Comment Billie Eilish can’t escape
Billie is one of the most successful singers in the world, but there’s one conversation she still can’t escape.
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OPINION
Billie Eilish has spent her entire career trying to avoid people’s unwanted commentary on her body, and her latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, reveals that she can’t.
The Grammy-winner, 22, became famous when she was 15 with her mega-hit Bad Guy, and her body has been discussed ever since.
Unlike other young pop singers, she didn’t burst onto the scene in a miniskirt with her belly button out.
She wore oversized jumpers and shorts that hung below the knee, the kind we were used to seeing Adam Sandler wear.
It didn’t make people back-off, instead, it made them curious.
People couldn’t work out if she was too skinny or too fat under those clothes, so she just got called both.
Later, she told Dazed that she wore oversized clothes because she “hated” her body.
She discussed her image again in 2019 and said she wore baggy clothing so people couldn’t comment on her body.
“Nobody can be like she’s slim thick; she’s not slim thick. She’s got a flat arse, she’s got a fat ass. No one can say any of that because they don’t know,” she argued.
Eventually, Eilish stopped wearing baggy clothes all the time and wore a waist-clinching dress to the Met Gala, and sure enough, people raved, complained, and sexualised her body.
But they were doing that when she was wearing jumpers four sizes too big.
In 2023, she spoke about her body image further to Variety and claimed she wasn’t trying to stop people sexualising her, and that all she wanted was privacy.
“I didn’t want people to have access to my body, even visually. I wasn’t strong enough and secure enough to show it. If I had shown it at that time, I would have been completely devastated if people had said anything,” she admitted.
It didn’t matter how she dressed because it never matters how women dress. Nothing stops women from being sexualised or their bodies scrutinised.
It also hasn’t mattered if Eilish is at her skinniest or heaviest; people will always talk about her body. No magic weight or baggy outfit will put a stop to that.
On her new album, she has a track titled Skinny, in which she sings about the scrutiny surrounding her body.
“People say I look happy just because I got skinny, but the old me is still me, and maybe the real me, I think.”
It’s a lot, isn’t it?
The lesson she’s learned is that people will always comment on her body and now all she can do is call it out.
If there’s one common thread throughout her career besides her great music, it is the never-ending chatter about her body.
To the point that whenever she does a major interview, she ends up discussing her body.
When she was younger, she thought maybe if she covered up, she’d be able to avoid some of the scrutiny.
Somehow, she’d trick people into not being interested in her body, but she wasn’t able to do that because no woman is able to do that.
Eilish is famous, so whatever is happening to her is magnified, but the obsession with her body just amplifies a sad truth: Women’s bodies are always scrutinised, criticised and sexualised no matter what we are wearing or what we weigh.
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Originally published as Comment Billie Eilish can’t escape
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