The scene in which Taylor Swift is seen standing on a bathroom scale that reads “fat” has been cut out of the music video for “Anti-Hero,” the lead single from “Midnights.”
Variety has confirmed that the scale is no longer visible in the music video on Apple Music; now, Swift’s anti-hero clone just gives her a disappointed expression. The scale still reads “fat” in the song video on YouTube.
Swift and Apple Music representatives did not immediately respond when Variety contacted them for comment.
Online discussion about the sequence has now earned it the moniker “anti-fat,” as it implies that being overweight is a bad thing. This has led to speculation about the motivation behind the removal of certain frames.
Swift claims that the visual approach of the music video, which she created and directed, was inspired by her own “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts [playing] out in real time,” in an Instagram post announcing its release. In that setting, the song’s reflective and analytical lyrics, which contain statements like “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby / And I’m a monster on the hill,” are mirrored by the music video.
Swift has previously opened up about having an eating disorder, most notably in her 2020 Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.” In the movie, Swift acknowledges that there have been instances 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.” “It’s only happened a few times, and I’m not in any way proud of it,” she says.
Later, Swift went into greater detail about her experiences for her Variety cover story, stating that it had been challenging for her to come out about them for the film.
I wasn’t sure if I would feel comfortable talking about body image and the things I’ve gone through in terms of how unhealthy it’s been for me — my relationship with food and all that over the years, she added. “However, Lana (Wilson, the movie’s director), truly makes sense in the way she delivers the story. There are so many people who could discuss this subject better than I could, so I’m not as vocal about it as I should be. But I can only speak from my personal experience. And I approached eating with the same mindset I did everything else in my life: If I got a pat on the back, I took that as a good sign. I considered punishment to be bad if I received it.