Censored: Taylor Swift shouldn’t have edited her “Anti-Hero” music video to appease critics who misunderstood the message of the piece

At the two-minute mark of what was probably my seventeenth stream of Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” music video, I noticed something changed — the clip showing the word “FAT” on the scale she stands on had been deleted. Instead of the word popping up on the scale, the camera swiftly cuts to Swift’s antihero clone looking at her disappointedly. 

The video was edited last month because of an uproar on social media. The body positivity community in favor of the scene’s removal argued that the scene reinforced the idea that being fat is bad and that it’s a trigger word. 

While it’s essential that prominent artists like Swift keep in mind how their work will affect their fanbase, fans need to keep in mind that everyone experiences eating disorders differently. The way Swift chose to depict hers obviously wasn’t intended to be offensive, after all it is her personal experience.

On Oct. 26, Variety reported that the video had been edited on Apple Music to remove the frame that shows the scale. On Oct. 27 it was also removed from the YouTube video after it had received 35 million views. On Oct. 21, the day of the video’s release, Swift posted a tweet saying the video represented her “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts.”

Even though Swift edited out the word, the message remains the same because of her antihero’s disappointed look. This outrage is so surface level — people just didn’t like to see “FAT.”

This perfectly represents society’s addiction to expressing our outrage on the internet but missing — or intentionally avoiding — the bigger picture. It’s not Swift’s fault that “fat” has negative connotations. Her work simply mirrors society. People aren’t angry at the word itself, but the culture of shame that it stems from.

Shaming Swift by dictating how she uses words is cruelly and unfairly dismissing her struggles, especially considering that she’s spent basically her whole adult life in an industry that places incredible emphasis on body image. If we’re trying to stop artists from representing their experiences, it narrows the scope of people understanding these illnesses.

It’s all too easy to target a celebrity and misinterpret their message. It’s art, which is meant to affect the audience in different ways. Just because you’re not in a space to see or hear a certain word, it doesn’t mean that the artist needs to change the work as a whole.

Swift made a whole documentary — “Miss Americana” on Netflix — addressing her struggles in the industry, including her eating disorder. She showed articles speculating that she was pregnant or calling her fat and described how she felt like she had to starve herself and would nearly faint on stage. So why are we now telling her that she isn’t allowed to feel this way or portray this?

We encourage survivors to be open about their struggles and claim to be supportive, but when those battling eating disorders produce art like this, they’re criticized and forced to dilute their messages and make them more palatable for their audience, regardless of how sincere it is to the individual’s experience. 

It was a small number of loud people who complained about the video. While they’re entitled to their feelings, Swift was hasty in removing the clip. It’s understandable that in an abundance of caution she was avoiding the critique becoming a larger story and bringing poor publicity to her first new album in two years. However, she shouldn’t have felt she had to remove it in the first place. 

Swift has proven to value her fans’ values and opinions, like when she attempted to make tickets to her upcoming tour accessible and affordable — going so far as to release an apology when things didn’t go as planned. However, even the most well-meaning artists aren’t exempt from public criticism. 

Swift isn’t the only artist pressured by fans to change their art recently. This year alone, mega-stars including Lizzo and Beyonce have edited their music after public criticism. Some of these criticisms are justifiable — like when Lizzo and Beyonce were told to remove the word “spaz” from their songs because it’s historically been used as an offensive term for disabled people. 

While these cases are drastically different — Swift has been called fat whereas Lizzo and Beyonce made an ignorant mistake — the public outrage was mirrored. People were angry at Lizzo and Beyonce for using the derogatory term instead of being angry that the term is so deeply ingrained in our culture that — like Lizzo said in her apology statement — they weren’t aware of the original meaning of the word.

At the end of the day, we expect artists to be raw and personal in their work but then freak out when we don’t completely agree or relate to it, zeroing in on one minor detail instead of focusing on the work as a whole.