Billie Eilish ‘I feel more powerful when I am masculine’

[DuncanBiscuits]

So sad to see Billie Eilish saying this in an interview with the BBC, and annoyed to see the female interviewers face light up as if she’d hit some kind of scoop.

Billie, you are a totally brilliant role model for young girls. And now you’re saying you feel your most powerful when you embrace your masculinity, whatever the fuck that means. When you walk like a man, or something.

We spent the nineties in big boots, sticking two fingers up at white stilettos and telling the world that ‘femininity’ could mean power, and swagger, and chaos.

And now here we are, thirty years later, and the bullshit gender roles are back with a vengeance - and this time, they have scalpels.

I’m so heartsick of it.

I agree, she achieved a lot as a woman, and a young woman. She had bearly started.

I’m sick of feeling disrespected. My femininity is in my blood, bones, spit and spleen.

Not a weakness.

now you’re saying you feel your most powerful when you embrace your masculinity, whatever the fuck that means.

Going out on a limb here, but perhaps you should find out what she meant before condemning her?

I’m not condemning her.

I don’t have that power.

My understanding of what she said is that she feels she has masculinity and femininity within, and she feels most powerful when she embraces the masculinity.

Which feels like a kick in the teeth, and the last thing the little girls who revere her need to hear, especially in the current climate, where ‘embracing your masculinity’ can lead to having a double mastectomy.

I'm not into femininity, that doesn't mean I am not a woman. It's all the bullshit we are told we are because of our biology, while men get the good stuff.

What an absolute shit stirring thread. The part you’ve gone off about is one line in the whole article:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63834016

A June 2021 issue of British Vogue, showed the then 19-year-old singer in a skin-tight satiny corset dress that was slashed at the knee, a departure from the baggy and genderless emo outfits she had been synonymous with. The cover generated commentary not just from the internet but the New York Times, which commented that some had been unhappy with her defiance of gender stereotypes.

Billie says she doesn't feel the need to display just one version of herself, though she does feel most powerful when she feels "masculine".

That’s it. To apply any analysis of her views on gender based on that is a leap Evel Knievel would be proud of (look him up, kids).

the last thing the little girls who revere her need to hear, especially in the current climate, where ‘embracing your masculinity’ can lead to having a double mastectomy.

Wow, that’s a pretty transphobic over-reaction.

"..she does feel most powerful when she feels "masculine"."

So Billie equates power with masculinity.

Gender stereotyping. The thing we want to get rid of.

@NotBadConsidering

No. It wasn’t from that article. It was from an interview that I watched. I shall link it for you. Have a watch.

Eilish: Growing up in public has been bruising www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63834016 I like to feel more masculine than feminine

if you scroll down…

DuncanBiscuits
Entirely agree.

Of course! Our very existences are deemed transphobic! Especially when we speak about them. Aren't most threads and posts on this board viewed as transphobic though (the new meaning of the word, of course)?

That said, I took Billie to be referring to masculine and feminine clothing. Those words might be problematic but they are still in common usage for that meaning. She also said that she thought people were scared of her big boobs when she tried overtly feminine dressing. She lost tonnes of followers.

She's really young and experimenting with clothes but in the public eye. I think that must be so tough. And it is hard putting clothes on big boobs. People read all manner of messages and criticisms into it. You're no longer cool but sexy or mumsy or wench like or frumpy. See the depressing style and beauty thread involving a frilly Boden dress and a size 14 model.

Sex is real, and male and female are real and different.

I read 'it's easier/safer to fit in with the powerful men in this business/world if I try to emulate them'. It's often a pretty crappy world for women IMO.

I agree. Listening to the interview it really struck me. Gender stereotypes. It's sad women feel like this.

It’s an interview with a focus on how she’s had to deal with so much, so young, including how anything she says sparks intense scrutiny and analysis:

Worldwide fame meant worldwide interest from some of the biggest media outlets. Comments she made, from the trivial to more serious and personal subjects like living with depression and suicidal ideations, were analysed and repeated by people twice her age.

It's a bruising experience to grow up in the public eye, she says, and hard to keep defending things you said as a teenager.

