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BY TREVA BOWDOIN/MAY 6, 2024 9:00 AM EST
Her heart, her hips, her body — which people love concocting wild rumors about. Taylor Swift can sing about her borrowed heart, hallowed hips, red lips, and pink cheeks all she wants, but unfortunately, using her own words to describe her person will never protect her from others scrutinizing every inch of it.

It doesn’t help matters that Swifties are an observant bunch who enjoy speculating about the singer. In 2022, BuzzFeed News reporter Paige Skinner noticed that Swift’s fans had started remarking about how often the “Fortnight” hitmaker’s bare feet appeared on social media. One Swiftie had a theory about why the lyricist, who romanticizes being barefoot in the kitchen and in the wildest winter, is so comfortable with everyone seeing her toes. “I don’t think she knows the way feet are sexualized on the internet these days,” Maya Luz told the outlet. “Very millennial of her.”

So, while it may be true that “all we are is skin and bone trained to get along,” to quote Miss Lightnin’ on her Feet herself, people can be really weird about other people’s bodies. The Swiftie topic du jour became rumors about Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce after she and the NFL player started dating, but that gossip has nothing on the odd conspiracy theories about Swift’s body that keep cropping up on the web.

Her rep denied an insurance claim

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When your legs are insured for a hefty sum of money, you don’t need to worry about the potential dangers of spinning around in your highest heels on your tallest tiptoes. But according to Taylor Swift’s rep, the entertainer hasn’t taken out an insurance policy on her pins.

The National Enquirer is responsible for this rumor. In 2015, the tabloid reported that Swift had her legs appraised and was stunned when their value was placed at $40 million. Explaining why a performer like Swift would want her lower limbs insured, a source said, “It seems like a ludicrous sum, but if something was to happen to her legs, Taylor wouldn’t be able to give her signature stage performances.”

Celebrities actually do get their body parts insured. When supermodel Heidi Klum appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in 2022, she revealed that a client she was working with had taken out a $2 million policy on her trusty runway treaders. According to Klum, she learned that one leg is worth less than the other because it has a scar on it. In response to the National Enquirer report, Swift made a joke to this effect; she accused one of her kitties, Meredith Grey, of lowering the value of her left leg. The singer shared an Instagram photo of a long scratch on her thigh and captioned it, “GREAT WORK MEREDITH I WAS JUST TRYING TO LOVE YOU AND NOW YOU OWE ME 40 MILLION DOLLARS.”

Her belly button coverage raised questions

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In 2015, a Redditor asked a burning question: “Seriously, does she have a belly button or not?” Their query included a photo of Taylor Swift sporting one of her favorite outfit combos, a crop top paired with high-waisted bottoms.

The obvious explanation for Swift’s reluctance to show off her lower midriff is that she’s a magical being who was created in a crystal jar using some form of ancient alchemy; having no umbilical cord would result in a totally smooth torso. But Swift admitted that her careful attention to keeping her navel covered was a calculated PR move, not an attempt to conceal her origin story. “I don’t want people to know if I have one or not. … I want that to be a mystery,” she told Lucky magazine in 2014. “As far as anyone knows based on my public appearances, they haven’t seen evidence of a belly button.”

Swift gave her fans another tantalizing idea to entertain when she mused that her navel area would be the perfect place to get a secret tattoo. But in 2015, Swifties learned that she does not have a wreath of snakes and butterflies inked around her belly button. The “Look What You Made Me Do” singer posted a photo on Instagram of her and the Haim sisters wearing bikinis, and Swift wasn’t rocking her usual retro aesthetic. Her rare decision to wear low-rise bottoms proved that she does, indeed, have a belly button.

She’s been hurt by pregnancy rumors

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Long before Travis Kelce’s baby fever sparked speculation about his future with Taylor Swift, his girlfriend found herself dogged by rumors that she was about to become a new mom. According to Swift, invasive speculation about her womb contributed to her body image issues and disordered eating. “I remember how, when I was 18, that was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine,” she told Variety. “And the headline was like ‘Pregnant at 18?’ And it was because I had worn something that made my lower stomach look not flat. So I just registered that as a punishment.”

Swift had previously addressed the rumor when it was fresh. The claim was that she and Joe Jonas were about to become first-time parents, even though they were no longer dating. Swift complained that the fabricated story was threatening to damage her reputation of setting a positive example for her fans. “I have devoted my entire life to not having something like that happen,” she told Access (via Today) in 2008. She also wondered aloud whether something as trivial as an outfit decision had triggered the rumor.

In a tweet that went viral in 2024, a fan speculated that Swift had used her mastermind capabilities to preemptively quash rumors that she was pregnant with Kelce’s baby. She achieved this by downing an alcoholic beverage while resting her hand on the pregnant belly of her WAG pal, Lindsay Bell.

The speculation about Taylor Swift getting plastic surgery

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Because plastic surgery is so ubiquitous in Hollywood, some fans may find it easy to believe rumors that their idols have had work done — especially when plastic surgeons are helping to propagate them. Taylor Swift has not escaped the scrutiny of these experts. After studying some older and more recent images of Swift’s face in 2014, Dr. Anthony Youn told Radar, “It looks like she had rhinoplasty, which is the plastic surgery that celebrities have had the most.” However, the plastic surgery rumor that Swift just can’t seem to shake is that she has breast implants.

According to Radar, the boob job speculation began in 2013, and it’s been revisited many times since then. In 2016, photos of Swift frolicking on the beach with her then-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston sparked some chatter about the matter on social media, prompting a Swift source to speak out. The insider told E! News that the rumors were untrue, adding that Swift wouldn’t want to change her chest because she “likes the fact she can go bra-less and have them still be perky.” But this statement didn’t put the rumors to rest. In 2019, Dr. Norman Rowe told Life & Style that Swift appeared to have a “well done and natural” boob job in photos from the Golden Globes. Another plastic surgeon, Dr. Marc Everett, told the Daily Mail that he believes Swift first got implants in 2012 and upgraded to a larger size in 2022.

Some fans think she’s worn butt pads

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In her documentary “Miss Americana,” Taylor Swift laments the impossible body standard women are expected to meet and maintain. “If you’re thin enough, then you don’t have that a** that everybody wants,” the artist says. “But if you have enough weight on you to have an a**, your stomach isn’t flat enough.” To achieve this unrealistic ideal, some fans are convinced that Swift has experimented with wearing padding to add curves to her backside. In 2018, a writer on the Babe.Net website opined that Swift seemed unconcerned about the size of her glutes when she was rocking casual wear but that all of her Reputation Stadium Tour costumes appeared to be enhanced with butt pads. TMZ tossed the same suggestion out as a theory explaining why her butt looked larger at the 2016 iHeartRadio Awards than it did a year prior.

The rumor made the rounds again in 2024, thanks to a 2011 video of Swift’s skirt blowing up during a performance and exposing her undergarments. “I’m glad she’s just wearing padded knickers and didn’t go for the Kardashian implant,” read one response to the video on X, formerly known as Twitter.

In response to a suggestion that Swift was also padding her Eras Tour costumes in 2024, one Redditor wrote, “As a girl I get her, people have body-shamed her a bunch of times … I understand her not wanting to be bullied because of it again.”