Last December, I was working on the weekend and my colleagues kept messaging me a picture and telling me that we needed to write about it. “IT’S THE INSTAGRAM PIC YOU WISH YOU WERE IN!”. In truth it was small and blurry and someone was wearing a mask that maybe was a poo?

My colleagues were right, of course. It was the biggest Instagram picture of the year. It was Taylor Swift ’s 25th birthday and there were lots of celebrities there having a great time ( Jay-Z, Beyonce, Sam Smith, Karlie Kloss, Emma Roberts, models, actors, performers. Justin Timberlake was under the poo mask).

I know who Taylor Swift is. I know how to Shake it Off. I like that she is tall. But that was my first real sense of Taylor Swift’s party posse. Her penchant for being photographed surrounded by other celebrities. And this was different than when Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian did it because Taylor Swift’s celebrity friends seemed to be pretty happy to be there. They seemed to be having a good time. They seemed to like this 25 year old woman. Good for them.

Flash forward half a year and the images of Swift with her mates have become THE Taylor Swift story. While the use of the word “squad” to describe a group of friends has been around for decades, the phrase “#SquadGoals” is now synonymous with Swift and her celebrity pals.

Taylor Swift has a Girl Squad, filled with the best looking, coolest women around. A flick through her Instagram will show you how she rolls: She and her cool girl group are just hanging out being fun and carefree. At the MTV VMAs this year, she and her group sat at a table adorned with a sign that said “reserved”. The expressions on the faces of Taylor Swift and her friends scream exclusivity.

Her live shows around the world have been no different. There is a catwalk from the stage to the audience on which Taylor invites her pals to walk. Everyone from Heidi Klum to the American Women’s Soccer team to her cats (named after celebrities who now appear in her film clips) stride out to dance a little and be hugged.

Faces of other women from Swift’s Girl Squad flash up on the screen and say nice things about her: Selena Gomez, Karlie Kloss, Lena Dunham, the sisters of the band Haim.

The same goes for her music videos, which are a role call of 2015’s It Girls. The clip for Bad Blood was so celeb heavy that if the set had blown up, Hollywood would never have recovered. [You can read more about the politics of Bad Blood here ]

Click through the gallery to check out Taylor’s girl squad in Bad Blood (post continues below):

Taylor Swift music video.

Selena Gomez as Arsyn.

Taylor Swift music video.

Cindy Crawford as Headmistress.

Taylor Swift music video.

Cara Delevingne as Mother Chucker.

Taylor Swift music video.

Jessica Alba as Domino.

Taylor Swift music video.

Martha Hunt as HomeSlice.

Taylor Swift music video.

Taylor Swift as Catastrophe.

Taylor Swift music video.

Ellen Pompeo as Luna.

Taylor Swift music video.

Mariska Hargitay as Justice.

Taylor Swift music video.

Serayah as Dilemma.

Taylor Swift music video.

Karlie Kloss as Knockout.

Taylor Swift music video.

Kendrick Lamar as Welvin Da Great.

Taylor Swift music video.

Lena Dunham as Lucky Fiori.

Taylor Swift music video.

Hailee Steinfeld as 'The Trinity'.

Taylor Swift music video.

Lily Aldridge as Frostbyte.

Taylor Swift music video.

Zendaya as Cut-Throat.

Taylor Swift music video.

Hayley Williams as 'The Crimson Curse'.

Taylor Swift music video.

Gigi Hadid as Slay-Z.

Taylor Swift music video.

Ellie Goulding as 'Destructa X'.

Taylor Swift music video.

Taylor Swift as Catastrophe.

Taylor Swift music video.

Taylor Swift and Martha Hunt.

Swift’s brand celebrates “the healing power of female friendship”, as the New York Times has put it. And Swift is clear: She IS here to make friends. At a recent performance, she spoke to the adoring crowd about her ‘rules for friendship’:

Of course, everyone in the audience does want to spend time with Swift and is happy to scream their nomination to be in the Girl Squad. Nobody seems to notice that she doesn’t mention a rule number 3: that you will have to be liked in return.

And while there is absolutely nothing WRONG with having beautiful, famous friends, there’s something increasingly uncomfortable about watching Taylor Swift parading them around in every public aspect of her life.

There’s something uncomfortable about the way that she appears to be hand-picking the people who can be in her club (Swift recently told veteran actors Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan: “You two are ULTIMATE Squad Goals”).

There’s something uncomfortable about the girls in the squad congratulating each other on being clever enough to make a group like this. Swift girl squad member