Taylor Swift Gets Candid About Overcoming Eating Disorder, Body Image in ‘Miss Americana’

Taylor Swift is preparing to release her Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, on Jan. 31, which explores the singer’s career over the past few years as well as her newfound political voice, cat backpack and, in a new revelation, her previous struggle with an eating disorder. Miss Americana premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday, Jan. 23, and one of its segments features a montage of criticism directed at Swift’s figure, Variety reports.

After footage of Swift stepping out of her front door into a barrage of reporters, the singer says in a voice over that “it’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day.”

The Grammy winner added that “it’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it,” but there have been instances when she has seen “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.”

Speaking to Variety in an interview about the documentary, Swift reflected on how difficult it was for her to address her relationship with food 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 said. “But the way that [director] Lana [Wilson] 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.”

The 30-year-old also recalled a magazine cover early in her career and subsequent photo shoots that caused her to look at her behavior in regards to eating as either positive or negative.

“I remember how, when I was 18, that was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine. And the headline was like ‘Pregnant at 18?’ And it was because I had worn something that made my lower stomach look not flat,” Swift said. “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.”

“I think I’ve never really wanted to talk about that before, and I’m pretty uncomfortable talking about it now,” she added. “But in the context of every other thing that I was doing or not doing in my life, I think it makes sense” to include it in the movie.

Photo Credit: Getty / Neilson Barnard