Billie Eilish has shared a new short film, Not My Responsibility.
Uploaded to YouTube, the film – which was made by Eilish herself – was originally used as an interlude at her Miami concert on the Where Do We Go? world tour, as Complex notes. It would have run throughout the rest of the dates if the tour hadn’t been postponed following the pandemic.
The film concerns body shaming, particularly Eilish’s choice to wear baggy clothes to avoid objectification.
“The body I was born with – is it not what you wanted?” Eilish asks in the video, as she submerges in water. “You have opinions about my opinions, about my music, about my clothes, about my body. Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it, some people use it to shame others, some people use it to shame me — but I feel you watching. Always. And nothing I do goes unseen. So while I feel your stares, your disapproval, or your sigh of relief; if I lived by them, I’d never be able to move.”
As she disappears into the darkness, she asks: “Would you like me to be smaller? Weaker? Softer? Taller? If I wear what is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I’m a slut.”
“Though you’ve never seen my body, you still judge it and judge me for it. Why? You make assumptions about people based on their size. We decide who they are. We decide what they’re worth,” she adds. “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?”
Revisit Dazed’s cover story with Billie Eilish and watch Not My Responsibility below.