Taylor Swift recently came out with 13 songs in her new album ‘Midnights’, representing thirteen midnights she hadn’t been able to sleep. While all of the songs on the album are great, ‘Anti-Hero’ is one song in particular that everyone has been adoring. However, the music video for ‘Anti-Hero’ has been criticized for the use of the word fat on the scale in the video.
The video has since been edited to remove the word. Fans believed that the inclusion of such a word was fatphobia and they called out Taylor for this. The original scene in the video shows Taylor Swift stepping onto a scale before a dial spins to reveal the word. In the updated version, however, Taylor simply receives a disapproving look from her doppelganger standing on the side.
Fans did call out Taylor for her use of the world. According to Teen Vogue Writer Catherine Mhloyi, “In having the word ‘fat’ appear on the scale, she made a choice to explicitly name her demon, the fear of being called fat, which is fatphobia in its most literal sense.”
A US eating disorder therapist Shira Rose said, “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’.”
However, some people have come to the defense of Taylor including Whoopi Goldberg who said if people didn’t like Taylor telling her story, they didn’t have to listen to the song.
Taylor Swift has spoken up about her eating disorder and mentioned that she has starved herself every time she has felt like her stomach looked too big. She has described ‘Anti-Hero’ as a video showing the scenarios she’s afraid of as well as her intrusive thoughts playing out in real-time.
However, despite Taylor telling her story her way, she has received a lot of backlash for that one scene and therefore has decided to remove it completely from YouTube as well as Apple Music.