Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be very uncomfortable with 17 year old Billie Eilish's Bad Guy video?

234 replies

AbsentmindedWoman · 03/07/2019 15:31

Am I being an old gimmer?

It makes me deeply uncomfortable because she's not legally an adult, and I'm pretty certain the production team around her are all adults, possibly with the exception of an intern or two. Most of the men you can see in the video are.

It feels very exploitative. I don't know much about this singer, but a quick google shows she is open about mental health issues, so possibly quite vulnerable in a way, and then she's singing about bruises on her knees and rough sex, seducing dads (who are obviously going to be adult men!) and she's only 17 years old.

I'll be honest, I would have thought in 2019 this wouldn't be legal until the singer is 18 - or at least frowned upon by the industry as not acceptable? Not that it is magically better when someone turns 18 but the whole attitude seems very dated?

OP posts:
Hithere12 · 03/07/2019 15:38

she's singing about bruises on her knees and rough sex, seducing dads (who are obviously going to be adult men!) and she's only 17 years old

That’s pretty disgusting considering I’m sure it was written/produced by older men. Yeah it’s exploitative.

Halloumimuffin · 03/07/2019 15:43

I’m sure it was written/produced by older men

Not really, it's written and produced by her and her 21-year old brother.

JoxerGoesToStuttgart · 03/07/2019 15:45

“it's written and produced by her and her 21-year old brother.”

GRIM!

JoxerGoesToStuttgart · 03/07/2019 15:46

And her brother is also an older man so yes, it is written and produced by older men.

Halloumimuffin · 03/07/2019 15:48

And her brother is also an older man so yes, it is written and produced by older men

Just saying it's a member of her own family who she appears to be very close to rather than a board of sleazy industry execs. And also to please give her the appropriate credit for her input into her own music rather than being sexist and assuming she has no say in it.

pallisers · 03/07/2019 15:48

more of the pornification of mainstream culture and extending it to young girls. disgusting. don't really care how old fashioned that makes me seem.

starzig · 03/07/2019 15:51

She is 17, not 7. Were you not getting bruises on your knees with the slightly older bad boy at that age or were you still at Sunday school.

Halloumimuffin · 03/07/2019 15:53

I hate to break it to y'all but 17 year old girls are allowed to have sex.

Zaeem5 · 03/07/2019 15:54

No you’re not being an old gimmer OP. Yes, it’s another example if the pornification of young girls. Of course she’s being exploited by the industry. Yet people are downloading her stuff. God knows why.

ICanWearMyBoobsUpOrDown · 03/07/2019 15:54

Of all the music videos in the world this wouldn't even make my top 50 to be uncomfortable about.

Someone old enough to have sex sings a song with sexual references in it 🤷‍♀️

VolcanionSteamArtillery · 03/07/2019 15:56

I had bruises on my knees after sex in an inappropriate location at 16....

darkriver19886 · 03/07/2019 15:56

Just watched it. Not a big fan of her music but the video made me distinctly uncomfortable.

PapayaCoconut · 03/07/2019 15:57

Were you not getting bruises on your knees with the slightly older bad boy at that age or were you still at Sunday school.

I lost my virginity when I was 19. DH was 20. I think the age of consent should be 18. I think it's completely nuts that someone can be classed as a child, not be old enough to vote, get married or drink alcohol and still be considered old enough to have sex and become a parent.

MargoLovebutter · 03/07/2019 15:57

Don't be daft, have you seen the video for it?

She's saying there might be 'bad' guys out there but she's badder for want of a better term. They don't own her, but she'll have the fun she wants, piss everyone off & even her mother will pity the men she knows. I hardly think that's exploitative, I think that is a big 17 year old fuck off to any potential exploiters.

Zaeem5 · 03/07/2019 15:58

“Were you not getting bruises on your knees with the slightly older bad boy at that age”

Oh yes, I was always after people’s dads at that age, while perfecting my most gornless, vacant expression. What a treat it was when they gave me a nosebleed too. The good old days!

pallisers · 03/07/2019 15:58

She is 17, not 7. Were you not getting bruises on your knees with the slightly older bad boy at that age or were you still at Sunday school.

No I wasn't since you ask. I wasn't on my knees giving blow jobs to men at that age and they weren't hitting me as part of a sexual encounter either. I'm old enough to remember when a teenage boy asking out a teenage girl didn't expect a blow job. That song is about violence. When did sex become synonymous with violence for our young people?

pallisers · 03/07/2019 15:59

She's saying there might be 'bad' guys out there but she's badder for want of a better term. They don't own her, but she'll have the fun she wants, piss everyone off & even her mother will pity the men she knows. I hardly think that's exploitative, I think that is a big 17 year old fuck off to any potential exploiters.

yes I'm quite sure that is what she thinks too. of course she is only 17.

FamilyOfAliens · 03/07/2019 16:01

Were you not getting bruises on your knees with the slightly older bad boy at that age or were you still at Sunday school.

Those are two ends of a spectrum, not two mutually exclusive options.

Original poster
AbsentmindedWoman · 03/07/2019 16:03

I hate to break it to y'all but 17 year old girls are allowed to have sex.

Of course they are.

But a 17 year old making a video with themes of having rough sex with someone twice her age makes me uncomfortable. The power imbalance is too great.

There's a reason the age of representation in porn is 18 (despite the age of consent being 16) and I honestly think it should be older, maybe 25 as that's when the brain fully matures - but obviously that's not a runner in the world we live in.

OP posts:
TheBigBallOfOil · 03/07/2019 16:05

At 17 I was studying to get into Cambridge not internalising the messages of pornography. And I’m jolly glad about that.

romeoonthebalcony · 03/07/2019 16:10

hmm, I'm too old to get it perhaps but it seemed to be about getting the attention and recognition of men and being better than other women by allowing yourself to be physically hurt in sexual encounters and saying you like it, you can take it, you can take more of it. It's a warped way of thinking you're in charge it seems to me.

She's an interesting character in that she deliberately wears baggy clothes I'm told so as not to have her body exploited but yet this seems still in the wrecking ball school it seems to me.

Our young people have been party to a mass social experiment of exposure to hardcore porn on film from a young age. We did not do enough to protect them or prepare them and I think there's much much more of this to come while in reality mental health problems grow and surveys seem to show that people are having less sex not more. Getting away with murder with the excuse it was a rough, asked for, sex game is a chilling consequence of it.

MargoLovebutter · 03/07/2019 16:10

Since when was pop music about making middle aged women comfortable?

Billie Eilish isn't prancing around in absurd sexualised outfits like loads of mainstream female pop artists, she wears very unsexy, individual clothes and she sings about interesting things too.

I find her a far healthier role model than the likes of Zoella or Girls Aloud.

Good for her singing about how she doesn't take any crap from all the 'bad' guys. I'd far rather that than simpering about heartbreak or finding the right man.

Bezalelle · 03/07/2019 16:11

Just because someone is complicit in their own exploitation doesn't make it ok.

gingerginger2 · 03/07/2019 16:11

I totally didn’t see it this way. I thought she was calling herself “the bad guy” . Which i can relate to, in my memories of being a teenage girl.

Halloumimuffin · 03/07/2019 16:12

Just because someone is complicit in their own exploitation doesn't make it ok.

So you know her personally then do you, to state so surely that she's being exploited?

Swipe left for the next trending thread