PARK CITY, Utah Taylor Swift s reign as the good girl is over at least thats what she wants us to believe after watching Miss Americana, her Netflix documentary that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday night.

The film, helmed by After Tiller director Lana Wilson, is an eye-opening look into Swifts psyche as a female superstar living for the approval of strangers. It offers a lens into the post-Reputation period of her career, in which she leaned into a new identity: politically charged pop star.

I needed to learn before I spoke to 200 million people, she says of her decision to finally share her Democratic beliefs after years of silence. Her teams longtime approach was to simply stick to the music, hoping to avoid another Dixie Chicks-President George W. Bush backlash in the country music world.

But after she fought and won a groping case against former radio host David Mueller in 2017, things truly began to change for Swift. Then, conservative Marsha Blackburn entered the U.S. Senate race in Tennessee during the midterm elections, and Swift could no longer sit on the sidelines.

Shes Trump in a wig, Swift says in the doc, arguing with Blackburns stances against equal pay for women and the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking and date rape. Blackburn also believes businesses have a right to refuse service to same-sex couples and opposes gay marriage.

These arent Tennessee Christian values, Swift asserts. I live in Tennessee. Im Christian. These are not my values.

Cheers erupted all around the 1,200-seat Eccles Theater in Park City as Miss Americana glided through Swifts social, political and personal journey to self-acceptance. The film opens with Swift playing the piano in her New York City apartment as the newest feline member of her family, Benjamin Button , scurries across the keys. She then reads the words on the cover of one of her first journals: My life, my career, my dream, my reality. The notebook is full of lyrics and ideas, storytelling that Swift says has shaped public perception of who she is as an artist.

Its clear throughout the film that Swift has always sought the approval of others, from her biggest fan and strongest critic to, well, Kanye West. In fact, the infamous 2009 VMAs moment, when West interrupted her speech accepting the award for Best Female Video, is featured prominently toward the beginning of the film as an example of Swift subscribing to that aforementioned moral code of constantly being agreeable.

Being good was all I wrote about. It was all I wanted, she admits in the movie. It was the complete and total belief system I subscribed to as a kid.

So, when the audience at the VMAs began booing West off the stage, Swift, then a teenage people-pleaser, automatically assumed the boos were for her. That moment was a formative experience, she says, one that eventually led her to develop thicker, shall we say snake-like , skin.