Taylor Swift has removed the scale that read “Fat” in her music video for “Anti-Hero” following online backlash.
After dropping her tenth album, Midnights, the singer released two music videos from the album – “Anti-Hero” and “Bejeweled”.
In the video for “Anti-Hero”, the 32-year-old included a scene where she she is in the bathroom with her alter-ego. The “evil” Taylor judges her and shakes her head disapprovingly as the real Taylor weighs herself on a scale which reads the word “Fat”.
This particular scene caused controversy online and had many people, who have suffered with an eating disorder or been negatively impacted by society’s pressure to be “thin”, talking.
While many disapproved of the scene, some fans of the singer defended her after her own struggles with an eating disorder. Some said:
“Taylor Swift should have done better because even if it is relatable and an ‘intrusive thought’ it is damaging and fatphobic,”
“It isn’t bad to be fat, and her having the scale say ‘fat’ is a radical simplification of eating disorders, especially when fat people have EDs too.”
After the scene was cut from the video on Apple Music, many criticised Taylor for not addressing the harm she has caused by including it in the first place:
“Okay, great. Taylor removed the image in the video on one single platform, but she’s yet to address it verbally OR address the fact that millions of fans have [and] are still attacking fat people in her name,”
“The impact the image had cannot be erased as easily as the image itself.”
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