Billie Eilish’s style is almost as synonymous to her as her music is.
Since bursting onto the music scene in 2017, the teen has made a name for herself by exclusively wearing baggy, oversized clothing, both on stage and on the red carpet. But kicking off her world tour, Eilish made a powerful statement by stripping off in the name of body shaming.
“Do you know me? Do you really know me?” Eilish said at the beginning of a clip played at her Miami concert, per a transcription by The Guardian. “You have opinions about my opinions, about my music, about my clothes, about my body. Some people hate what I wear; some people praise it. Some people use it to shame others; some people use it to shame me.”
Eilish went on to say, I “feel you watching, nothing I do goes unseen.”
Billie shows off her body during powerful interlude on the “WHERE DO WE GO? WORLD TOUR” (1/2) pic.twitter.com/4jKl4LXTcF
— Billie Eilish Updates (@eilishupdates) March 10, 2020
“So while I feel your stares, your disapproval or your sighs of relief, if I lived by them, I’d never be able to move,” she continued. “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 what I wear is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I am a slut. Though you’ve never seen my body, you still judge it and judge me for it. Why?”
Billie shows off her body during powerful interlude on the “WHERE DO WE GO? WORLD TOUR” (2/2) (via @badtypebils) pic.twitter.com/4t75CXnsmz
— Billie Eilish Updates (@eilishupdates) March 10, 2020
“We decide who they are. We decide what they’re worth,” she added. “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?”
Eilish has opened up about her personal style a number of times, most notably during an interview with Pharrell Williams for V Magazine last year when she condemned people for praising the way she dresses, as if it’s how all women should dress in order to not be sexualized.
“I wear baggy s–t and I wear what I want; I don’t say, ‘Oh, I am going to wear baggy clothes because it’s baggy clothes.’ It’s never like that,” she explained. “It’s more, just, I wear what I want to wear. But of course, everyone sees it as, ‘She’s saying no to being sexualized,’ and, ‘She’s saying no to being the stereotypical female.’ It’s a weird thing because I know a lot of what I hear is a positive or people trying to be positive about how I dress; how I am never really out there wearing nothing, or wearing dresses. I’ve heard that. [Even] from my parents, [the] positive [comments] about how I dress have this slut-shaming element. Like, ‘I am so glad that you are dressing like a boy, so that other girls can dress like boys, so that they aren’t sluts.’ That’s basically what it sounds like to me. And I can’t [overstate how] strongly I do not appreciate that, at all.”
