Taylor Swift Says She’s Struggled With an Eating Disorder
Taylor Swift has always used her music to share her feelings—and pieces of her life—with her fans, who carefully dissect every lyric. But those lyrics only tell part of the story. Her new Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, is about to show us a whole lot more.
Ahead of the film’s debut on January 31, Swift talked to Variety about something she’s never spoken about publicly before: her relationship with food and a past struggle with an eating disorder, a topic also covered in the documentary. So why is she opening up about this now? “I think I’ve never really wanted to talk about that before, and I’m pretty uncomfortable talking about it now,” she says. “But in the context of every other thing that I was doing or not doing in my life, I think it makes sense [to have it in the film].
“I didn’t know if I was going to feel comfortable with talking about body image and talking about the stuff I’ve gone through in terms of how unhealthy that’s been for me—my relationship with food and all that over the years,” she tells Variety. “But the way that Lana [Wilson, who directed the documentary,] tells the story, it really makes sense. I’m not as articulate as I should be about this topic because there are so many people who could talk about it in a better way. But all I know is my own experience. And my relationship with food was exactly the same psychology that I applied to everything else in my life: If I was given a pat on the head, I registered that as good. If I was given a punishment, I registered that as bad.”
She reveals there have been times when she has viewed “a picture of me where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big, or…someone said that I looked pregnant…and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit—just stop eating.“ She continues, “It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it.” However, the constant pressure, she says, would cause her to “go into a real shame/hate spiral.”
“If you’re thin enough, then you don’t have that ass that everybody wants,” she says in the film. “But if you have enough weight on you to have an ass, your stomach isn’t flat enough. It’s all just fucking impossible.”
While most women haven’t had the experience of being on the cover of a magazine or in countless paparazzi photos, Swift’s feelings here are probably relatable to many. “I remember how, when I was 18, that was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine,” she continues. “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. And then I’d walk into a photo shoot and be in the dressing room, and somebody who worked at a magazine would say, ‘Oh, wow, this is so amazing that you can fit into the sample sizes. Usually we have to make alterations to the dresses, but we can take them right off the runway and put them on you!’ And I looked at that as a pat on the head. You register that enough times, and you just start to accommodate everything towards praise and punishment, including your own body.”
The undereating affected not only her mental health but her physical health as well, especially while she was on tour. “I thought that I was supposed to feel like I was going to pass out at the end of a show, or in the middle of it,” Swift says in the doc, according to Variety. “Now I realize, no, if you eat food, have energy, get stronger, you can do all these shows and not feel [enervated].” Swift says she doesn’t care so much now if someone comments on a weight gain, and she has reconciled “the fact that I’m a size 6 instead of a size double-zero.” Swift says she was completely unaware that anything was wrong in her size 00 era and had a defense at the ready should it come up. If anyone expressed concern, she’d say, “‘What are you talking about? Of course I eat.… I exercise a lot.’ And I did exercise a lot. But I wasn’t eating.”
Swift says she has found comfort in the work of Brene Brown and Jameela Jamil. “I love people like Jameela Jamil, because she says things in a really articulate way,” she tells Variety. “The way she speaks about body image, it’s almost like she speaks in a hook. If you read her quotes about women and body image and aging and the way that women are treated in our industry and portrayed in the media, I swear the way she speaks is like lyrics, and it gets stuck in my head and it calms me down.“
Given the singer’s reach and impact, it’s a pretty big deal for Taylor Swift to speak out about her complicated relationship with food in such an intimate way and share that she’s in a healthier place now.
“I am actually really happy,” she says. “Because I pick and choose now, for the most part, what I care deeply about. And I think that’s made a huge difference.”
Originally Appeared on Glamour
