Taylor Swift's Music Video Edited to Remove Fat Reference Amid Backlash

Taylor Swift cut a scene from her "Anti-Hero" music video after receiving backlash for promoting what fans and health professionals have deemed a "fatphobic" message.

The segment in question shows Swift, who previously opened up about struggling with an eating disorder, stepping onto a scale but instead of a numerical weight, the word "fat" is displayed. Swift wrote and directed the video for the song, which comes off her new album "Midnights," and said in a tweet it represented her "nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts."

And while the scene, which has since been scrubbed from the Apple Music version of the video, is innocent enough, health professionals and fans alike have said it promotes an unhealthy message about body weight.

"Taylor Swift's music video, where she looks down at the scale where it says 'fat,' is a s***ty way to describe her body image struggles," Shira Rosenbluth, a social worker with a specialization in eating disorder treatment, wrote in a tweet. "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," she added. "It's not hard to say, 'I'm struggling with my body image today' instead of 'I'm a fat, disgusting pig.'"

Another social media user pointed out it could have been more helpful if Swift had used the words "not thin enough" instead of "fat" shown up on the scale. A third Twitter user noted Swift was "enforcing the idea that fat is gross/bad."

"Her feelings can be valid, while still promoting fatphobia," the Twitter user continued. "This isn't a competition. ED & Fatphobia are both real, but just because someone has ED doesn't mean that they should promote the idea that fat is gross."

In 2020, Swift released her documentary "Miss Americana" in which she got candid about her mental health and living with an eating disorder, saying it was triggering to see photos of herself every day and admitting, in the past, she had resorted to starving herself as a result.

"It's only happened a few times, and I'm not in any way proud of it," she says, according to Variety, noting there have been times in the past when she has seen "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."

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