By JULIET PEREZ
Staff Writer
Billie Eilish has been making music since 2015, with her brother Finneas who also makes his own music in his own band. She has been incredibly successful and liked by many people around the world, and has held a pretty good reputation for the past 6 years. She is the recipient of several awards and nominations, including seven Grammy Awards, five MTV Video Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, two Brit Awards, two Teen Choice Awards, two Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, and a People’s Choice Award, among others. Despite her talent and accomplishments, recently she has made questionable remarks and has done some pretty questionable things. It all started in June of this year when she dropped her music video for her song “Lost Cause” in which people had complaints that she was queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique used to attract queer viewers that involves creating romantic or sexual tension between two same-sex characters but never making it canon or evolving on it”. This is super harmful to the LGBTQ community as it paints same-sex relationships as jokes or derives them from all seriousness. This may not seem like a big deal to straight people, but for homosexual people who want to see representation in media, and are constantly teased but the “relationship” never follows through, it is a big deal. The reason why Billie was accused of queerbaiting was that the music video depicts multiple women being a little more than friendly and laying on each other wearing very light clothing. There are multiple problems with this, but the main one being that Billie is not even homosexual, she has said many times she is straight, and not to point out that the song for the music video is about a man and the music video genuinely has nothing to do with the song. Another problem with the music video is that it sexualizes lesbian relationships, which has always been an extreme problem within the lesbian community. Lesbian relationships are constantly sexualized and never seen as real or loving, the way straight relationships are. In a case where the artist was actually homosexual and wasn’t giving her/his audience false hope of it actually following through, it wouldn’t be problematic. After receiving backlash about the music video and how fans found it harmful and offensive, Eilish goes on to make an Instagram post with the caption “I love girls”. She still identifies as straight and has not made any attempt to apologize for her mistakes. The post makes it clear she does not care nor does she see what she did wrong, letting down her LGBTQ fans.
