‘It’s just impossible’: Taylor Swift on the dangerous pressure to look thin

When you see Taylor Swift walk down the red carpet in a custom silk gown or dance on stage in a shimmery rainbow mini dress, you think she is oozing with confidence. We can’t help but wish we looked like her, but the singer has shed a light on the body image issues she has been struggling with for years.

The Lover singer opens up about her complicated relationship with food in her new documentary Miss Americana. She told Variety that discussing it made her “uncomfortable” but she knew it was time to share her story.

Taylor explained that there were times when she’d see a photo of herself and her stomach wouldn’t look flat so she felt like she should punish herself.

In the documentary, Taylor revealed: “It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day. It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it, but there have been times in the past when she has 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.”

The All Too Well singer explained: “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.”

Taylor believes that there is far too much pressure placed on women when it comes to body image. We may have made progress but the fear of looking too big or too skinny is something that still haunts millions of us today, even pop stars like Taylor.

“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 f**king impossible,” the Delicate singer stressed.