Lady Gaga has commended Taylor Swift for opening up about her eating disorder in a resurfaced clip from the 2020 documentary, Miss Americana.
Earlier this week, the “Born This Way” singer reacted to a TikTok video which featured Swift talking about her past eating disorder and body image issues. In the clip from the Netflix documentary, which was released in January 2020, Swift speaks publicly for the first time about suffering from an eating disorder in her early career.
“I don’t care as much if somebody points out that I have gained weight, it’s just something that makes my life better,” Swift said in the scene. “The fact that I’m a size six instead of a size 00, that wasn’t how my body was supposed to be, I just didn’t really understand that at the time. I would have defended it to anybody who said, ‘I’m concerned about you.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Of course I eat, it’s perfectly normal, I just exercise a lot.’ And I did exercise a lot, but I wasn’t eating.”
Swift continued: “I don’t think you know you’re doing that when you’re doing it gradually. There’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting, because if you’re thin enough, then you don’t have that a** that everybody wants. But if you have enough weight on you to have an a**, then your stomach isn’t flat enough. It’s all just f***ing impossible.”
In response to the video, Lady Gaga took to the comments section to praise Swift.
“That’s really brave everything you said, wow,” the House of Gucci star wrote, alongside a black heart emoji.
The video – which was shared by Taylor Swift fan account @angclswift – was captioned, “This scene always breaks my heart.”
Swift previously revealed that she began to feel insecure about her looks when she broke into the music industry as a teenager.
“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 during an interview with Variety in 2020. “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.”
Meanwhile, Lady Gaga has been open about her own experience with an eating disorder. In 2013, the “Bad Romance” singer detailed her battle with “anorexia and bulimia” on her Little Monsters social media site, where she revealed that she struggled with an eating disorder from the age of 15.
For anyone struggling with the issues raised in this piece, eating disorder charity Beat’s helpline is available 365 days a year on 0808 801 0677. You can visit their website here.
NCFED offers information, resources and counselling for those suffering from eating disorders, as well as their support networks. They can be reached by phone on 845 838 2040 or their website here.
