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Taylor Swift has opened up about suffering from an eating disorder in her early career.
In Miss Americana, the upcoming Netflix documentary about the singer, she recalls her body being scrutinised in the media.
“It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day,” Swift says in a voiceover as a montage of criticism appears on screen.
“It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it,” the singer adds before explaining how if she saw a photo of herself where she felt like her “tummy was too big” or someone had said she looked pregnant, that would trigger her “to just starve a little bit – just stop eating.”
Now, speaking to Variety, Swift revealed she began to feel insecure about her looks when she broke into the music industry as a teenager.
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NBCUniversal via Getty Images
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9/10 Tarana Burke
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1/10 Malala Yousafzai
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2/10 Michelle Obama
“Whether it was during my time as a lawyer, as an administrator at a university, a nonprofit manager, even now as First Lady, I’ve never once asked someone I was interviewing to explain a test score or a grade in a class -- never. I’ve never once made a hire just because someone went to an Ivy League school instead of a state school -- never. What I have looked for is what kind of person you are. Are you a hard worker? Are you reliable? Are you open to other viewpoints? Have you stepped outside of your own self-interest to serve others? Have you found a way to serve our country, whether in uniform or in your community?” Commencement address at Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky, 2013
Getty
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Getty Images
4/10 Patricia Arquette
“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all." Academy Awards, California, 2015
Getty Images
5/10 Hillary Clinton
"All the evidence tells us that despite the enormous obstacles that remain, there has never been a better time in history to be born female. But the data leads to a second conclusion: That despite all this progress, we're just not there yet." Women in The World Summit, New York, 2015
Getty Images
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“We are here and around the world for a deep democracy that says we will not be quiet, we will not be controlled, we will work for a world in which all countries are connected. God may be in the details, but the goddess is in connections. We are at one with each other, we are looking at each other, not up." Women's March in Washington DC, 2017
Getty Images
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NBCUniversal via Getty Images
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Getty Images
9/10 Tarana Burke
“So much of what we hear about the Me Too Movement is about individual bad actors or depraved, isolated behavior, and it fails to recognize that anybody in a position of power comes with privilege, and it renders those without that power more vulnerable. Teachers and students, coaches and athletes, law enforcement and citizen, parent and child: these are all relationships that can have an incredible imbalance of power. But we reshape that imbalance by speaking out against it in unison and by creating spaces to speak truth to power. We have to reeducate ourselves and our children to understand that power and privilege doesn't always have to destroy and take -- it can be used to serve and build. And we have to re-educate ourselves to understand that, unequivocally, every human being has the right to walk through this life with their full humanity intact.” Ted Women, California, 2018
Getty Images for Comedy Central
10/10 Greta Thunberg
"The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say - we will never forgive you." UN Climate Summit, New York, 2019
Getty Images
“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,” Swift said.
The “Lover” singer added that she doesn’t feel as “articulate” as other people are on the subject of eating disorders.
“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 musician recalled how a magazine cover of herself aged 18 prompted deep insecurities.
“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.”
Swift said she admired women like Jameela Jamil, who advocate for body positivity on social media.
“I swear the way she speaks is like lyrics, and it gets stuck in my head and it calms me down,” she added.
“Because women are held to such a ridiculous standard of beauty. We’re seeing so much on social media that makes us feel like we are less than, or we’re not what we should be, that you kind of need a mantra to repeat in your head when you start to have harmful or unhealthy thoughts. So she’s one of the people who, when I read what she says, it sticks with me and it helps me.”
For more information on where to seek support for eating disorders visit Beat.