Taylor Swift Talks About Overcoming An Eating Disorder In Her New Netflix Documentary

Taylor Swift has opened up about struggling with an eating disorder in her new Netflix documentary.

In Miss Americana, which premiered last night at Sundance Film Festival, Taylor speaks candidly about body image and the pressure she felt in the past to be ultra-slim.

“It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day,” she says, admitting that although “it’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it”, she’d restrict food after seeing a paparazzi picture she didn’t like.

“I tend to get triggered by something, whether it’s a picture of me where I feel like my tummy looked too big, or someone said that I looked pregnant or something. And that will trigger me to just starve a little bit, just stop eating.”

She tells the film’s director Lena Wilson that she would make lists of everything she ate, exercise constantly, and have a defence ready if anyone confronted her about what was going on.

“I thought that I was supposed to feel like I was going to pass out at the end of the show, or in the middle of it,” she says. “Now I realise, no, if you eat food, have energy, get stronger, you can do all these shows and not feel [drained].”

In an interview with Variety magazine, Taylor went into detail about the effect that being ‘punished’ by tabloids, then ‘patted on the head’ for fitting into sample sizes, had on her body image.

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… You register that enough times, and you just start to accommodate everything towards praise and punishment, including your own body.

The singer says she doesn’t care so much now when someone comments on her weight, and has embraced “the fact that I’m a size six [UK 8-10] instead of a size double-zero [UK 4]”.

Miss Americana, which also deals with her mother’s illness and desire to speak out about politics, will be streaming on Netflix from January 31.

• Body Image
• Eating Disorder
• Taylor Swift