Billie Eilish is the first to admit she has a strained relationship with her body and its public perception, but she also finds it bizarre that anyone even cares.
In an interview with The Guardian to promote her sophomore album, Happier Than Ever, the pop star confessed that social media can have a hugely negative impact on how she views herself. “I see people online, looking like I’ve never looked. And immediately I am like, ‘Oh my God, how do they look like that?,’” she said. “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 added, “And I mean, I’m very confident in who I am, and I’m very happy with my life…I’m obviously not happy with my body, but who is?”
She went on to explain, “Since I was a kid, my dad and I have always talked about a certain type of person who’s so insecure, or hyperaware and self-conscious, that they never move in a weird way, or make a weird face, because they always want to look good. I’ve noticed that, and it makes me so sad. If you’re always standing a certain way, walking in a certain way, and always have your hair just so…It’s such a loss to always try to always look good. It’s such a loss of joy and freedom in your body.”
Eilish has attempted to deal with her body image by wearing baggier clothes that allow her to move comfortably on stage, but those outfits also come with their own set of difficulties when it comes to self-perception. She explains, “When I’m on stage, I have to disassociate from the ideas I have of my body. 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.”
The Grammy winner added that while she is understandably preoccupied by her appearance, she finds it very strange that anyone else would care at all. “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. Like, why? Why do we care? You know, when you really think about it?,” she said. “Why do we care about hair? Why does everybody hate body hair so much, but we literally have an enormous thing of hair on our heads, and that’s, like, cool and pretty. Like, what’s the difference? I mean, I love hair, and I do crazy things with my hair. I’m as guilty as everybody else. But it’s so weird. If you think about it hard, you go crazy.”
CREDITS: VANITYFAIR.