Billie Eilish is opening up about her struggles with body image, which she has described as "a truly horrible, terrible thing."
The "Ocean Eyes" singer made the remarks during an interview with the Sunday Times, saying that she views her body as her "ugly friend."
"My relationship with my body has been a truly horrible, terrible thing since I was 11," she explained, according to the Toronto Sun. "I love that my body is mine and that it's with me everywhere I go. I kind of think of my body as my friend. My ugly friend! It's complicated. But what are you gonna do?"
Elsewhere in the interview, Eilish spoke about her transformation for British Vogue. The 20-year-old traded her baggy clothes and green/black hair for a pink corset and blonde hair to pose for the magazine's cover last year. Backlash ensued from fans who felt that Eilish had "sold out." Speaking with the Times, the singer pointed out that regardless of what she did "it's wrong."
"Wearing baggy clothes, nobody is attracted to me, I feel incredibly unlovable and unsexy and not beautiful, and people shame you for not being feminine enough," she said. "Then you wear something more revealing and they're, like, You're such a fat cow w****. I'm a s*** and I'm a sell-out and I'm just like every other celebrity selling their bodies, and woah! What the f*** do you want? It's a crazy world for women and women in the public eye."
Eilish explained that in 2021 she created an image that did not necessarily reflect who she was.
"Looking back at all of the promo and stuff we did before the album [in 2021], I'm, like, don't know who that is, but that is not me!" she said. "I didn't have any time to think. I just decided who I was. I just became that vibe. And I don't know if that was necessarily what I really was feeling. I was just grasping on to anything."
Eilish added that she did not "feel desired, ever" and worried that because of this, she may have "occasionally tried too hard to be desirable."
"It makes me sad to think about," she said.
However, Eilish said she felt as if she had more "solid" confidence in herself nowadays.
"In the past couple of months I feel far more solid in who I am," she said. "I feel different now, like I'm desirable. I feel like I'm capable of being as feminine as I want to be and as masculine as I want."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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