Fans have been split over the scene with some calling it “anti-fat” while others defend the clip as shedding light on her issues with body image.
Taylor Swift is making a few changes to the music video for her lead single “Anti-Hero” off her new “Midnights” album.
Following some online backlash, the 11-time Grammy Award winner removed a scene that featured her stepping on a bathroom scale that read “fat.”
Though the music video on YouTube still features the scale reading “fat,” the shot is no longer in the video on Apple Music and instead pans to her “Anti-Hero” clone who looks at her with a disappointed face once she steps on the scale.
Fans have been split over the scene with some calling it “anti-fat” saying the clip implies that being fat is negative.
Some have defended Swift saying that the moment wasn’t fatphobic, but was shedding a light on her issues with body image and referenced her inner critic.
Back in 2020, the “Lavender Haze” singer opened up about how she previously battled an eating disorder in her Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.” She admitted that there have been a few times where she’d see paparazzi photos of herself “where I feel like I looked like my tummy was too big, or… someone said that I looked pregnant … and that’ll just trigger me to just starve a little bit — just stop eating.” Swift says that her disordered eating patterns would “only [happen] a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it.”
She shared that the starvation and weight loss began affecting the singer’s ability to perform while on her “1989” tour, as she said she “thought that I was supposed to feel like I was going to pass out at the end of the show, or in the middle of it.”
Getty
Penn Badgley Recreates Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero TikTok Challenge as ‘You’ Character
View Story
If anyone would express concern over her frail, double-zero frame, she would say: “What are you talking about? Of course I eat…I exercise a lot.” She admitted that she “did exercise a lot, but I wasn’t eating.”
“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 an ass, your stomach isn’t flat enough,” she said in the film. “It’s all just f–king impossible.” As she became aware of the impossible standard of beauty imposed on her and other women, she said it caused her to “go into a real shame-hate spiral.”
At the time, Taylor explained that she’s reconciled with “the fact that I’m a size 6 instead of a size double-zero,” noting that that sense of peace came with the realization that “if you eat food, have energy, get stronger, you can do all these shows and not feel [enervated].”
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, seek help by calling the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or go to NationalEatingDisorders.org.
