Billie Eilish Celebrates Body Positivity In Swimsuit Photos

At this point, it’s fair to say Billie Eilish has taken the world by storm. It was only about six years ago that she was stunning us all with great songs like “Ocean Eyes.” Fast-forward a few years and she now has seven Grammy awards and many other major accolades.

Of course, all this attention on her music has led to added scrutiny about her life. The 20-year-old singer has had to deal with a lot of online hate, especially centered around her body. But this doesn’t keep her from living her best life on vacations and celebrating body positivity with a series of swimsuit photos.

Where did Billie Eilish go on vacation? How are these swimsuit photos her victory over her haters, and how did she become a body positivity icon? Keep reading to find out!

The real reason Billie Eilish wears baggy clothing

One of the reasons that Billie Eilish in a bikini turns heads is simple: a bikini is pretty much the polar opposite of the clothing she normally wears. Both onstage and in her daily life, Eilish is mostly known for sporting very baggy clothing. And the reason why she does so is fairly sad.

As Teen Vogue reports, the singer opened up about her clothing in a Calvin Klein ad of all places. In the ad, she describes how the baggy clothing helps protect her.  “That’s why I wear baggy clothes,” she says. “Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath. Nobody can be like, ‘she’s slim-thick,’ ‘she’s not slim-thick,’ ‘she’s got a flat ass,’ ‘she’s got a fat ass.’ No one can say any of that because they don’t know.”

Being an international superstar musician likely made Eilish more conscious of her own body. However, she has been struggling to love her body since long before she was famous.

Billie Eilish and her struggle to love her body

In the past, Billie Eilish has gotten very real about her history of body issues, mental issues, and self-harm in a special interview. Elle reports that she previously drew a distinct connection between being bullied over her body and wanting to hurt herself. As she said, “the reason I used to cut myself was because of my body.”

And these struggles to love her body go back a long time. She remembers, “I was, like, starving myself… taking a pill that told me that it would make me lose weight and it only made me pee the bed—when I was 12. It’s just crazy.” As she got older, dating actually made these insecurities worse.

As she admitted in an interview with GQ, she never felt desired by a significant other. “Here’s a bomb for you: I have never felt desired,’ she said. “My past boyfriends never made me feel desired. None of them. And it’s a big thing in my life that I feel I have never been physically desired by somebody.”

You might think having fans all over the world praise both her music and her body would help in this regard. But in many ways, fame has only made this situation worse.

Realizing she can’t win with internet trolls

Of course, it’s impossible to wear baggy clothing to places like the beach. So when Billie Eilish took a vacation to Hawaii in 2020, she wore a bikini. And when she comments from trolls online, she realized just how bad the internet could suck.

In an interview with Dazed, she opened up about the online abuse she received. “I saw comments like, ‘How dare she talk about not wanting to be sexualized and wear this?!’” she said. “It was trending. There were comments like, ‘I don’t like her anymore because as soon as she turns 18, she’s a whore.’ Like dude, I can’t win. I cannot win.”

She offered up similar thoughts in her interview with Elle. There, she admitted that she “thought that [she] would be the only one dealing with [her] hatred for [her] body,” but then added that, “I guess the internet also hates my body. So that’s great … The internet hates women.”

Rather than let the abusers win, Billie Eilish fought back. And along the way, she became an icon for body positivity.

Becoming an advocate for body positivity

By now, Billie Eilish is a world-famous creative musician. So she struck back at her haters in the best way she knew how: by creating some powerful and inspirational media.

In May of 2020, a little over four months after the trolls began hating on her Hawaii bikini pics, Eilish released a short film titled “Not My Responsibility.” The film is basically a spoken word music video, and it tells the world exactly how Eilish feels.

As Glamour reports, the poem Eilish reads in the video asks viewers point-blank, “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?”

She goes on to describe the paradox of being a famous woman. “If I wear what is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I am a slut. Though you’ve never seen my body, you still judge it and judge me for it.” And she ends with a rhetorical question: “Is my value based only on your perception? Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?”

This video prompted Eilish fans to release many statements online about how they have learned to love their bodies. And the poem became something of a rallying cry as more people realized it is not their responsibility what others think and say about them.

Billie’s return to bikinis

About two and a half years after her Hawaiian photos made such a splash, Billie Eilish rocked a bikini again. She posted images on her Instagram of her enjoying a mini-vacation around the Fourth of July. Eilish wore her hair up to keep it out of the way and looks perfectly comfortable.

Her comfort came through in the simple caption to the photo. As Hello! reports, Eilish captioned the photos with a sun emoji and two words: “home again.”

These photos prompted favorable comments from fans, including statements that Eilish remains an “iconic queen.” But our real hope for her being “home again” is that she has put the hatred of online trolls behind her and realized that she can and should wear whatever she wants. Neither baggy clothes nor bikinis will make her the “bad guy,” and it’s well past time for her to do and wear whatever she wants, online haters be damned!