Taylor Swift Edits Out 'Fat' Scene From 'Anti-Hero' Music Video

Last week, the pop star finally dropped the highly anticipated Midnights, a recordbreaking album inspired by her late night musings. Immediately becoming Spotify's most-streamed album in a single day, Swift also went on to go viral on YouTube by simultaneously releasing her self-directed music video for lead single "Anti-Hero," which she described as a visual representation of her "nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts" and also ended up sparking a heated online debate about some perceived fatphobia.

The Anti-Hero video is HERE, which I wrote and directed. Watch my nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real timehttps://t.co/3ieastDifu pic.twitter.com/h5mpzVLKDY

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) October 21, 2022

During the scene-in-question, the singer-songwriter — who previously talked about having an eating disorder in her Taylor Swift: Miss Americana documentary — can be seen stepping on a scale that reads "fat," while she sings "I stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror" and her alter ego looks on disapprovingly. However, the moment quickly incurred criticism from body positive activists and eating disorder experts, who called out Swift for trying to illustrate her own body image struggles in this way.

“I saw someone say that she could’ve put ‘not thin enough’ and I think that would’ve been more in line with what she was trying to get across anyways on top of not being offensive," as one person wrote on Twitter, before eating disorder specialist Shira Rosenbluth added in a viral tweet that "Taylor Swift’s music video, where she looks down at the scale where it says ‘fat,’ is a shitty way to describe her body."

"Fat people don’t need to have it reiterated yet again that it’s everyone’s worst nightmare to look like us,” she continued. “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.”

Taylor Swift’s music video, where she looks down at the scale where it says “fat,” is a shitty way to describe her body image struggles. Fat people don’t need to have it reiterated yet again that it’s everyone’s worst nightmare to look like us.

— Shira Rose (@theshirarose) October 21, 2022

Granted, it seems as if the star has heard about the critique, as the scale scene is no longer featured in the "Anti-Hero" video from Apple Music. As of writing though, neither Swift nor Apple Music have explicitly addressed the backlash. In the meantime though, you can watch the original cut of "Anti-Hero" via Swift's YouTube channel below.

Photo via Shutterstock / Tinseltown