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.

She's still a kid. The language we now use to describe feeling powerful as a woman has been so mangled by patriarchal gender woo woo bullshit that she doesn't really have the language to talk about it.
She's just a young woman growing up in the spotlight in a world that is hypersensitive to gendered language. Look what happened to Adele when she said she was glad to be a woman (or whatever). The tra babies threw a tantrum that she might be a [whispers] terf.

I pay very little attention to what young people have to say. They don't know their arse from their elbow. I probably came out with the same nonsense at that age. Some might argue that not much has changed....

I thought she came across quite well, she did say people bring up things she said 5 years ago. She also said she doesn’t believe most of what she has said in the past, she came across to me, as saying, people change there minds, kids grow up. She may we’ll change her mind on the masculinity thing.

I hope so.

Surely we should support a woman embracing her masculine side? She remains a woman. Just as a man who embraces his feminine side remains a man.

I think the issue is her framing power and position, being stronger, better as 'masculine' is the issue.

The whole idea of feminine and masculine is troublesome.

Here is my take on it. For years women and girls have been told you have to be strong and being "frilly" and feminine is weak or sexy . You only have to look at some threads on here about baby names and some names are dismissed as being too "girlie" or I wouldn't dress my girl in dresses etc etc so imo being a strong woman can be misconstrued as masculine. I think this is a place Billie is coming from.

Yes, she clearly sees appearing feminine as being weak, not in control, powerless, sexualised, unconfident and so on. Hence wanting to be powerful, in control, not sexualised, confident by being what she perceives as masculine. So baggy clothes, no makeup, changing her stance, etc etc.

I get what she's saying - for most of my young adulthood, I stayed away from anything overtly feminine - as in coded feminine, frilly, lacy, jewellery - hell, even v-necks, because I didn't want to project that image - I felt safe dressed in a more masculine style.

These days my style is still definitely not feminine, but I also wouldn't shy away from showing some cleavage if I felt like it. There's one dress in my wardrobe (from a wedding 15 years ago) - generally I'm in jeans and hoodie etc. because that's how I feel comfortable - just like Billie expresses, and I'm not even in the spotlight.

I feel attractive and sexy when I'm dressed well, and because of who I am, not because of what the style of dress is, if you see what I mean.

I can only imagine how much of a deep breath she had to take to wear that satin corset number and have her picture taken TBH. I know that I couldn't have done it at her age.

Yes, this.

"For years women and girls have been told you have to be strong and being "frilly" and feminine is weak or sexy ."

I was born in the 1960s . I was never taught this

It seems to have happened insidiously. Last time I looked it was all ‘strong, independent woman’ like Beyoncé et al.

Where has this bullshit come from?

This is part of the annual BBC's 100 Women list (which always includes a token trans woman).

This. I recently read Grace Jones's autobiography and one of the main themes is what she perceives as her male and female sides. Her androgyny is key to her image and sense of self, nothing to do with gender woo.

Silly Billie - like you couldn’t possibly be powerful as a woman 🙄 I’m so sick of this regressive crap! She reminds me of that trans man on Star Trek discovery. I once read a comment from them about what they associated with being a boy/man, and they said “Strength” 🙄 Talk about self-hate and crapping on other female people.

I tried to find the article but couldn’t. I did find this one though and it’s full of the usual contradictions of Gender Ideology:

Article

All underlined by stupid stereotypes from decades ago. I despair of some young people. They kind of get a fraction of the idea but still can’t step outside their self-enforced stereotypes.

Silly Billie - like you couldn’t possibly be powerful as a woman 🙄

Are you saying that a masculine woman isn’t a woman? Why can’t a masculine woman be powerful as a woman?

Why does masculine = powerful? Does feminine = weak? That's the real problem.

This is an interview. The paragraph is written by the journalist, with the only quote being "masculine" and all the other words are not Billie's. She's a young woman, speaking about herself in the language of her generation. This is one word, in a context generated by a third party. I don't think you can realistically read anything into it with any certainty of the meaning.
I would imagine that Billie is very well aware of the effect that her dressing in a way perceived by her, or others, as masculine/feminine has. And how that makes her feel.

No, I’m obviously not. But Billie is implying that - that masculinity is linked with strength, that they form a pair. Gender stereotyping. Idiotic and regressive, even in its mild forms because the subtle messages are absorbed by those growing up.

I’ve never looked at Billie and thought she looked masculine because of the way she dressed. Such straitjackets younger people have made for themselves. God, I miss the 80s!

Thing is all the terms are getting muddled. Anyone can be masculine or feminine or androgynous as they like, but they all have a sex. If Billie as a girl wants to be masculine that's fine, as long as she knows she is female that doesn't mean she has to act in ant particular way. Of course masculinity is associated with strength, because men are generally stronger physically plus they dominate society, e.g. men's jobs pat more than caring jobs even at the same skillset like warehouse forklift work pays more than nursery nurse. Actually nn requires quals and far more skills but is still lower paid.

I think the issue is with the traditional definitions of masculine and feminine and the characteristics ascribed to each.

How are you defining masculinity and femininity? I am not even sure I know what to use terms mean anymore.

Daphne du Maurier said something similar. She felt that the masculine force was in the ascendency when she wrote her novels.

I suppose it's very subjective. All a person can mean by it is what they feel and view as being a more masculine side to themselves.

Perhaps artists find they need to step into roles and personas in order to be creative, and this is one part of that process.