Lorde opens up about disordered eating and body image struggles

Lorde says she has battled body image issues over recent years. Photo / Getty Images

Warning: Discusses eating disorders

Lorde has spoken out about her disordered eating, saying she felt “weak” and “ungrounded” as she battled body image issues.

The pop star has confessed she made her body “very small” because she thought that was required of her as a woman in the public eye, admitting she didn’t release a record for four years because she didn’t want to make music until she felt better about herself.

She told Document Journal: “There would be these layers of grief that would come through, and there was such a collective anger, and so much trauma coming to the surface.

“Then on top of that, I had made my body very small, because I thought that that was what you did as a woman and a woman on display. I thought, I’m small.

“This will communicate to people that I’m taking my position seriously. It had the effect of making me [feel] totally ungrounded. I was very weak.”

However, Lorde now feels more like herself and has put her disordered eating behind her.

“I look back now, and I don’t have that same feeling of floating away. I eat as much as I want and need now. I wasn’t very embodied,” she said.

“The biggest goal for me of this new record. It was like, I’m not going to put anything out until I’m in my body the way I know I’m supposed to be, to be able to do my work. That’s all I did the last four years, basically. This album is a byproduct of that process of fully coming into my body and feeling the fullness of my power. It’s cool to be back in that place of, like, the portal opening and the weight. I’m myself.

”I’m not hiding from myself. I’m not stealing from myself. I often would think about not eating very much as I felt like every bite of food I had was stolen. I was like, hang on, this has gotten weird.”

Lorde’s new album Virgin is due for release in June. It comes after she dropped new single What Was That in April.

Virgin will hit the charts four years after she dropped her third record Solar Power in 2021.