Taylor Swift Reveals Eating Disorder In "Miss Americana" Documentary (Review)

For anyone who has read a few of my Taylor Swift posts, you probably know two things: I call Taylor a self victimizer weasel, but you know that I don’t believe that she is the worst person out there.

Taylor recently dropped a documentary on Netflix called “Miss Americana.” According to Taylor’s team, this documentary will show the true raw side of Taylor which insinuates that the audience should finish the documentary, with a sense of knowing the real Taylor.

I actually wasn’t thinking about watching this, but I saw the first few minutes and decided why not.

What I Think

The documentary is mainly focused on Taylor Swift vs. the media. I realized throughout the whole documentary, we don’t get to see as much of Taylor’s friends and family that we would like to.

They showed her best friend eating dinner with her and a very short clip of her and her boyfriend Joe Alwyn hugging and I think that’s how far they go with that.

Taylor focused on issues she had to deal with since she reached stardom at such a young age. One of the main things she focused on was how much she craved the people’s acceptance and applause.

This is why she always tried to maintain the “sweetheart” image because there were countless times that she worried if she had an opinion that differed from someone else’s, that would result in them not liking her anymore. This is very true even in Taylor’s personal life; she does crave other people’s acceptance of her, but she cares more about the PUBLIC’S acceptance rather than people behind closed doors not liking her.

I found it interesting how that was the theme of the whole documentary.

“I didn’t speak about politics because I was told not to.”

“Good girls don’t force their opinion on others.”

It was a nice introduction to how people in Hollywood really do get spoken to. She probably worded it more nicely, but it’s true. Celebrities are constantly told what to do and what not to do, and because of lack of experience, they blindly listen to these people. This is why so many of them have that “breaking free” moment in their careers.

Taylor makes a point that after the Kim and Kanye scandal in 2016, she got tired of being the “good girl” and started to have her own personality basically.

After she introduces the “good girl” aspect, she talks a little bit about having an eating disorder.

The funny thing about this is that I always looked at Taylor as a very skinny person in general. Like she became famous as a teen who has a small frame and kept it that way.

So I never realized she could have an eating disorder until I saw pictures of her in 2015 and now.

I applaud her for speaking up about that because that could’ve been something that would’ve been hidden from the world but she chose not to hide it.

Also, notice how no inside source knew about the eating disorder? I mean correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall any blind sites posting about it because if they did, you guys would have flooded my ask box about it. This is a perfect example of how close and tight knit Taylor keeps her circle. On top of that, Taylor is VERY controlling. She reveals things on her own time and her coming clean about it in the documentary, was a perfect example of that.

What I did realize about the documentary is that Taylor isn’t doing her usual self victimizing schemes. I feel like she just told stories as if she was a narrator.

Like when it came to the 2016 scandal with Kim and Kanye, she didn’t sit there explaining herself. She just said “and after that happened, I was gone for a year.”

Some critics are saying that the documentary was very calculative and I can see why that is.

I feel like if you know a few things about Taylor, watching this documentary won’t help you know her more. I felt as if I finished the documentary with the same amount of information about Taylor when I started it.

To me, it didn’t feel super personal. It felt like a news reporting documentary where it was like “so then this happened, and then this, and then that, and then this.”

We get to see Taylor open up about politics a bit more. She spends a good amount of time talking about the election for Nashville senator.

I’m happy that Taylor finally opened up about politics even if I feel like talking about politics now is a lot safer and convenient than in 2016, BUT I do give her credit. There comes a lot of pressure from a country star wanting to share her opinions on politics.

However, do not be mistaken, I’m not praising Taylor for staying quiet during 2016 because in the era of Trump, it’s not even a question of politics anymore, but a question of your human morality. YOUR ETHICS and how far are you going to go to stay silent in times of oppression? But that’s another story.

The senator who Taylor was voting against, Marsha Blackburn, ends up winning and Taylor is saddened by this so to feel better, she writes a song called “Only The Young.”

Throughout the documentary we get to see Taylor’s song writing process mainly for her album Lover.

And I can’t help but say it: her lyrics are beautiful, but the production of these songs are awful.

God forbid Taylor gives us a nice ballad for once. If I didn’t watch the documentary, I would’ve heard Only The Young and automatically associated it with school bullies or something. Also, Taylor’s lyrics are confessional, but not raw.

For example, in “Only The Young” she sings, “The game was rigged, The ref got tricked. The wrong ones think they’re right” and that’s great and all, but I feel like Taylor has been using the same exact technique when it comes to writing songs that I can’t help, but feel like they all sound the same.

Not only are the lyrics ‘fairy-tail’ like, but her most recent songs have the same singing patterns.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of her music. I just see repeating patterns in most of her recent songs.

One thing I thought was funny was when she got a call that Reputation didn’t get a Grammy nomination and she was all like “I just have to make a better record.” That to me doesn’t seem like a person who has learned to stop craving the world’s acceptance.

Even the person over the phone was like “no Reputation is an amazing record” and Taylor was all like “nope! I gotta make a better record.”

Taylor Swift/Miss Americana

Well Lover didn’t get nominated either Taylor so maybe that wasn’t it.

Overall, I did enjoy the documentary. I feel like the only thing I learned was she had an eating disorder and craved acceptance, but overall I just don’t feel like it was as personal as it could’ve been. Maybe Taylor didn’t have more to give to the audience, but at the same time I felt like she was still controlling the narrative.

Like if she put in too much emotion, then that would give us too much of her and she wants to paint herself as someone slightly different.

What I Would’ve Liked to See

I would’ve wished to see a side of Taylor that she didn’t already give us thanks to her controlling her image most of the time. I would’ve loved to see friendship breakups, stories that are personal that we don’t already know, maybe a really angry Taylor.

But all we saw was… the same Taylor opening up about 3% more than she normally does. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that maybe she didn’t have more to give us but…. I mean… come on.

Overall Rating

My overall rating would be a 6/10. I enjoyed it and I thought that the documentary flowed very nicely. It just would’ve been better to see a RAW version of Taylor. That is probably the biggest piece missing in the entire documentary. It was a documentary that showed more of Taylor as a celebrity as opposed to Taylor as a person.

I guess it’s up to me now to write about Taylor as a person.

Hope you guys enjoyed! See you in the comments down below. Tell me what you thought about the documentary. Do you agree or disagree with anything I said? Let me know! Add on! You can comment anonymously so take advantage of that.