“It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl.”
Over the past several years, there’s been an ongoing — and, in many cases, much-needed — conversation around pop stars and body image. In 2020, Taylor Swift disclosed to Variety’s Chris Willman that she would sometimes “just stop eating” and had developed an “unhealthy” relationship with food, a pattern she characterized as a Pavlovian response to constant feedback on her size from outside observers. In dialogue with Charli xcx on a remix of 2024’s “Girl, so confusing,” Lorde sang about a “war with [her] body” that entailed starving herself and then gaining the weight back — the latter seeming to cause her as much emotional pain as the former. She further elaborated in her 2025 album “Virgin,” admitting she got “sucked in” by bodily measurements like a “new waist-to-hip” ratio on a song aptly titled “Broken Glass.”
To many fans, these revelations were welcome. Just as Swift distills universal experiences like loss and heartbreak, so too can she put to words what many people feel in a world where bodies are constantly on display. The pressures Lorde faces as an exceptionally visible person are more intense than the average social media user’s inner turmoil over whether and how to edit a selfie, but they’re identical in nature. It’s reassuring to have community in that struggle, and to hear that it’s possible to come out the other side.
