Billie Eilish Says Relationship With Her Body Has Been 'Horrible,' Calls It An 'Ugly Friend'

Singer Billie Eilish's fans know her to be very candid about her experiences as a female celebrity, including the criticism she faces because of her looks and style.

Eilish's bold street style caught fans' attention when she initially rose to fame, and she maintained this trend for a while. Her unorthodox fashion choices, which at one point featured baggy clothing and hair painted bright green, weren't always well welcomed by the public, and she faced many critiques for her appearance.

The "Happier Than Ever" singer then shocked her audience by unexpectedly appearing on the cover of British Vogue in June 2021 while wearing corsets and lingerie for a pin-up-style picture session that revealed a side of her that fans had never seen before.

Eilish has now given several explanations for her constantly shifting sense of style, one of which being her "complicated" relationship with her body.

Billie Eilish described her body as an "ugly friend" in a recent interview with the British publication The Times. When asked where she is in her body-image journey, the Grammy winner quipped, "Nowhere good."

"My relationship with my body has been a truly horrible, terrible thing since I was 11. 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?" she said.

For the earlier part of her career, Eilish's dress sense, which mostly comprised of baggy, oversized apparel, has received a lot of media attention. She claimed in a 2017 interview with Harper's Bazaar that she enjoys dressing beyond her comfort zone to feel like she is the center of attention.

In a different chat with another publication, this time in 2018, the award-winning singer stated she prefers to seem "kind of intimidating, so people will listen up," and that she tries to "look memorable" to "prove to people that [she's] more important than they think."

Eilish's interview with The Times saw her come clean on why she began wearing baggy clothes, revealing that she "hated" her body and never felt "physically desired." However, the singer pointed out that it came with backlash from the public for not possessing sufficient feminine attributes.

"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," Eilish said.

The shaming also came with being stigmatized as the girl who "wears big clothes" and has just one particular singing style, a stereotype that drove her to her emotional boundaries. "Being known for the whole start of your career for one thing — she wears baggy clothes, and she sings like this — it was driving me mad," she told the publication.

Hoping to change her public image which she was no longer comfortable with, Eilish bleached her hair platinum blonde and appeared on the cover of British Vogue in a body-hugging corset to publicize her sophomore album "Happier Than Ever" in 2021.

However, the result of the experiment proved to the singer that "no matter what you do, it's wrong and right," implying that there would always be a division in the public's view of her actions.

"Then you wear something more revealing and they're like, 'You're such a fat cow whore,'" Eilish recounted the remarks she got following her appearance on the Vogue Cover. "I'm a slut and I'm a sell-out and I'm just like every other celebrity selling their bodies, and Woah! What the fuck do you want? It's a crazy world for women and women in the public eye."

While Eilish does not regret changing up her fashion style for her "Happier Than Ever" album, in hindsight, the singer says that doing so did not seem authentic to who she really is.

"I'm like, 'Don't know who that is, but that is not me!' I didn't have any time to think. I just decided who I was. I just became that vibe," she opined. "And I don't know if that was necessarily what I really was feeling. I was just grasping on to anything."

In addition to being featured on the BritishVogue cover, Eilish promoted her sophomore album by starring in the 65-minute concert video "Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles," which walks viewers through the entirety of Eilish's recent body of work.

Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas wrote and performed all of the songs. The penultimate track on the project shared the same title as the album and was written about the vocalist breaking up with an ex-boyfriend.