Taylor Swift caused an uproar after her new album Midnights dropped last week. The music video of her song “Anti-Hero” shows her at one point stepping on a scale and the word “fat” appearing.

Twitter was in a frenzy, in discussions over whether this was in fact fatphobia or a criticism of the fatphobia that’s so common in our societies.

Some say she should “do better,” like celebrities are often told they need to do. They suggest that using the word “fat” in a negative way is in itself damaging.

Others consider it the complete opposite.

One dietitian suggested a list of words Swift could have used instead of “fat”, which I think was true and useful.

But I still don’t think it goes to the point.

Swift, as far as I know, hasn’t addressed the controversy herself, which makes her look worse. Not as bad as James Corden saying he doesn’t care about the stories calling him a true jerk to other people, but still bad.

Taylor’s also been compared to other musicians who have done better.

When Lizzo or Beyoncé have been criticized over their use of ableist words, they’ve listened to the public, apologized and removed those words from their work. It seems easy to do if you truly care about your fans.

But does Swift have to apologize if she’s talking about something she’s lived through herself?

Quick Disclaimer

Look, I’m no Swiftie. I do have “Shake It Off” on some of my gym playlists and I like to sing along to some of her songs. I’m just not a fan.

I tried to listen to a couple of her albums a few times, but they just don’t catch. I really want them to, but they don’t.

Maybe I just disliked the country-ish origins of Taylor’s career so much that I can’t get over it. It’s just such a US-American style, we really don’t get it in Europe or over here in Latin America.

Tay-tay also has a certain reputation, as she well knows. It’s partly slut-shaming, partly some mean girl energy she’s been associated with. But then again, I have no idea what really happened in those situations, and I don’t really care.

This is all just to say I have absolutely no interest in defending her as a fan. I haven’t got, as we Finns say, my own cow stuck in the ditch. (Oma lehmä ojassa.)

I just don’t necessarily agree with the criticism.

Who’s Allowed to Say Fat?

I think we all know the skinny woman who once put on a couple of extra pounds and then dropped them, and considers it to have been the worst time of their life.

“Listen to me, I was fat once! Let me just tell you how you can become successful, like me!” And success and happiness, for these people, always seem to equate to being skinny.

It’s annoying and genuinely traumatizing for fat people. The world keeps telling them there’s something wrong with being them. They can’t find clothes that fit. They’re not taken as seriously in jobs as skinny people are.

But what genuinely bothers me about the Swift controversy is this: who is allowed to use the word “fat”, if not someone who has trauma over it? And who can say she’s not traumatized by it?

I don’t know if I would be allowed to use the word. I’m not fat, and I’ve never been obese. I was never even overweight, at least if you measure by BMI (a bullshit measure, by most standards) until I started lifting weights.

If I weighed myself today, the scale would tell me I’m overweight, but I’m not fat. I’m very physically active, and I have amassed quite a lot of muscle in the past 10 years at the gym. I love it, but it weighs a lot.

I also have a couple of kilos of fat I could drop, because I have one thing in common with SCOTUS jerk Brett Kavanaugh: I like beer.

I probably will lose those kilos soon, since I just added another 8–10 hours of physical activity into my week to avoid the subway. Be that as it may, I’m not all that worried.

Because while there’s some fat on my body, it doesn’t define who I am, like it used to.

Growing up, even though I was never obese, I was called fat at school. Every day, from about age 9 to age 16. As a result, I developed an eating disorder. Being obsessive about food and not being fat was what marked my adolescence and early adulthood.

I got called fat even when I was clearly underweight. And there was nothing I could do about it except hate myself some more.

I got over my eating disorder as an adult, thanks to the gym, going vegan, and simply being firm with not dieting, counting calories or fasting, ever. Not forbidding myself anything has slowly made me appreciate food for its nutritional and emotional value.

But I still carry the trauma from my school years. Whenever I feel inadequate or unworthy in some way, my brain tries to tell me it’s because I’m too fat. It tells me my body needs to be controlled. That it needs to disappear.

And whenever, as an adult, I put on a couple of kilos, I feel like I’m doing worse in life, even if everything else is going fine.

It’s all because of that word. And that’s something that needs to be talked about. Because it is fatphobia, but it comes from real-life experience.

Do I have the right to use it to talk about my trauma?

Do I, as a comedian, have the right to make jokes about my ED?

Do I have the right to create a character in a novel that’s traumatized by that word?

And if I do, why doesn’t Taylor Swift?

Maybe We Shouldn’t Judge Other People’s Trauma

I don’t know what kind of a life Taylor Swift has lived. I can only see the extremely thin woman she’s been the whole time she’s been in the public eye.

But I also know all women in the public eye are scrutinized every time they eat a burger or have some cellulite. I know that it’s probably easy to develop an eating disorder in that environment.

I could easily claim Taylor Swift’s life and her feelings about her body are obvious because she’s skinny. But I can’t. Body dysmorphia comes in all sizes.

I don’t know what she’s gone through. I don’t know her struggles.

Yes, it’s awful and fatphobic that the word she hates seeing is the word “fat”. This associates the word “fat” with something negative, which it shouldn’t be.

But that’s the world we live in. And that’s a word that truly has a triggering effect on many of us. And if it’s her trauma, we don’t have the right to deny her, or anyone else, her right to speak about it.

But hey, I’m not going to claim my opinion is the only reasonable one. The fact that I’m not mad at Swift doesn’t mean others aren’t entitled to their feelings.

I just think she was making an important point, and it’s as valid as mine or yours.

And that if we want to get rid of this glorification of being skinny as the be-all, end-all of female existence, there are other places we can start pointing our fingers at.

Hey there! If you liked this and want full access to Medium, consider becoming a member. You’ll support me and other writers, and if you use this link I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.