The singer has previously been candid about how she had struggled with her weight and body image issues
Billie Eilish is opening up about how one famous clothing brand heavily impacted her relationship with her weight.
Opening up about her first experience with negative body image, the 22-year-old musician shared in a cover story interview with Complex on Thursday, Dec. 5 that her obsession with Brandy Melville as a kid heavily impacted her self-image.
“What’s really interesting is that when I was a little girl, I loved big dresses,” she revealed to Complex, opening up about how she’s known for often dressing in baggy, masculine clothing. “All I wore was fairy dresses and skirts. I never wore pants or shorts when I was a little kid.”
“But when I got to be about 11, I got obsessed with this brand called Brandy Melville,” Eilish recalled. “And they only sold clothes in one size. I was chubbier and I was obsessed with these clothes, but I’d buy a shirt and it wouldn’t fit me. That’s when my body problems started. I was around the age of 10 or 11. I got boobs at like 9, and I was just developing really early. I wasn’t slim. Also, I was in ballet, and that’s this whole world of body problems.”
For Eilish, wearing baggy clothes complicated her sense of self deeply, as she felt it both embodied her sense of style and helped her to feel comfortable, but also helped her hide her body.
“Then [my career] got to be big, and when I was around 16, I was put in such a box of, like, ‘Billie Eilish wears baggy clothes only. And she’s not a woman. And she doesn’t look like a girl. And she’s not desirable,’” the “What Was I Made For?” singer recalled. “So when I made Happier Than Ever, I was kind of like, ‘OK, people have decided that I’m this one thing. And I am that thing. But I’m also all these other things.’”
The singer then says she took things to the “completely extreme version of it” and began dressing in a hyper-feminine style to offset comments about her baggy clothing.
“I couldn’t just, like, wear a skirt once. I had to completely reverse everything and be this girly girl for a second and have these pink nails, blonde hair, skirts, dresses, button-ups, bras, and lingerie,” she told Complex.
“I really just did it to prove a point. I was just like, ‘F— you guys. I can do whatever I want. And then I can go back to what I was doing before, and you guys can eat it,’” she added. “So even though it was a little extreme how I did it all, I feel really grateful for it.”
After HBO released a documentary about Brandy Melville earlier this year titled Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion, people from in the fashion industry and outside of it have spoken candidly about how they felt the one-size-only company’s clothing promoted unhealthy habits and a toxic fashion culture.
Eilish, meanwhile, has also been candid about how the public’s perception of her — and fans comments about her body and sense of style — have hurt her.
In an interview with British Vogue last year, she shared that the “constant criticism” still gets to her, but she knows it could have been much worse if she was receiving these comments as a younger kid.
“Honestly, nobody can say anything about my body that I don’t have a stronger opinion about … I also think that if I was younger, like if the internet talked about me the way they do now when I was like 11, I don’t think I would be able to exist, to be honest,” she said at the time.
“I like myself more than I used to, and I’m more interested in how I feel than how they feel,” Eilish added of the social media trolls. “But then also that might be a load of bulls— because it still hurts my feelings like a sonabitch.”
