Over the weekend, fans were blessed with the Taylor Swift documentary on Netflix, Miss Americana.
WATCH: Trailer for Taylor Swift’s ‘Miss Americana’ documentary
And boy – did we learn a lot!
One thing that Taylor opened up about was the fact that she suffered from an eating disorder.
A montage of awful comments people have said about Tay Tay appeared across the screen, one reading, “She’s too skinny. It bothers me.”
But Taylor has had to do a lot to break the bad habit of looking at paparazzi photos of herself online, realising that it was doing her a lot of harm.
“It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day.”
She said that “it’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it.” When she had 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.”
Taylor touched on the subject when she spoke with Variety for their cover story.
“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 to the publication.
“But the way that Lana (Wilson, the film’s director) 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.”
She continued, talking about how the industry had such a large effect on her body image at such a young age.
“I remember how, when I was 18, that was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine,” she said. “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. 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.”
She continued: “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”
If you or someone you know is affected by an eating disorder, call the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 or visit their website here.
Need help? Call Lifeline on 131 114, visit www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/get-help-home, or call beyondblue on 1300 224 636.
If you would like to talk to someone about mental health, you can call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800 or Headspace on 1800 650 890.
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