From motherhood to an eating disorder: 11 things we learned in Taylor Swift's Miss Americana documentary.

Taylor Swift, who was recently named Artist of the Decade by Billboard, has emerged as a trailblazer for women in the entertainment industry in the past years.

Her new Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, demonstrates exactly why.

The nearly 90-minute film shows how the ‘Me!’ singer has so-cleverly carved out her own career, with a publicly fearless attitude yet with private insecurities that have followed her the whole way.

From motherhood to an eating disorder, Taylor Swift talks navigating her twenties with the public’s magnifying glass on her the whole time.

Here are 11 things we learned about Taylor Swift in her documentary Miss Americana. 

Kanye West VMAs moment.

The documentary recounted the infamous 2009 moment when Kanye West, an established rapper, stole the microphone from Taylor Swift as she was mid-speech, accepting her award for ‘Best Female Video’.

"It was so echoey in there. At the time I didn’t know they were booing him doing that, I thought they were booing me," Swift recalls.

"For someone who has built their entire belief system on getting people to clap for you, the whole crowd booing was a pretty formative experience."

Swift's Grammy's disappointment.

In 2018, Taylor Swift filmed herself as she received a call about Grammy nominations. Her album, Reputation, was not nominated for any of the "main categories", she was told over the phone.

"I just need to make a better record," she immediately responds. "I’m making a better record."

Her next album was Lover, released in 2019.

Watch the trailer for Taylor Swift's new documentary, Miss Americana, here. Post continues below. 

Falling in love with Joe Alwyn.

Joe Alwyn, who Swift has been dating since 2016, only features in small snippets in Miss Americana. But she does reveal why she fell in love with the English actor.

"I was falling in love with someone who had a really wonderful, normal, balanced kind of life," she says in the documentary. "We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private."

Talking about falling in love with Alywn she simply says: "We were happy.

"It was happiness without anyone else's input."

Motherhood

As Swift talks about turning 29 in the documentary, the singer tells her producer Joel Little that she is "definitely not ready for kids".

"I’m definitely not ready for all this grown-up stuff," she adds.

Swift's eating disorder.

Swift explains that she had an eating disorder, fuelled by her obsession with control and provoked by paparazzi photos.

"I’ve learned over the years it’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day because I have a tendency… I tend to get triggered by something whether it’s a picture where I feel like it looked like my tummy is too big or where someone said I looked pregnant.

"That’ll just trigger me to starve a little bit, just stop eating," Swift says.

She continues: "I thought I was just supposed to feel like I was going to pass out at the end of a show, or in the middle of it.

"There’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting. ‘Cos 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 that ass then your stomach isn’t flat enough. It’s all just f**king impossible."

Loneliness.

After winning Album of the Year at the Grammys for the second time, for 1989, Swift felt lonely.

"I just wondered… shouldn’t I, shouldn’t I, shouldn’t I have someone that I could call right now?"

Recovering from Kimye scandal.

The documentary also recounted the infamous scandal after Kanye West released his song 'Famous' which included the lyrics: "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex. Why? I made that bitch famous."

Although Swift denied she had any knowledge those lyrics were being released, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West claimed the exact opposite, insisting he sought permission.

Subsequently, the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty was trending worldwide.

"When people decided I was wicked and evil and conniving and not a good person, that was the one I couldn’t really bounce back from because my whole life was centred around it," she says.

"When people fall out of love with you, there's nothing you can do to change their mind. They just don't love you anymore.

"I just wanted to disappear."

Why Swift remained publicly apolitical.

Taylor Swift was hugely influenced by the adverse impact experienced by the Dixie Chicks after they spoke out against George W. Bush. Hence, she decided to not "force her politics" on her followers.

"A nice girl doesn’t force their opinions on people, a nice girl smiles and waves and says thank you, a nice girl doesn’t make people feel uncomfortable with her views," Swift recalls thinking.

Her decision to become political.

Swift changed her apolitical stance. This was fuelled in part by her sexual assault case in 2017.

"I just thought to myself, 'Next time there is any opportunity to change anything, you better know what you stand for and what you want to say.'"

During the midterm elections of 2018, the singer came out strongly in support of Democratic candidates and against Tennessee Republican and then-Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn.

Swift's decision wasn't without tense backlash from her own team, who argued that this wasn't the right move for Swift.

"It's not that I want to step into this, I just can't not at this point," she says, adding she regretted not campaigning against Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

"I'm saying right now that this is something that I know is right and you guys need to be on the right side of history," Swift argues.

Oh. Taylor Swift didn't have a burrito until she was 26.

Swift got through 26 years of her life without ever eating a burrito and that's a... concern.

She made the admission during a studio session with her producer, Joel Little, saying she didn't have a burrito "until like two years ago."

She now enjoys them with tortilla chips inside, for that extra "crunch".

Reinvention.

Taylor Swift is the Queen of Reinvention. In the documentary, she explains why.

"We do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they're 35," Swift explains.

"The female artists that I know of, have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to, or else you're out of a job."

You can watch Miss Americana on Netflix now. It is available here. 

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