The singer discusses how paparazzi photos and social media comments impact her.
Billie Eilish has learned how to "disassociate" from her feelings about her body -- at least while she's performing. The 19-year-old singer opened up about her body image in a new interview, describing how social media has made her "feel really bad."
"I see people online, looking like I've never looked," Eilish told The Guardian. "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."
"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," she continued, before asking "but who is?"
Eilish, who just released her sophomore album Happier Than Ever, said that both paparazzi photos and social media comments affect the way she feels about her body.
"We only need bodies to eat and walk around and poop. We only need them to survive," she explained. "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?"
"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."
This isn't the first time Eilish has opened up about society's expectations of women's bodies. In March 2020, the GRAMMY winner made a big statement at her Miami concert by removing her shirt and stripping down to her black bra in visual for the show.
"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," Eilish reportedly said in the 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?"
See more on Eilish in the video below.
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