Billie Eilish opens up about ‘terrible’ body image and having to ‘disassociate’ on stage

Billie Eilish, whose newest album “Happier Than Ever” was released just last week, opened up about her struggle with body image in an interview with The Guardian.

Despite knowing the “ins and outs of the industry,” Billie admits that even as a a Grammy winning superstar, she too falls into the social media comparison trap. 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 admitted. “I know… 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.”

The 19-year-old added, “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?”

On that note, Billie recalled how, even as a child, she was hyper-aware of those around her who “always wanted to look good,” and how sad it makes her as an adult. “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,” she said. “It’s such a loss of joy and freedom in your body.”

“I mean, we only need bodies to eat and walk around and poop,” she continued. “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?” The singer makes a very valid point, but even with all the self-awareness in the world, she still gets insecure while performing. Billie confessed that whilst on stage, she has “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. Because I have such a terrible relationship with my body, like you would not believe, so I just have to disassociate,” she said. “Then you get a paparazzi picture taken when you were running to the door and had just put anything on, and didn’t know the picture’s being taken, and you just look how you look, and everyone’s like, ‘Fat!’”

Billie has always spoken candidly about her complicated relationship with her body. In a 2019 interview with Calvin Klein, she explained that she preferred baggy clothes because they kept critics from seeing her body “I never want the world to know everything about me,” she said. “I mean, that’s why I wear big baggy clothes. Nobody can have an opinion, because they haven’t seen what’s underneath, you know?”

More recently, Billie appeared on the cover of British Vogue and expressed feeling “empowered” in the outfit she selected for the photos.

“Suddenly you’re a hypocrite if you want to show your skin, and you’re easy and you’re a slut and you’re a whore,” she said. “If I am, then I’m proud. Me and all the girls are hoes, and fuck it, y’know? Let’s turn it around and be empowered in that. Showing your body and showing your skin – or not – should not take any respect away from you.”