While promoting her latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, Billie Eilish had a lot to say about sex. Setting the tone with the song “Lunch” (“I could eat that girl for lunch / Yeah, she dances on my tongue / Tastes like she might be the one”), she spoke freely with Rolling Stone of her love of women and her desire to put her “face in a vagina.” She then joked that she “should have a Ph.D. in masturbation,” a ritual she regards as a healing tool and an important contribution to her self-esteem. While most fans pored over these revelations with respect if not admiration, the quotes also spurred another tabloid cycle of speculation about Eilish’s sexuality — an already fraught topic for a young person growing up in the limelight. Now, in an interview with Vogue published on Tuesday, the 22-year-old says she regrets sharing such details of her personal life.
“I wish no one knew anything about my sexuality or anything about my dating life. Ever, ever, ever,” she told Vogue. “And I hope that they never will again. And I’m never talking about my sexuality ever again. And I’m never talking about who I’m dating ever again.
“I guess I also underestimate that things I say will be blown up into the biggest news of the whole world,” she added. “That’s so unnatural. We’re all babies. We’re all little kids growing up and learning ourselves.”
That’s a hard pivot from what the singer told Rolling Stone in April. “I basically talk about sex any time I possibly can. That’s literally my favorite topic,” she said. “My experience as a woman has been that it’s seen in such a weird way. People are so uncomfortable talking about it, and weirded out when women are very comfortable in their sexuality and communicative in it. I think it’s such a frowned-upon thing to talk about, and I think that should change … Can’t recommend it more, to be real.”
As Eilish herself points out, she’s 22 and still learning (and obviously entitled to her privacy). But if her appearance in Charli XCX’s “Guess” video is any indication, I’m willing to bet this isn’t the last time we’ll see Billie rolling down a mountain of bras.
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