Billie Eilish went viral today, but it was for an unfortunate reason: A Twitter user shared a body-shaming post about her, so her fans swooped in the stand up for the singer and tell that detractor off. Now Eilish herself has offered a reaction to the tweet, and although it’s an indirect response, it seems clear that Eilish is either addressing this specific situation or the general types of comments she sees about this sort of thing.
On her Instagram Story last night, Eilish shared a video from content creator and social media personality Chizi Duru, in which she calls for people to start “normalizing real bodies.” In the video that Duru shared to her 170k Instagram followers on October 7, she says, “Y’all gotta start normalizing real bodies, OK? Not everybody has a wagon behind them, OK? Guts are normal, they’re normal. Boobs sag, especially after breastfeeding. Instagram isn’t real.” Duru also captioned the post, “In case someone needed a reminder…. Instagram has warped a lot of y’all into thinking NORMAL bodies are abnormal. NO. Not every black girl has a shelf behind them. Stomach pudge is completely normal. Most boobs SAGGGG. And to all my mamas out there, it’s ok! You brought LIFE into this world sis.”
Billie Eilish encourages people to ‘normalize real bodies’ after she was body-shamed in viral tweets. pic.twitter.com/SS0clRaeHo
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 14, 2020
The tweet in question featured a paparazzi photo of Eilish and declared that she “has developed a mid-30’s wine mom body.” The backlash against that Twitter user was severe, with one person summing up the tone of the responses with their tweets: “Body-shaming Billie Eilish is the main reason she wears baggy clothes. This sh*t is just weird and objectively wrong. She looks beautiful and most importantly, healthy. Let people develop confidence… on God most people wish they looked like her, like damn y’all see a lil tummy and people think you obese… this MAN is pushing 30 as well. Embarrassing.”
Eilish responded to a similar situation in April, after she had shared videos of herself in a swimsuit. She was frustrated, saying in an interview, “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 can not win.”