Taylor Swift has opened up about her friendship with Girls creator Lena Dunham, revealing she is "like a hug in the form of the person".

Swift graces the cover of the December issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, taking over 23 covers worldwide.

In her accompanying interview, the star addressed Emma Watson's feminist speech at the United Nations last month, praising her pal Dunham for shaping her views over the past few years.

T-Swizzle said: "My girlfriends and I talk a lot about feminism and the inequality between the way men and women are talked about.

"The kind of things we say are, ‘Why is it mischievous, fun and sexy if a guy has a string of lovers that he’s cast aside; loved and left? Yet if a woman dates three or four people in an eight-year period she is a serial dater and it gives some 12-year-old the idea to call her a ‘sl*t’ on the internet?’ It’s not the same for boys, it just isn’t and that’s a fact."

After previously revealing how she was bullied at school for not being ‘cool or pretty enough’, Taylor went on to credit her female peers partly to “that mental adjustment that happens when you grow up and figure out who you are”, paying homage to Dunham.

[related]The Shake It Off singer gushed: “Her perspective has truly shaped me in the past couple of years. She is just so enthusiastic about life, about other women. She is like a hug in the form of a person.”

As well as talking about Lena, Taylor - who has been romanticallylinked to the likes of Harry Styles and John Mayer -also admitted that she's given up on dating, stating: "People will say, let me set you up with someone, and I’m just sitting there saying, ‘That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not lonely; I’m not looking.’… They just don’t get it.

"I’ve learnt that just because someone is cute and wants to date you, that’s not a reason to sacrifice your independence and allow everyone to say whatever they want about you. I’m not doing that anymore.”

Swift concluded that it would take someone truly special to sweep her off her feet, claiming: "It’d take someone really special for me to undergo the circumstances I have to go through to experience a date.

"I don’t know how I would ever have another person in my world trying to have a relationship with me, or a family. The best answer I can come up with now is ‘go at it alone. Life can be romantic without having a romance. I’m very attracted to how happy I am now.”

The full interview appears in the December issue of Cosmopolitan, on sale November 4.Also available in digital edition on Apple Newsstand.

For further exclusive content, please go towww.cosmopolitan.co.uk/taylor

Photos: © James White/Cosmopolitan