To Make a Point, Eilish Sheds the Baggy Clothes

Billie Eilish chose the kickoff of her world tour to address comments about her famously oversize clothes, and the body underneath. The singer, who turned 18 in December, has previously found issue with comments praising her clothes as a statement about the sexualization of women. Indeed, she's said such comments have an air of slut-shaming women who dress differently, per the Guardian. She elaborated on the topic in a video interlude shown during her "Where Do We Go?" tour launch in Miami on Monday. The singer is seen removing a tank top, revealing a black bra underneath, as she descends into water. "While I feel your stares, your disapproval, or your sighs of relief, if I lived by them, I'd never be able to move," Eilish says in the clip. "Would you like me to be smaller? Weaker? Softer? Taller? ... The body I was born with, is it not what you wanted?"

"If what I wear is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I am a slut," she continues. "Though you've never seen my body, you still judge it and judge me for it ... You make assumptions about people based on their size." But, "if I wear more, if I wear less, who decides what that makes me?" she asks. "Is my value based only on your perception? Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?" In one early review of the show, David Rolland at the Miami New Times notes "the musical phenomenon didn't hold anything back. And neither did her audience"— though whether the crowd was able to hear her words is another matter. "It's been said the Beatles quit touring because they couldn't hear themselves play during concerts," Rolland writes. "[I] always took that for mythology, until this show." (Eilish once railed against a shirtless image of her.)