Lorde Opens Up About Eating Disorder, Gender Identity: ‘I’m a Woman Except for When I’m a Man’

“I felt so hungry and so weak,” she told the publication. “I was on TV [that] morning, and I didn’t eat because I wanted my tummy to be small in the dress. It was just this sucking of a life force or something.”

Lorde said her relationship to her disorder started to change in 2023 as she continued doing MDMA and psilocybin therapy, which involves taking psychedelic drugs, for her intense stage fright.

“[I’ve] been in the same body [my] whole life,” she said, recounting one of her trips. “I understood it. I was like, ‘These arms climbed the jungle gym. And they held an award on a TV show.’ I understood the whole spectrum of it and began to enjoy the complexity and ruggedness.”

Embracing her physical form also allowed the singer to think differently about her gender identity, saying her pronouns are unchanged, but that her gender has gotten more “expansive.” She shared a conversation she had with Chappell Roan. 

“She was like, ‘So, are you nonbinary now?’ And I was like, ‘I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.’ “ she said. “I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but there’s a part of me that is really resistant to boxing it up.”

On the blue carpet at the Met Gala, Lorde told Emma Chamberlain her silverish-gray two-piece was an Easter egg for Virgin.

“It represents where I’m at gender-wise,” she said. “I feel like a man and a woman.”

Virgin is set to drop on June 27. Lorde says people might view her in a different light after listening.

“There’s going to be a lot of people who don’t think I’m a good girl anymore, a good woman. It’s over,” she said. “It will be over for a lot of people, and then for some, I will have arrived. I’ll be where they always hoped I’d be.”