing in strength, promising refuge and family and a place the misunderstood can call home. So yes, this is a war - not World War 3 perhaps, not total war, but a war of ideologies.

Samuel P. Huntington was right all along.

We can say what we want, we can display all the solidarity we want, and yet, the world will go on. Barack Obama said that people have become 'numb' to America's 'routine' gun attacks, just as the rest of us have done to terrorist attacks in the Middle East, events to which we pay little attention.

We will talk about this for a little while, put on our little mourning show, and then live life as usual. We will go about our days, have toast and orange juice at breakfast, and watch the latest episode of Breaking Bad.

Change is uncomfortable - change is hard. Changing the way we see friends and neighbours is especially difficult, if we try to shift our view from one of fear to one of love. But change is necessary, for it is the only way that we can get ourselves out of this mess of extremism and hatred.

In war, everyone has their part to play. It is the part of the military to seek and destroy Daesh strongholds and weaken their operations. It is the part of the people to tend to our own communities and avoid alienating those already weak or scared. When there is family to be had among their own communities, there is neither need nor desire to seek out radical alternatives.

The only way forward is one of acceptance, of trust and of welcome.

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IKEA Hack: Stolmen cat tree

Small space living with pets ain't easy. I know, because I'm doing it. Kincaid, magnificent beast that he is, loves nothing more than to get in your way (he is a cat, after all) at all hours of the day - whether it be in the middle of the night or while you're trying to do something on your computer. At night he walks on you, and in the day he falls asleep on top of the keyboard.

So when I came across this IKEA Stolmen cat tree hack, I knew I needed it - partially because I really needed to get Kincaid in a space where he could chill out and do his thing, but mostly because it looked pretty, design-conscious, minimalistic, and catified af.

Here's what you'll need to make your own:

Wood planks
Dinner plate, or similar (for templates)
Bandsaw or jigsaw
Sander
Hole saw
Drill
1x IKEA Stolmen pole
4x IKEA Stolmen suspension fitting with 2 holders
8x bolts and nuts
Supervisor Cat

Since I'd been decluttering, I was left with two perfectly empty, perfectly good, usable IKEA Ivar shelves. These shelves are solid pine and well strong enough to hold up the weight of a cat, so I decided to reuse them.

First step was to use the dinner plates and bowls to trace out a template. This left me with four shapes of platforms.

Then I borrowed a friend's wood shop, and use bandsaws to start cutting the large planks into more manageable pieces, as well as start roughly cutting them down to the size of the template, taking straight edges off sides wherever I could. Since I didn't have a jigsaw, I couldn't be as precise as I'd have liked to be, but I like to think that the rough knobbly-ness of the finished product adds to its charm.

Be careful not to get overconfident and winding up getting too close and chopping bits off.

Next, use a more flexible bandsaw (or jigsaw, or whatever tools you might have at your fancy) to cut finer details into the platform - any more intricate curves that you might not have been able to do with the first straight-cutting bandsaw. At this point the rough template of the platform is done!

Now the pretty-making part. Since up to this point all the platforms were cut roughly with bandsaws, I used a belt sander to take the edges down and smooth out the curves. This was by far the most time-consuming part of the project, since it took a lot of sanding and checking to make sure that I didn't have any bits that could stick out and injure someone (or some-cat!)

Sanding down the edges so that at least the platform looks finished.

Not bad for my first real woodworking project, I'd say - I haven't been even remotely close to a wood shop since D&T in secondary school, so I consider this a success.

The next bit is drilling holes so the main part of the Stolmen pole fits through the platform. I got a friend with a hole saw to do this for me. The Stolmen pole measures 4.6cm in diameter, so we used the closest option we had available: 5cm. A couple of wood clamps, a decent hole saw, a centering marking and we were all good to go!

The result - a perfectly circular 5cm hole.

The next holes to drill are the screw holes for the Stolmen fittings. This was pretty easy - no specialist equipment here, just a regular old drill through marked-out either sides of where the suspension fitting was going to go.

Marking...

... And drilled. Done!

Then it's a simple matter of assembly. The Stolmen pole is just a tension rod between the floor and the ceiling that's surprisingly sturdy for how simple of an idea it is! I slid the platforms through, and then placed the platforms at the heights I wanted. Make sure each platform is rotated at a 120-degree angle from the next platform so that your cat can move from one to the next.

I used bolts, nuts and washers to fit it all together, using washers to fill the space between the platform and fitting so that it would stay sturdy. Make sure you tighten everything nice and snug!

The final, and most important step of all, is for you to have gone through all this effort and be proud of what you've done, creating your wonderful cat tree only to realise that your cat is deathly afraid of heights and won't go anywhere near it.

In Jackson Galaxy's terms, after you've built and designed your wonderful cat tree, you realise that you don't have a Tree Dweller cat but a Bush Dweller. He would much rather hang out on your floor and in low spaces and doesn't really have a need for your magnificent cat tower, thank you very much.

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Announcement: Photography Portfolio Update!

