Taylor Swift has received rave reviews for her new album Midnights, but amongst the outpouring of praise, a slew of angry debate has been bubbling on social media.
The criticism has been levelled at Taylor's music video for Anti-Hero, released last week, which she described on Twitter as ‘watching my nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real time’. We see Taylor take shots with her ‘evil’ drunk self, taking notes from a blackboard which reads ‘everyone will betray you’, and stepping onto a pair of scales which then simply display the word ‘fat’.
As soon as the video dropped, people started criticising Taylor's use of the word ‘fat’, calling it fatphobic, insensitive and harmful. “Terrible. Just awful. Fatphobia at its finest. And from a skinny, rich, white, straight cis woman. Your choice to include this will cause intense harm to many people,” read one critique on Twitter. “It is possible to appreciate Taylor Swift and midnight as an artist AND call her out on her blatant fatphobia. Taylor Swift should have done better because even if it is relatable and an “intrusive thought” it is damaging and fatphobic. Listen to fat ppl when they tell you it is,” read another.
Shira Rosenbluth, an eating disorder therapist in New York, also condemned the video. “Taylor Swift’s music video, where she looks down at the scale where it says “fat,” is a sh*tty way to describe her body image struggles," she wrote. "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 has previously been open about her struggles with disordered eating, both in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana – in which she describes seeing “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” – and press interviews, including with Variety, also in 2020.
“My relationship with food was exactly the same psychology that I applied to everything else in my life: if I was given a pat on the head, I registered that as good. If I was given a punishment, I registered that as bad,” Taylor said. “I remember how, when I was 18, that was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine, and the headline was like ‘Pregnant at 18?’ And it was because I had worn something that made my lower stomach look not flat. So I just registered that as a punishment. And then I’d walk into a photo shoot and somebody who worked at a magazine would say, ‘Oh, wow, this is so amazing that you can fit into the sample sizes!’ and I looked at that as a pat on the head. You register that enough times, and you just start to accommodate everything towards praise and punishment, including your own body.”
This is why many people have jumped to Taylor's defence, saying that she's portraying her own lived experience of disordered eating and a society which idealises thinness above all else, and the immense pressure this puts on women and girls. As one fan writes on Twitter: “She knows it’s f*cked. That’s the point.”
Here's the thing: while it's true that eating disorders are not inherently fatphobic, and that many people with EDs exist in larger bodies – and no, not just those with binge-eating disorder – society's rampant fatphobia can, and very much does, contribute to disordered eating. Those of us with a history of disordered eating do, sadly, have a lot of internalised fatphobia towards ourselves. We have intrusive and insidious thoughts about our bodies that we cannot control. We have stepped on the scales and felt utterly obliterated by the number staring back at us, just like Taylor.
“Not everyone with an eating disorder will have distorted beliefs about their body size and shape, but many people with eating disorders do have problems with body image and expressing dissatisfaction or even disgust at their own body or weight can be a symptom of them,” explains Tom Quinn, Director of External Affairs at eating disorder charity Beat. “When public figures like Taylor Swift choose to speak about their own journeys with an eating disorder, it can have a very positive influence and encourage others to seek help. However, we'd also urge them to be mindful of the effect their depictions could have and to do so sensitively.”
Should Taylor have covered up this very real and very painful symptom of her eating disorder? Personally, I don't see how that would help tear down the stigma that still shrouds eating disorders, and that forces many sufferers to live in secrecy and shame.
But if that was indeed Taylor's aim, then the video doesn't go far enough to address the nuance around the word ‘fat’, or to challenge society's glamourisation of and obsession with thinness. In fact, I'm finding it hard to remember a time when Taylor has actively helped to champion and normalise body diversity, dismantle diet culture, or put in the work to support the ED community. As someone who has undoubtedly experienced a great deal of trauma around body image and disordered eating, she should have gone further. She should have tried harder.
If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s health, you can contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, 365 days a year on 0808 801 0677 or beateatingdisorders.org.uk.
