Taylor Swift‘s Netflix documentary is truly showing fans a look into her life they’ve never seen before.
And with the highs of being a pop star, there are some serious lows, as she opened up about her past battles with eating disorders in Taylor Swift: Miss Americana.
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The doc, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday, goes deep into Swift’s “unhealthy” relationship with food, stemming from obsessive paparazzi and public scrutiny. Admitting she would “starve” herself over these triggers, she shared:
“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.”
It’s new territory for Taylor to open up this way, but during her recent cover interview with Variety, she did recall a tabloid alleging she was pregnant at 18 just because of the way her outfit made her look:
“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.”
The 30-year-old continued:
“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. 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 didn’t take the decision to open up about her body image struggle and eating disorder for this new documentary lightly. Confessing she wasn’t actually sure if she wanted to go public, she said:
“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.”
The Lover artist concluded:
“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].”
We imagine she’ll be delivering another inspiring message for her Swifties and fellow celebs who are battling the same issues.
Will U be watching Miss Americana when it premieres on Netflix January 31??
[Image via WENN/Avalon]