Billie Eilish has been open with fans about her complicated relationship with her body image. Now, she’s getting candid about how social media and paparazzi photos have played a role in altering it.
In a new interview with The Guardian, the 19-year-old singer opens up about being “confident in who I am,” however, seeing images of other people’s bodies on social media affect her to the point that she’s “obviously not happy” with her body.
“I see people online, looking like I’ve never looked,” Billie said. “And immediately I am like, ‘Oh my God, how do they look like that?’ I know the ins and outs of this industry, and what people actually use in photos, and I actually know what looks real can be fake. Yet I still see it and go, ‘Oh God.’ That makes me feel really bad.”
She revealed that in order for her to get up on stage and perform in front of thousands of fans, she has to “disassociate” from her feelings about her body.
“When I’m on stage, I have to disassociate from the ideas I have of my body,” she shared. “Especially because I wear clothes that are bigger and easier to move in without showing everything — they can be really unflattering. In pictures, they look like, I don’t even know what. I just completely separate the two. Because I have such a terrible relationship with my body, like you would not believe, so I just have to disassociate.”
She also mused about “how weird” it was that people would make judgements about her body based on some unflattering photos taken by paparazzi.
“I mean, we only need bodies to eat and walk around and poop. We only need them to survive. It’s ridiculous that anybody even cares about bodies at all,” she said. “Like, why? Why do we care? You know, when you really think about it?”
Billie has previously spoken out about body shaming, addressing the double standards women face in a short film which debuted as a video interlude in her Miami concert back in March 2020.
In the video, Billie, who has never publicly shown her figure prior, surprised fans by stripping down to her black bra as she slowly sank into a murky black substance.
“Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it, some people use it to shame others, some people use it to shame me, but I feel you watching — always — and nothing I do goes unseen. So while I feel your stares, your disapproval or your sigh of relief, if I lived by them, I’d never be able to move,” Billie said in the voice over monologue. “Would you like me to be smaller? Weaker? Softer? Taller? Would you like me to be quiet? Do my shoulders provoke you? Does my chest? Am I my stomach? My hips? The body I was born with, is it not what you wanted?”
“If I wear what is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I’m a slut. Though you’ve never seen my body, you still judge it and judge me for it. Why?” she continued. “We make assumptions about people based on their size. We decide who they are, we decide what they’re worth. If I wear more, if I wear less, who decides what that makes me? What that means? Is my value based only on your perception? Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?”
In her recent interview, she addressed how promoting unrealistic figures can negatively impact others.
“It’s completely fine to get work done – do this, do that, do what makes you feel happy,” she told the newspaper. “It’s just when you deny it and say, ‘Oh, I got this all on my own, and if you just tried harder, you could get it.’ That makes me literally furious. It is so bad for young women – and boys, too – to see that.”
She also noted how grappling with body image insecurities can be exhausting, saying, “It’s such a loss to always try to always look good. It’s such a loss of joy and freedom in your body.”
