Taylor Swift is getting really real like never before in her documentary Miss Americana – including her past struggles with body image issues and an eating disorder.
The docu premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday (January 23), and one of the things she revealed was how living in the spotlight previously led her to have an unhealthy relationship with food.
“It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day. It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it. 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 shared in the film.
In a recent interview with Variety, she shared some instances that had her triggered.
“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. So, I just registered that as a punishment,” she recalled.
“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,” she continued.
“You register that enough times, and you just start to accommodate everything towards praise and punishment, including your own body,“ she said, further explaining, “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.”
Taylor actually had some reservations about going public with her struggles – something that Lana Wilson, who directed Miss Americana, helped make her feel more comfortable with.
“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, 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,” she explained.
“I think I’ve never really wanted to talk about that before, and I’m pretty uncomfortable talking about it now, 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],” she added.
