Why Is The Internet Attacking Fat People For Calling Out Taylor Swift? - The Quint

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Taylor Swift courted contention for fatphobic imagery successful the caller euphony video for her archetypal single, Anti-Hero.

Published: 27 Oct 2022, 9:05 AM IST

Why Is The Internet Attacking Fat People For Calling Out Taylor Swift?

(Trigger Warning: The pursuing nonfiction contains mentions and descriptions of fatphobia, eating upset & assemblage dysmorphia)

As a feline who's lone precocious discovering the marvels of Taylor Swift's music, I was eagerly awaiting her newest album, Midnights. After its merchandise connected 21 October, I was peculiarly moved by her track, Anti-Hero. On the aforesaid time arsenic the medium merchandise (21 October), she announced the merchandise of the euphony video of her archetypal azygous by taking to Twitter, calling it her "nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts playing retired successful existent life."

Written and directed by the All Too Well singer herself, the euphony video poetically depicted her unsmooth experiences with an eating upset (ED) and assemblage representation issues - some things that made maine consciousness glaringly seen arsenic a abdominous non-binary idiosyncratic with a caller ED diagnosis.

But determination was 1 peculiar country - a blink-and-you-miss one, if you volition - that appalled me. Taylor Swift, a bladed pistillate who fits into astir accepted standards of quality astir the world, stepping connected a weighing standard and the speechmaking saying "FAT" portion her evil alter-ego shakes her caput successful disappointment.

Now, fixed the discourse of her information down the euphony video, it tin beryllium easy chalked up that the country was a depiction of her flawed cognition of her body, fuelled by her eating upset and rampant media scrutiny. In fact, astir radical - particularly bladed folks - battling an ED spot themselves arsenic overmuch larger than they really are. But Taylor Swift does not person the lived acquisition of a abdominous person, trying to navigate done a highly fatphobic world.

By portraying being abdominous arsenic her worst nightmare, she's actively adding a antagonistic connotation to the connection 'fat' - thing that's a nonstop absorption to everything that the assemblage positivity question stands for.

Fat activists astir the satellite took to societal media instantly aft the euphony video dropped, expressing their daze and disappointment. Most people, myself included, had 1 elemental question: however are we expected to respond to nonstop messaging by a thin, millionaire instrumentalist implying that looking similar america is her worst nightmare?

Here are immoderate of their reactions:

But soon, Taylor Swift fans - popularly called Swifties - arrived successful flocks to support their favourite artiste and followed that with hurling adjacent viler fatphobic insults towards plus-sized radical voicing their concerns. Most Swifties argued that the Exile singer wasn't being fatphobic; she was simply depicting her struggles with her assemblage and her ongoing ED.

But what astir of them, particularly bladed radical defending Swift, failed to comprehend is that firstly, the foremost measurement of recovering from an ED is addressing years of internalized oregon externalized fatphobia. There's nary uncertainty that Swift's imagery was fatphobic. She didn't falter astatine depicting her literal fearfulness of being fat: the textbook explanation of fatphobia.

Secondly, if abdominous radical - the precise radical of radical facing years of assemblage shaming, aesculapian mistreatment and different manifestations of oppression - impulse idiosyncratic to bespeak connected their fatphobia, the validity of the statement is not up for bladed radical to debate.

Aggressive levels of fatphobic trolling led aggregate radical calling retired Taylor Swift to either deactivate their accounts oregon power to backstage accounts. This blatant onslaught and dismissal of abdominous people's opinions connected their ain depictions and media representations is abysmal. But mislaid successful this sound is Taylor Swift - idiosyncratic who mightiness person innocuously channelized her pugnacious experiences but did overstep her privilege arsenic a wildly influential idiosyncratic holding monolithic powerfulness and responsibility.

People similar me, who are calling her out, are not doing truthful to disregard her ED oregon to marque her the Anti-Hero; we conscionable privation an iota of accountability. Because mainstream media, our families, our doctors, each azygous strategy successful spot and now, a Taylor Swift euphony video is retired determination equating our bodies with a nightmare you'd ne'er privation to experience.

(At The Quint, we are answerable lone to our audience. Play an progressive relation successful shaping our journalism by becoming a membe r. Because the information is worthy it.)

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