Billie Eilish body photo sparks debate about 'bravery'

In case you’ve been living under a rock this week, you’ll know that there was a lot of discourse about Billie Eilish walking down the street because it’s 2020 and women still can’t walk down the street without being scrutinised.

Sigh.

So what happened?

As mentioned, Billie Eilish went for a walk this week and wasn’t wearing the oversized clothes people are accustomed to seeing her wear. This was followed by a deluge of body shaming and intensely sexist scrutiny.

Eilish eventually coyly responded on Instagram to the whole thing on Instagram and was flooded with support from fans.

But now people are debating whether Eilish is “brave” or “courageous”, as she has been described.

Scaachi Koul wrote an essay for BuzzFeed news about this very topic, and lamented that we seem to have gotten to a place where “merely existing in a body larger than a size 0 is considered courageous”.

Essentially, the argument is that Eilish isn't brave, she's just normal. And it's frustrating that society's warped attitude towards bodies has brought us to this place.

Some people agreed.

But others thought that, while people are still shamed and scrutinised for their bodies, challenging unrealistic beauty standards can be a form of bravery.

Ultimately, as Koul points out, there's no good way to talk about a young woman's body.

Perhaps the best thing would be if everyone would just let everyone else develop their own relationship with their bodies? Wouldn't that be nice?