It's almost impossible to fathom how such a young person could have coped under this intense spotlight, and the weight of outsiders' expectations.

And here you are, taking one thing she’s said about masculinity and expanding that to being a “kick in the teeth” and “the last thing the little girls who revere her need to hear”.

What irony.

Billie Eilish is 20 years old and not responsible for the horrors of gender ideology.

Like @DuncanBiscuits I too heard part of that interview - about 5 minutes ago Radio2 news - went and found the article.

She very clearly says she views masculinity as powerful; that her baggy Emo'ness had been portrayed as "defiance of gender stereotypes" and upset some MM, hence the dress in Vogue! She discusses male relationships (of all sorts) as men having power.

She says "I don't look at myself like I am something to explain," the 20-year-old says. "I just exist. I'm a person."

Sounds like one soon to be unhappy again young woman. As she grow up, looses the childlike presence that has contained her so far (like all child stars) she will face more and more pressure to 'be something" to explain herself. To find a flag and nail it to a wall. Her songs, her youth will make that an ever increasing demand!

That she feels she has less power over her life than the men in it, A&R men, producers, her brother(?), is worrying, as it would be for any young woman.

I will admit that I should have expressed more sorrow than anger. She’s only 20.

But she’s not talking about clothes. She says it’s in her walk, her fingers, etc.

I’d have just loved to have seen her saying, ‘This IS femininity, if you want it to be.’

That’s what we grew up hearing, and it feels as if it’s being washed away.

She says it’s in her walk, her fingers, etc.

We need to introduce her to Chrissie Hynde. Though maybe not!

This is what she says in the 1:23 long video labelled "I like to feel more masculine than feminine" on the BBC website article (www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63834016)

"BE: I feel the most powerful when I feel masculine. Um, in my life and I, I, I can also find power in femininity it's kind of a balance of both but I, I..

Interviewer: What do you mean by masculine?

BE: I don't know.. I like depending on how I walk and stand and my clothes and my face and my jewellery and my fingers and my like every, just everything that I, everything that I am day to day like I feel ... I like to feel more, more masculine than feminine it just makes me feel better. Um, which I struggled with for a long time because I wanted to feel feminine and like it but I just didn't really and so, um, but then it's like finding moments where you can have that and it feels good still, you know? Like, right now I'm wearing a tighter shirt, I'm wearing a more low cut shirt and like you know the older me would've be like "urgh please don't!" but I like it and it makes me feel good, now, and it's just the balance of the two..."

To me, she's describing the process of growing up as a teenage girl in a heavily sex-based stereotyped environment. Probably one of the most heavily skewed environment there is, which is the entertainment, specifically pop music, industry. Like a lot of teenage girls she wore baggy clothes and tried to hide her body, to avoid scrutiny, to avoid being sexualised, to avoid sexual approaches, to try to appear more like the boys and men that were being taken seriously as artists etc etc.

I think by "feminine" she means "sexualised".

So is Billie the victim here or the perpetrator? So far we’ve had she’s saying things kids shouldn’t be hearing, but also the things she’s saying are a result of the influence of men around her. She’s setting a bad example but it’s not her fault?

Or maybe she’s just a 20 year old talking casually about her clothes with another woman?

I think by "feminine" she means "sexualised". That's interesting. You could be right!

She is certainly seems to be struggling with 'just existing, being a person' at the moment. The change from angsty teen to a young women is hard enough without all the adoring fans and often critical media.

So is Billie the victim here or the perpetrator? Not sure I said she was either. Not sure anyone has.

Or maybe she’s just a 20 year old talking casually about her clothes with another woman? Casually? Investing them, as well as how she walks, talks etc with 'power'? She is, as I said, questioning. Like we all did at that age. But she has the added pressures of fame, being very young and already having met the phenomenon of patriarchy in many of her life relationships.

You know, I think she’s the victim. I’m happy to be schooled on this.

It’s a bloody sad state of affairs though.

I think she has the potential to be a victim. What she does with her questioning will decide that.

As happens to all of us at that age, but young and very famous? That is very much a crucible I am happy never to have encountered.