Even before the slime-green roots made their grand debut, Billie Eilish has long favored a boxy, oversize fashion aesthetic while out in public — a choice that she previously explained is not to avoid being sexualized as a young female musician, but rather because, simply, she’s more comfortable wearing baggy clothes. During the opening of her world tour in Miami on Monday evening, Eilish defined her sartorial views a step further with a poignant prerecorded video, which showed her in a state of undress as she submerged herself in a pool of water. “Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it. Some people use it to shame others, some people use it to shame me,” she explained. “But I feel you watching, always. And nothing I do goes unseen.” Eilish continued:
So while I feel your stares, your disapproval or your sighs of relief, if I lived by them, I’d never be able to move. Would you like me to be smaller? Weaker? Softer? Taller? Would you like me to be quiet? Do my shoulders provoke you? Does my chest? Am I my stomach? My hips? The body I was born with, is it not what you wanted? If I wear more, if I wear less, who decides what that makes me? What that means? Is my value based only on your perception? Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?
Besides the video, which can be viewed below, Eilish didn’t further address body shamers during her tour set. “It’s a weird thing because I know a lot of what I hear is a positive or people trying to be positive about how I dress,” she told Pharrell Williams in an interview with V last year, when the topic of clothing came up. “Even from my parents, the positive [comments] about how I dress have this slut-shaming element. Like, ‘I am so glad that you are dressing like a boy, so that other girls can dress like boys, so that they aren’t sluts.’ That’s basically what it sounds like to me. And I can’t [overstate how] strongly I do not appreciate that, at all.” When the concert ended, Eilish also got to meet noted superfans Jennifer Lopez and her daughter, Emme.