There’s a scene about a half-hour into “Miss Americana,” Taylor Swift’s new Netflix documentary, where the star emerges from her Tribeca apartment to throngs of fans and paparazzi, slides into the backseat of a waiting car, and says, “I’ve learned over the years it’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day.”
What follows is a candid conversation about how her life in the spotlight led her to develop body dysmorphia and, eventually, an eating disorder, with Swift revealing that a single photo snapped from an undesirable angle could cause her “to just starve a little bit — just stop eating.”
“I don’t think you know that you’re doing that when you’re doing it gradually,” she adds.
For me, a longtime superfan of Swift’s, it hit home harder than any song lyric she’s ever written.
To be sure, my pop-star idol and I lead very different lives. I don’t have 10 Grammys and hundreds of millions of social media followers to my name, for starters, and as a writer and editor, I’m more accustomed to seeing my name in bylines than headlines. But in that moment, all I could see was a fellow perfectionist and people-pleaser sharing the destructive downside of the way she’s wired.
I’ve never written before about my own battle with anorexia, which dominated and destroyed half a decade of my life. I’ve barely spoken about it with close friends and family; even discussing it in therapy makes me uncomfortable. But after watching my favorite artist open up about her own experience to an audience of millions, I knew it was time, to borrow one of Swift’s lyrics, to speak now.
My eating disorder began when I was away from home at college, sparked by a particularly isolating semester and fueled by the deeply ingrained need to be thought of as “good,” a dependence on external approval that Swift and I share. It began innocently enough, as it does for so many, with me simply scaling down the size of my meals and upping my workout frequency. But it didn’t stop there.
“My relationship with food was exactly the same psychology that I applied to everything else in my life,” Swift recently told Variety. “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.”
Indeed, as I continued to eat less and exercise more, the pounds fell off — and the praise poured in. It certainly didn’t help that I worked in the fashion industry, where unhealthily thin bodies are historically not just normalized, but glamorized. As a magazine intern, I was able to slip into the tiniest sample-sale sizes with ease; during my stint assisting a buzzy designer, my boss often draped his dresses directly on my body, since my measurements mirrored those of many runway models. In both instances, I was met with compliments rather than concern.
“You register that enough times, and you just start to accommodate everything towards praise and punishment, including your own body,” as Swift put it.
Before long, counting calories had consumed my life. I spent my days on autopilot, too mentally and physically depleted to do much else besides sleep, (barely) eat and go to the gym.
In “Miss Americana,” Swift recalls how undereating affected her energy during concerts. “I thought that I was supposed to feel like I was going to pass out at the end of a show, or in the middle of it,” she explains. Similarly, it was shockingly easy for me to accept my constant state of exhaustion as normal; even when I had to stop and lie down halfway through folding a load of laundry, it didn’t seem like a red flag.
It would take a family intervention along with some harrowing health scares — including heart palpitations, fainting spells and more than three years of missed periods — for me to finally recognize that my lifestyle could kill me.
And as anyone who’s struggled with an eating disorder knows, recovery is a long and rocky road. Learning to retrain your brain — to stop viewing hunger pangs and protruding bones as “good” and skipping the gym or having to buy jeans in a larger size as “bad” — is a difficult process, one that for me required the help of therapy, medication and a supremely supportive partner.
It also, incidentally, led me to fall in love with Swift’s music; as I gradually cleared my closet of my old “skinny” clothes and reintroduced new foods that I’d previously prohibited, like pizza and pasta, her signature kiss-off songs and upbeat pop anthems served as my soundtrack. I was never ever ever getting back together with my illness, I’d tell myself. Stressing about a particularly decadent meal? I just had to shake it off.
Today, I’m proud to call myself recovered, but for those still struggling, Swift’s decision to open up about her history of disordered eating may well save lives. Ask any fan why they adore the musician, and most will point to her storytelling skills and rich, relatable lyrics. If other Swifties are able to identify with the star’s body-image struggles the same way they do with her songs, this scene in “Miss Americana” might just be the motivation they need to seek help and start healing.
That’s no small feat when you consider that 30 million people suffer from eating disorders in the US alone, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. It is the mental illness with the highest mortality rate.
As documented in “Miss Americana,” Swift has used her massive platform to draw attention to everything from sexual assault to the importance of midterm elections, spiking crisis-hotline calls and voter registration in the process. Put simply, when Swift gets real, millions listen. And by sharing her experience with overcoming her eating issues, she’s sending a powerful message that recovery is possible — and that it’s brighter on the other side.
The vast majority of people in this world aren’t constantly photographed or subjected to media scrutiny the way the Grammy winner is. But in this digital age, toxic body commentary — not to mention photos of impossibly beautiful and thin models and influencers, often digitally airbrushed to perfection — is always only a tap away.
Between the cancellation of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and the rise of body-positivity advocates like Lizzo, Jameela Jamil and Ashley Graham, we’ve made great strides in embracing and encouraging more realistic and healthy beauty standards in recent years. Still, despite their prevalence, eating disorders — which affect people of all ages, sizes, genders and socioeconomic backgrounds — are still shrouded in stigma and stereotypes that can make individuals feel as though they’re suffering alone.
And even for those not on social media or plugged in to pop culture, triggering criticism and compliments are unavoidable. As “Miss Americana” director Lana Wilson told Variety, “It’s incessant, and I can say this as a woman: It’s amazing to me how people are constantly like ‘You look skinny’ or ‘You’ve gained weight.’ People you barely know say this to you. And it feels awful, and you can’t win either way.”
Every so often, I’ll still catch myself criticizing the way my tummy or legs look in a photo or how a certain pair of pants fits me. From now on, whenever that happens, I’ll be repeating a line Swift says in the film: “We do not do that anymore, because it’s better to think you look fat than to look sick.”
It just might be my new favorite song.
If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, you can get help. Call the National Eating Disorder Association helpline at (800) 931-2237 or visit nationaleatingdisorders.org.