- Megha Mohan and Yousef Eldin
- BBC 100 women
December 6, 2022
Billie Eilish is the first 21st-century artist to top the Billboard charts and also win an Oscar. The 20-year-old singer, who is known for her baggy image, tells the BBC she prefers to feel more masculine than feminine.
“I feel stronger when I feel masculine in my life,” she explains in an interview with the BBC as part of the special 100 Women, the BBC’s annual list of the most inspiring and influential women in the world. “I can also find strength in the feminine. It’s kind of a balance between the two,” she adds.
“It depends on how I walk and how I stand and my clothes and my face and my jewelry and my fingers, everything that I am on a day-to-day basis… I like to feel more masculine than feminine, it makes me feel better ” she explains the artist three hours before the start of her penultimate concert of her Happier Than Ever tour in Australia.
“I struggled with that for a long time because I wanted to feel feminine and I liked it, but it didn’t feel like it,” says the singer.
“It’s about finding moments where you can have that and still feel good, you know? Like now that I’m wearing a tight t-shirt and it has a more pronounced neckline,” she adds ahead of the concert, which is part of a world tour that has taken her four continents over seven months. As part of this tour, which began last February, the artist will perform next year in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, where she will end her tour on April 2nd in Guadalajara.
A June 2021 issue of Britain’s Vogue magazine featured the then 19-year-old singer in a fitted, knee-length satin corset dress, a departure from the baggy, genderless emo outfits it was synonymous with. The cover drew comments not only online, but also in The New York Times, which commented that some didn’t like that it challenged gender stereotypes.
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Growing up in the spotlight
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell was born and raised in Los Angeles to actors and musicians who have had supporting roles on shows such as Friends and The West Wing. He studied at home with his brother, guitarist and singer-songwriter Finneas O’Connell. I’ve been writing songs since I was four years old. His rise to stardom is already legendary.
One night in 2015, 14-year-old Billie walked up ocean eyes, written by Finneas, on the SoundCloud platform for his dance teacher to listen to.
When she woke up, thousands of people had heard her. A record deal and a series of awkward encounters with older men followed.
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She has won seven Grammy Awards and is the first artist in history to win all four general categories on the same night.
“I look back on it fondly for the most part, but it was so weird being a 14-year-old girl with my 17-year-old brother and doing hundreds of meetings all the time,” she says. “There were a lot of meetings with people who didn’t know how to talk to 14-year-old girls.”
As her fame skyrocketed, so did her social media accounts. With 100 million followers on Instagram and more than 60 million on TikTok, a Billie Eilish publication, spawns an entire global comment engine. “Growing up in public is a painful experience,” he admits.
During his career he also had to deal with the feeling of not being enough. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve had impostor syndrome so many times in my life,” he says.
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“Your Power”
Billie’s favorite song, “Your Power,” with lyrics like “You may not want to lose your power, but having it is so strange,” led to a particularly electrifying moment on the final night of the tour in Perth, when dozens of young women held up notes, on which she said “thank you” while singing the ballad.
The posters were made by Australian Alyssah Louise, 19, who distributed them to fans overseas. For Alyssah, the song is about a time of abuse in her own life.
“Your Power is a song that almost everyone can relate to,” he tells the BBC. “When I hear this song, I think of the man who abused his power while he was with me, how much trauma he caused me physically and emotionally.”
Billie says the song is about different people she’s met who have influenced and fought against others.
“It’s generally very difficult to have so much power”He says.
“And it’s very difficult when you really don’t have power and all of a sudden you have a lot of power and it’s difficult not to take advantage of it and abuse it. That goes for everything in life,” he adds.
This note is part of the BBC special featuring the 100 most inspiring and influential women in the world in 2022.
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