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Megan Brownell photojournalist
This past weekend, Taylor Swift released her 10th studio album, Midnights. The album was promoted in a variety of ways through social media.
Close to her album release, she came out with a schedule for the week of the release such as a special surprise, music videos, teaser trailer on Thursday Night Football, and talk show appearances. A part of the Friday morning following the release, she came out with the first music video for the album with her track three song Anti-Hero.
If you really listen to the lyrics of the song, the overall purpose is about having an eating disorder and the feelings that go through someone’s mind when they have one. Some examples are like, “it’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me,” “everybody is a sexy baby, and I’m a monster on a hill,” “I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror,” are just some examples of how the song is perceived this way.
The biggest controversy however, is during the music video she has another version of herself following her commenting on all the bad things about herself. One scene is in the bathroom where she stands on a scale and then the second version of herself is disappointed. The problem is the scale just says “fat.”
For me, I have always grown up being bigger than most girls in my class, and this scene didn’t cause any problems for me. It just comes across as someone struggling with an eating disorder because with an eating disorder, most of the time even super skinny people still believe they are fat, and Swift was just showing those struggles and your mind beating yourself up about it.
Even though I did not think much of it, a lot of people on social media, especially Tik Tok did. I first started seeing videos of people saying how “their favorite artist is scared to look like them.” I was confused at first, like what artist said that? Later on I saw a Tik Tok that pointed out it was that scene people were offended by. Most people were confused as well, like that isn’t the point Swift is trying to get across. I even saw a Tik Tok where a girl pointed out how much the scene meant to her as someone recovering from an eating disorder.
Even because of this backlash, if you watch the music video on apple music they cut out that part of the video for viewers because of the ‘sensitivity”.
Honestly, if people who have eating disorders are telling people what this scene really means and that it isn’t Swift being scared of being fat, even a lot of bigger people are saying similar things.
So, in conclusion, it honestly is not something people should be angry about or ‘cancel’ her for. If it really had something wrong with it, something really would be done and a high percentage of people wouldn’t stand for it. It isn’t her saying she is scared to be fat, it is just showing the struggles of having an eating disorder and raising awareness of how tough and a mental battle it is fighting one.
