Taylor Swift has edited her music video “Anti-Hero” from her newly-acclaimed album “Midnights” to remove what critics were calling a reference to “fatphobia.”
In the music video, a scene depicts Swift standing on a bathroom scale and the results show “fat” instead of her actual weight that conveys the insecurities she has faced with her image in the media. Then the same scene proceeds to show the anti-Taylor, who represents her self-sabotaging self, look back at the real Taylor in disappointment and shakes her head.
The video has been recently edited to remove the word “fat.” It no longer shows Taylor looking at the scale, and that whole scene is cut altogether. Instead, it just shows her weighing herself with her “anti-hero” in disapproval.
The change was due to all the criticism that were received from viewers who called the video “fat” shaming. A Huffington Post editorial published on Oct. 24 called out Swift and said, “Taylor Swift is not, and has never been, even remotely fat.” It goes on to read, “But ‘fat’ isn’t a bad word (to be clear, neither is skinny). It’s a descriptive word society turned into an insult.” The op-ed also added, “Alternative words this scale could have displayed: Unworthy. Unlovable. Hated. Terrible. Bad. The list could go on.”
There were others that came to Swift’s defense like Whoopi Goldberg who expressed on the “The View,” that Taylor “reflects what she see” and “Just let her have her feelings. If you don’t like the song, don’t listen to it.”
However, Swift’s internal struggles with her body shouldn’t come as a surprise. She admitted in her “Miss Americana” documentary in 2020, that when she saw photos of herself from the paparazzi that looked “too big,” it would “trigger me to starve a little bit.”
Despite the negative buzz surrounding the music video, “Midnights” has been a success with more than 1.4 million album units sold and according to Billboard, currently holds the record for the “fifth-most streams in a single week by an album ever.”
