Billie Eilish opened up about how the pressures of social media have altered her relationship with her body.
The 19-year-old singer told the U.K. newspaper The Guardian that while she’s “confident in who I am,” she’s “not happy” with her body.
“But who is?,” Billie remarked, before wondering out loud why people struggle with self-image. “We only need [bodies] to survive… It’s ridiculous that anybody even cares about bodies at all. Like, why? Why do we care?”
“When I’m on stage, I have to disassociate from the ideas I have of my body,” she told the outlet. “Especially because I wear clothes that are bigger and easier to move in without showing everything — they can be really unflattering… I have such a terrible relationship with my body, like, you would not believe.”
Eilish also noted how paparazzi will take unflattering photos of her, which inspires online bullies to call her “fat.” The singer also confessed she feels pressured to look a certain way.
“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,” Billie continued. “Yet I still see it and go, ‘Oh God.’ That makes me feel really bad.”
Eilish sings about that in her new track “OverHeated,” which she says is a call-out letter to “all the people who promote unattainable body standards.”
“That makes me literally furious. It is so bad for young women – and boys, too – to see that,” she remarked.
Eilish also noted how exhausting it is to grapple with insecurity, adding, “It’s such a loss to always try to always look good. It’s such a loss of joy and freedom in your body.”
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