A scene from Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero music video has been removed after the singer was accused of perpetuating fat-shaming attitudes.
The chart-topping star unveiled her 10th album Midnights last week, which was accompanied by the release of a video for lead single Anti-Hero.
In the clip – which Taylor wrote and directed herself – the Love Story star said she was hoping to depict her “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts play out in real time”.
However, it received something of a backlash over one scene in which she was seen stepping onto a bathroom scale which then displays the word “fat” as she looks dejected, while an “anti-hero” version of herself then shakes her head disapprovingly.
This scene was criticised by many fans and some health professionals who voiced their disappointment online, claiming that Taylor was attaching negative connotations to the word “fat”.
On Wednesday night, Variety reported that the scene had been cut on Apple Music and in the edit of the video on YouTube.
Instead, we now see Taylor stepping onto the scale while her “anti-hero” self shakes her head, without the previously-included close-up of the scale.
HuffPost UK has contacted Taylor’s representatives for comment.
In recent history, Taylor has spoken out about her struggles with disordered eating, opening up in her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana.
Speaking about the impact of seeing constant images of herself, she recalled: “[I’ve 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.”
Elaborating on these comments to Variety, Taylor said: “I didn’t know if I was going to feel comfortable with talking about body image and talking about the stuff I’ve gone through in terms of how unhealthy that’s been for me — my relationship with food and all that over the years.
“I’m not as articulate as I should be about this topic because there are so many people who could talk about it in a better way. But all I know is my own experience.
“And 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.”
Midnights is expected to debut at number one on both sides of the Atlantic, after breaking a number of streaming records in the days after its release.
Watch the music video for Anti-Hero below:
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