by View The co-hosts have come to Taylor Swift’s defense after she took down a controversial scene from her ‘Anti-Hero’ music video that caused backlash.
“Anti-Hero” is the lead single from her highly anticipated and critically acclaimed new album, Midnightswhich fell last Friday.
The hit song co-written with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff explores issues of anxiety and self-loathing, which is suggested in the following lyrics.
“It’s me
Hi
I’m the problem, it’s me
At tea time
Everyone is in agreement”
“I will look directly at the sun but never in the mirror
Must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
The controversial ‘Anti-Hero’ music video scene – which Taylor wrote and directed and racked up 15,040,098 views on its first day of release – showed the singer stepping on a scale and seeing the word “fat” instead of her weight.
When the scene was criticized online – including comments accusing the singer of being “fatphobic” – it was replaced with an updated scene that does not show the word on the scale but shows her party girl alter ego looking at the result with disapproval and shaking his head.
The updated music video for “Anti-Hero” can be seen here:
Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero (Official Music Video)Youtube
Here is the original scene cut from the video.
On Tuesday’s episode of Viewco-host Sunny Hostin said of the reviews:
“They missed the point.”
“For someone who’s an artist, she has the power to act on her artistic talent. She was describing a personal experience, and quite frankly, it’s a personal experience that a lot of women have.”
Hostin continued:
“I’ve experienced it, and men. You step on the scale and you’re perfectly normal weight and all you see is fat, all you see is, ‘Oh my God, I weigh five pounds more than I should be.'”
Whoopi Goldberg chimed in, urging the audience to “just let her have her feelings.”
“Why are you wasting your time on this? You all want to say something about Taylor Swift, leave her alone!” she said and encouraged those who opposed the song to walk away from it.
The discussion reminded Joy Behar of a conversation she had had with former See co-host Star Jones on how empowering it is to recontextualize a word that has negative connotations.
“Take the word back,” Behar said.
“If you feel like saying you’re fat, say you’re fat. It’s like ‘bitch’, we own the word now, they can’t really use it against us.”
You can see the segment of View below.
Loyal fans, or “Swifties,” also offered their support for their idol and claimed she wasn’t the problem, but rather:
“Hi. It’s you. You’re the problem.”
Swift described “Anti-Hero” as one of her favorite songs, as well as most personal songs to date on an Instagram post.
“I don’t think I’ve delved into my insecurities into this detail before,” she told her followers.
“I have a hard time with the idea that my life has become unmanageable and, in order not to sound too dark, I have a hard time with the idea of not feeling like a person.”
“We all hate things about ourselves, and it’s all those aspects of the things we dislike and like about ourselves that we have to accept if we want to be that person.”
Swift previously opened up about her body self-image issues and eating disorders in the Netflix documentary, miss american.
In the 2020 film, she mentioned how, on a very rare occasion, she became insecure after looking at photos of herself “where I felt like my belly was too big, or…someone said I look pregnant…and that’s just going to make me starve a little bit – just stop eating.
Referring to this sequence in the film, Taylor said Variety:
“I remember how when I was 18, it was the first time I was on the cover of a magazine, and the headline was like ‘Pregnant at 18?’ And that was because I wore something that made my lower tummy not look flat.”
“So I just recorded that as a punishment. And then I’d walk into a photo shoot and I was in the locker room and somebody who worked at a magazine was like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s so amazing that you can fit in the sample sizes.”
“Usually we have to do alterations on the dresses, but we can take them straight off the catwalk and put them on you!” And I saw that as a pat on the head.”
She added:
“You record this enough times, and you just start adapting everything to praise and punishment, including your own body.”
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