After being labeled “fatphobic,” Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” music video has now been edited on YouTube removing a scene where the scale reads “fat” when she steps on it.
The scene was supposed to showcase how Swift views herself & her history with body dysmorphia.
The video for Taylor Swift’s song Anti-Hero, the lead single from her new album Midnights, has been altered days after its initial release to remove the word “fat” from one of its scenes.
In the original clip, directed by Swift, the 32-year-old singer and songwriter steps on to a bathroom scale whose dial spins to the reading “Fat”. In the new version of the clip, viewable below, Swift steps on to the scale, receiving a look of disapproval from a doppelganger also played by Swift, but no reading is shown.
The edit comes after some fans and commentators criticised the scale scene for perpetuating “fatphobia”. On Twitter, eating disorder therapist and body positivity blogger Shira Rosenbluth said the clip “reiterated yet again that it’s everyone’s worst nightmare to look like us,” while Teen Vogue writer Catherine Mhloyi described the scene as “lazy”: “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.”
Other commentators, including Whoopi Goldberg, have come to Swift’s defence. “Just let her have her feelings – if you don’t like the song, don’t listen to it,” she said on panel show The View. “Why are you wasting your time on this? You always wanna say something about Taylor Swift – leave her ass alone.” Joy Behar added: “What’s she supposed to put on the scale, ‘plump? It doesn’t work.”
“Once again: art about how your biggest fear is being fat is fatphobic art! Saying ‘but she really felt that way’ is a poor defense of Tay. You’re making MY case,” wrote a critic on Twitter.
Many agreed that the moment, whatever it was trying to express (Swift wrote and directed the music video) was muddled at best.
On YouTube, the video remains the same. No one from Swift’s team commented on the change.
Online, some praised the edit, with one Twitter user writing, “Taylor Swift removed the close up of the scale saying ‘FAT’ in the Anti-Hero music video on Apple Music. It got across her point just as well with it only showing her standing on the scale + being judged, this version does it without harming fat folk in the process. #Midnights”.
Despite this change on Apple Music, the “Anti-Hero” video hasn’t been updated across all platforms. Swift’s music video still includes the “FAT” scales on YouTube, likely attributable to the fact that the platform doesn’t allow such edits to videos that have already been uploaded.
YouTube creators can trim clips that have already gone live, but inserting those extra few seconds of Taylor judging Taylor would require the “Anti-Hero” music video be deleted then reuploaded in its entirety. This would completely erase its still-rising 34 million view count, which is a number both Swift and Republic Records would no doubt rather keep. Apple Music doesn’t publicly display such statistics.
It’s reasonable to assume the change to “Anti-Hero” was due to the unfavourable response to Swift’s original video. Even so, the removal of the controversial shot arguably strengthens the overall product. Without the word “FAT” glaring up at the audience, the more subtle implication is that it doesn’t really matter what the scale says — her critical second self will be dissatisfied no matter what.
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