Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights highlights the numerous mental health topics facing the younger generation (us!), including, mental health, depression, anxiety, and the consequence of fame and exposure to the media. However, there’s one topic that is incredibly relevant to this blog: Taylor’s depiction of body image. In her song “Anti-Hero,” Taylor sings about how she’ll “stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror / It must be exhausting always rooting for the Anti-Hero.” After the release of the music video, where there’s a scene where Taylor weighs herself; the scale pointing to “Fat,” fans spoke up about how Taylor, being a tall, thin, conventionally attractive woman was using her music harmfully to say that fat people were worth less.
Except, I’ve got a different take on this. I hear Taylor’s fans saying that they feel her words undervalue their experiences; and if that was Taylor’s intention, then I definitely don’t defend her. But, I find that another interpretation is worth exploring. Taylor feels that, when she looks in the mirror or at the scale, that she’s fat, and she associates being fat with all the things that are looked down upon in society.
Doesn’t that bring us back to the root of the problem? Why are we associating weight – a factor that humans are genetically created to have variety in – with a person’s worth? How does how much someone weighs have any bearing on who they are as a person? How does their weight tell us whether they are kind, or clever, or hard-working? Does their weight make them an honest person?
Taylor Swift experiences body dysmorphia just like the rest of us, even though she’s super famous and the spitting image of media beauty. She can still look at herself and feel unworthy. And, other interpretations of her movie video body weight scene aside, this brings awareness to an issue that’s often underlooked – that this society equates someone’s physical appearance with their value as a person (which is super, super messed up but a topic that I'll dive into more in the next blog!). Thanks for reading!
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