Billie Eilish revealed in a new interview with British GQ that her body image issues stem from not feeling “desired” in past relationships.
“Here’s a bomb for you: I have never felt desired. My past boyfriends never made me feel desired. None of them,” Eilish said. “And it’s a big thing in my life that I feel I have never been physically desired by somebody.”
“So I dress the way I dress as I don’t like to think of you guys — I mean anyone, everyone — judging [my body], or the size of it,” she continued. “But that doesn’t mean that I won’t wake up one day and decide to wear a tank top, which I have done before.”
According to the 18-year-old singer, she doesn’t mind when rare images of her body go viral (“Suddenly my boobs are trending on Twitter. Which is fine — that shit looks good“), but does feel “trapped” at times by her androgynous clothing style.
“Sometimes I dress like a boy. Sometimes I dress like a swaggy girl. And sometimes I feel trapped by this persona that I have created, because sometimes I think people view me not as a woman,” Eilish said.
Eilish explained that a short film from her recent tour called “Not My Responsibility” — in which the singer removes layers of clothing while speaking about the public perception of her body — can be seen as a direct response to her battle with body image.
“That tour video was about all that. It is me saying: look, there is a body underneath these clothes and you don’t get to see it,” the “Bad Guy” singer said. “Isn’t that a shame?”
“But my body is mine and yours is yours,” she continued. “Our own bodies are kind of the only real things which are truly ours. I get to see it and get to show it when I want to.”
This isn’t the first time Eilish has opened up about her struggles with body image, and how being in the public eye affects her.
Earlier this year, Eilish revealed that she’d been troubled by her appearance as a child, since she started developing at an extremely young age.
“I just hated my body. I would have done anything to be in a different one,” Eilish said in an interview with Vogue.
“I really wanted to be a model, really bad, and I was chubby and short. I developed really early. I had boobs at 9. I got my period at 11. So my body was going faster than my brain.”
In 2019, Eilish opened up about her decision to wear androgynous clothing, explaining in a Calvin Klein ad, “That’s why I wear big, baggy clothes. Nobody can have an opinion, because they haven’t seen what’s underneath.”
And while the singer has mixed feelings about people who use her androgynous style as a way to shame their own daughters, she admitted previously that she wasn’t opposed to showing off her body as she grew older.
“I’m gonna be a woman. I wanna show my body,” Eilish told Elle in 2019. “What if I wanna make a video where I wanna look desirable?”
Source/Credits: INSIDER.
