Billie Eilish has delighted fans with a new video, for her track Therefore I Am, and many are speculating that it contains a powerful message hitting back at body shaming. It's an issue that the eighteen-year-old has spoken about publicly on numerous occasions before, including while on tour.
She previously opened her shows with a video interlude, featuring herself saying, "If what I wear is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I am a slut. Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it. Some people use it to shame others, some people use it to shame me. While I feel your stares, your disapproval or your sighs of relief, if I lived by them, I’d never be able to move."
In her new video, the artist is seen running around an empty shopping mall and at one point heads to the food court, where she picks up some tasty-looking fries and a pretzel (God, I want fries now too?). Billie then proceeds to eat the snacks (whilst looking like a snack herself, of course) and fans have interpreted it as a metaphorical middle finger to society's beauty ideals.
Sharing a short clip, one fan wrote on Twitter: "BILLIE EILISH SAID FUCK BODY SHAMING."
Another said, "Billie Eilish casually running around the mall grabbing mall snacks singing 'Iʼm not your friend', basically slamming people who were body shaming her, I never thought my crush on her would be bigger."
In response to a tweet saying Billie had "wasted" the opportunity to create a cool music video by only choosing to pick up food while in the empty mall, a further fan theorised, "If you listen to the song closely I think the song is about body shaming coming from her 'fans' so she goes around eating all the junk food around the mall telling them that she doesn’t care."
Everyone's clicking on...
Billie herself is yet to comment on whether or not that was her intention in creating the video, but either way – we're here for it. We're huge fans of not only her, but the song and those delicious looking fries.
Keep doing your thing, Billie (you absolute icon)!
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Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