Hi everyone! Here's a quick announcement - from today, my photography portfolio will now be hosted at cherylkphoto.com! This is where you'll find the best of my photography of the most recent years - travel, landscape, and some portraits. My photographic style has been evolving in the past few years and I expect it will for some time to come, and this is where you'll be able to keep up to date with what's new and changing.

For personal reasons, I haven't been as active here on the main site as I should. I'm gonna try my best to fix that - my life's all sorts of upside down right now, and because I try to write quality rather than quantity I don't always have the space to sit down for hours and write new posts every week. Blogging is fun, but the world of post-graduation is chaotic and filled with questions of what to do with my life. So far, what I've done with my life has been a whole ton of figuring out what to do.

I've also managed to get in a bit of time to write some music for a couple of projects I was attached to, both mastered and aided in no small part by the wonderful Iliya Zaki:

Have a look/listen and let me know what you think? Music, as some of you might know, is what I've been working towards for a very long time in my life, and I'd love to keep being a part of it. I'm starting to properly explore the creative side of myself for the first time in forever (!) and would love your feedback on both my music and photography.

Help me make myself better!

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Taylor Swift and the idolising of the BFF

I didn't always like Taylor Swift. When she first made it big with Love Story, I thought it was a decent song - memorable, catchy, but over-the-top cheesy. (Disclaimer: In 2008 when Love Story was first released, I was a cynical 17-year-old who thought she knew better than everyone else in music.)

While Taylor and I had a relationship of hits and misses for a while, it wasn't until the release of Red that I solidly decided that I liked her as an artist. She writes good songs - her collaborations with Ed Sheeran (Everything Has Changed) and The Civil Wars (Safe and Sound) in particular were the songs that made me come around. The 1989 album, already so talked-about, and its ongoing world tour firmly put Taylor at the top of the pop music world. I love 1989, I love the music video for Blank Space, I love a lot of things about Taylor Swift.

But there's one thing I don't like, and that's how Taylor has turned the BFF into a status symbol - an idol to be adored, a girl gang to aspire to.

Let me get this out of the way - I think Taylor is a good person. She donated $50,000 to a fan who was struggling with cancer; $15,000 to a family in hospital after a car accident (anyone else think the cost of healthcare in the U.S. is beyond ridiculous?! But that's a topic for another time); she bakes cookies and surprises fans with hand-picked presents at Christmas. Really, there's no reason for anyone to criticise anything about Taylor, right?

Taylor's girl-gang is not new; she's been collecting girlfriends from Karlie Kloss to Lorde and proudly sharing her #squadgoals on Instagram. Who can forget this now-famous photo of Taylor and HAIM on a vacation boat?

Greetings from Maui! @haimtheband

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Jan 23, 2015 at 5:20pm PST

In theory, it's brilliant. Feminism has been ruling, women are empowered, and we want to show that we are every bit as brilliant as men. We want to show that we are united. Having BFFs surely must be the perfect solution, to show that we are equally friends with each other, and that we've got each other's backs.

Except that having BFFs is just the new, politically-correct way to talk about being popular.

In reality, Taylor's role-modelling is just another picture-perfect image telling women what they should aim to become. The squad is overwhelmingly made up of tall, willowy, white women, and unsurprisingly, girls want to be like her. "If I'm like Taylor, I can have BFFs too!"

There is no doubt that Taylor Swift's immaculately manicured image is a huge contributor to how popular she is - she's the perfect not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman who takes on large corporations and wins, yet has time to care for her fans. Another caveat: I'm not saying that this is entirely Taylor's fault. Taylor is tall, willowy, and white; people overwhelmingly have friends who are like themselves; therefore Taylor's friends are also tall, willowy and white.

Makes sense.

But the culture that has emerged around Taylor's collection of friends is frightening. Everyone wants to be Taylor's BFF, and if you're not one of her BFFs, well you're not part of the squad. Taylor Swift's brand has taken the image of friendship and turned it into some sort of club, some sort of status symbol: that's the real message that the Taylor Swift brand is sending.

Unable to find my chill because of @fettywap1738 singing 'Trap Queen' for 60,000 people in Seattle. Amazing night!!

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Aug 9, 2015 at 1:14am PDT

Taylor Swift is not your friend, and unless your name is Karlie Kloss or Lorde, Taylor Swift is most certainly not your BFF. Even if she were, BFFs shouldn't have a leader of the pack, the role that Taylor undoubtedly claims.

There shouldn't be a hierarchy of BFFs, or a war to claim the coolest kids for your squad. BFFs are not a collection of the who's who in feminist pop - they are the people you get along with, who you share secrets with, who come over at 2am in the morning with a tub of Ben & Jerry's because you watched Ross and Rachel break up on Friends again.

A healthy friendship is based on equal standing and respect, not one with a queen idol at the head of the gang. It's just as important to value yourself as it is to value your friends, and one's self-worth shouldn't be determined by the people they choose or don't choose to surround themselves by.

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