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Ambrosia Shaff

Professor Dewey

ENG 101

11 December 2022

Billie Eilish’s Take On Other’s Perceptions

What makes a person? Is it the traits that create their personality? Is it what they do for

others, how they treat others? Or is it their body, how others perceive them? In the song “Not My

Responsibility” written by Billie EIlish, many different body shaming effects are touched on.

Billie Eilish explains that though she's never shown her body, she is still judged for it. In fact she

is judged for not showing it. Billie also tells that those not only judge her, but others look up to

her for the exact same things. No matter what she does, someone will disapprove, so how is that

her fault? Within Billie Eilish’s work, she speaks about the judgment she faces no matter her

actions, how people see her only as valuable as her body, and how others' opinion is not the fault

of the objectified.

One topic Billie touches on is the judgment she receives from every angle.The song

begins with Billie asking the audience how much they know her. She runs with this then delves

deeper and starts to show some vulnerability. Towards the beginning of the song, Billie says,

“Some people hate what I wear / Some people praise it / Some people use it to shame others /

Some people use it to shame me” (Eilish, lines 20-24). In this she explains how double sided

people can be. Before she turned 18, Billie only wore baggy clothing. In turn people would either

praise her lifestyle or ridicule her and accuse her of searching for attention. This really connects

her with the audience by relating them to it.

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Another area that Billie touches in this song is the comparison of her value to her body.

Now that she has covered the double sidedness of people's opinions, she asks the audience if she

is only as much as her body. Billie Eilish asks the audience, “Am I my stomach? My hips? / The

body I was born with / Is it not what you wanted?” (Eilish, lines 37-39). Often, women, or people

in general, are seen only worth as much as their looks. This is obviously something she has had

to deal with for many years, especially since she got into the music industry at age 16. She

rhetorically asks the listeners if she is her stomach, as if it is not just a part of her, but what

makes her. This part of the song is quite relatable to many people in the world, and with this

Eilish seems defensive and really questioning the values of the world.

The last section of the song is the part that leaves the reader to wonder what their opinion

has to do with the responsibility of the victim. The following excerpt is Billie summarizing with

the theme of her song, “Is my value only based on your perception? / Or is your opinion of me /

Not my responsibility?” (Eilish, lines 55-57). Why should one be judged based on another's

preference or perception? If you have no control over the way others see you, how are you held

accountable for it? Most of the pressure and negativity surrounding body image and value could

be easily dismissed by simply taking in the fact that it is not your responsibility to fix.

Billie makes an incredible argument that other people's opinions zero say over how you

are valued or even how you view yourself. Just because someone else doesn’t like your body or

what you wear or how you represent yourself, it doesn’t mean you need to change anything about

yourself. This text can even be implemented into several different issues. As long as it involves

someone else's judgment of something they cannot control, it can be fitted to this song. Billie

Eilish is an idol to so many teenage girls. Knowing how society deems female bodies and the
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harsh comparison, having Billie speak up on this topic and giving girls someone to relate to will

make that much more of a difference.

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Work Cited

Eilish, Billie. “Not My Responsibility.”, Not My Responsibility, 2020, Google.com/

https://www.google.com/search?q=not+my+responsibility+lyrics