Taylor Swift Opens Up About Having An Eating Disorder And How She 'Starved Herself' In Her New Documentary

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A Vulnerable Admission

Taylor Swift's Miss Americana premiered at Sundance on Thursday night, and the singer got incredibly candid about her struggle with an eating disorder in the new documentary.

Swift explains that she would often starve herself to the point where she would feel like she would pass out during a show.

"I thought I was supposed to feel like I was going to pass out at the end of a show, or in the middle of it. Now I realise, no, if you eat food, have energy, get stronger, you can do all these shows and not feel enervated."

Impossible Standards

Swift opens up about how "f*cking impossible" modern beauty standards are and how being in the public eye as intensely as she is made it a constant battle.

"There's always some standard of beauty that you're not meeting. Because, if you're thin enough, then you don't have that ass that everybody wants. But if you have enough weight on you to have an ass, then your stomach isn't flat enough. It's all just fucking impossible."

At the height of her eating disorder, she would starve herself, exercise obsessively, and keep a detailed list of everything she would eat in a day. Swift says that she would get extremely defensive if anyone mentioned the behavior.

A Complicated Relationship With Food

In recent years, Swift has developed a healthier relationship with her body and is "no longer a size double zero," but she admits that she still struggles with seeing constant pictures of herself.

"It's better to think you look fat than to look sick. 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."

Swift also gave an interview with Variety that was released with the Sundance premiere, and Swift revealed that the pressure began when she was just 18 years old.

"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."

"No Longer A Size Double 0"

Swift continued, explaining that the system of praise and punishment made her starve herself in order to get more praise.

"So I just registered that as a punishment. And then I'd walk into a photoshoot 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."

It's so brave of Swift to speak out and will surely help her young and impressionable fans who could also be struggling with eating disorders. Bravo, Taylor!