Earlier this year, pop singer Billie Eilish found herself in the cross-hairs of body-shaming internet trolls when photos surfaced of her wearing weather-appropriate tight clothing instead of her usual loose-fitting outfits. She offered no apologies then, and she’s offering no apologies now.
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Eilish sent a message to the body-shaming trolls, saying unapologetically that she is who she is.
“There’s this picture of me, like, running from my car to my brother’s front door on like a 110-degree day in a tank top. And people were like, ‘Damn, Billie got fat!’ And I’m like, ‘Nope, this is how I look, you’ve just never seen it before!’ So that’s the most current one, but whatever,” she said.
Eilish added that her fans are often appreciative of the fact that she helps them feel comfortable with their body image.
“I love having kids relate to me and tell me that I make them feel comfortable in their bodies,” she said. “If I can do anything, I want to do that.”
The photos this past October featured Eilish wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top and shorts on a hot summer day. In response to the trolls, Eilish shared a video from Chizi Duru that called for the normalization of real women’s bodies. “Instagram has warped a lot of y’all into thinking NORMAL bodies are abnormal. NO,” the video was captioned.
The incident occurred several months after photos surfaced of Eilish enjoying herself in a bikini while on vacation. As The Daily Wire reported:
Earlier this year, Eilish went to Hawaii with her family and posted several photos to Instagram. In almost every photo she’s wearing her usual baggy clothes, but in a couple she is wearing a swimsuit – because it’s Hawaii.
Some people were critical that she didn’t cover herself more because of her stance on showing her body.
Speaking with the alternative magazine Dazed & Confused at the time, Eilish lamented that she just can’t seem to win.
“I saw comments like, ‘How dare she talk about not wanting to be sexualized and wear this?!’” she said. “It was trending. There were comments like, ‘I don’t like her anymore because as soon as she turns 18 she’s a wh***.’ Like, dude. I can’t win. I can not win.”
As to why she regularly wears baggy clothes, Eilish said she’s just wearing what she wants to wear and is not rebelling against anything.
“There was a point last year where I was naked and I didn’t recognize my body [because] I hadn’t seen it in a while,” she told the outlet. “I would see it sometimes and be like, ‘Whose body is that?’ It’s not that I like [my body] now, I just think I’m a bit more OK with it.”
“If I wore a dress to something, I would be hated for it,” she added. “People would be like, ‘You’ve changed, how dare you do what you’ve always rebelled against?’ I’m like, ‘I’m not rebelling against anything, really.’ I can’t stress it enough. I’m just wearing what I wanna wear. If there’s a day when I’m like, ‘You know what, I feel comfortable with my belly right now, and I wanna show my belly,’ I should be allowed to do that.”