Taylor Swift has removed a controversial scene from a new music video after backlash. Photo / Jeff Kravitz
Taylor Swift has removed a controversial scene from a new music video after backlash. Photo / Jeff Kravitz
Taylor Swift edited out a scene from the music video for her new song Anti-Hero after several activists and health experts called it “fatphobic”.
The scene showed the Grammy-winning singer stepping on scales that read “fat” instead of displaying weight in numbers, according to Page Six.
Looking down at the scales, the star sang, “I stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror”, before the camera revealed a second version of herself shaking her head.
Swift, who wrote and directed the video herself, said on Twitter last week that the video for the song from her new album Midnights portrayed her “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts”.
The artist, who had previously struggled with an eating disorder, removed the scene from the Apple Music version of the music video after it was slammed as “damaging”.
Shira Rosenbluth, a social worker specialising in eating disorder treatment, said on Twitter that “Taylor Swift’s music video, where she looks down at the scale where it says ‘fat,’ is a s***y way to describe her body image struggles. Fat people don’t need to have it reiterated yet again that it’s everyone’s worst nightmare to look like us.”
“Having an eating disorder doesn’t excuse fatphobia. It’s not hard to say, ‘I’m struggling with my body image today’ instead of I’m a fat, disgusting pig,” she said.
Another wrote, “I saw someone say that she could have put ‘not thin enough’ and I think that would have been more in line with what she was trying to get across anyway on top of not being offensive.”
A third fan declared that, “It’s understandable that people have ED [eating disorders] and see their bodies as ugly, but fat isn’t a feeling; fat is a state of being. When people who have ED say, ‘Ew gross I feel so fat, I’m ugly,’ of course feelings about their bodies are real.
“But it’s still enforcing the idea that fat is gross/bad. Her feelings can be valid, while still promoting fatphobia. This isn’t a competition. ED and fatphobia are both real, but just because someone has ED doesn’t mean that they should promote the idea that fat is gross.”
But many of Swift’s fans jumped to her defence.
The now-deleted scene shows Swift standing on scales that simply read "fat". Photo / Supplied
“If she feels/felt fat, she is sharing her story. When I am above the weight I want (often), I feel fat. Someone saying, ‘You’re not fat,’ doesn’t make me feel not fat. I don’t get why someone feeling fat (no matter how unhealthy the thought) is wrong?” wrote one fan.
“Having insecurities is no longer allowed because it might make a fat person somewhere upset?” another tweeted.
Swift famously opened up about suffering from an eating disorder in her 2020 documentary Taylor Swift: Miss Americana.
“It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it. A picture of me 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,” she shared at the time.
