Perhaps the most striking example is Sonic Youth’s 1990 single “Tunic (Song for Karen),” which Kim Gordon wrote from the perspective of Karen Carpenter, who died at age 32 from complications related to anorexia nervosa. “I feel like I’m disappearing, getting smaller every day,” Gordon sang, with remarkable empathy, putting into words what Carpenter could never express in song. “But I look into your eyes, and I’m bigger in every way.”
These songs are an exception. The widespread stigma surrounding eating disorders—and the fear of talking about them in imperfect language—has created a stifling culture of silence.
When Eilish, now 22, achieved stratospheric fame as a teenager, she seemed to anticipate and preemptively avoid the lecherous scrutiny that is always directed at a young female pop star’s body. On and off stage, she appeared effortlessly cool in baggy clothes, and when a paparazzi photo of her in a tank top became an internet sensation—she was just 18—Eilish responded with a spoken manifesto on her sophomore album, “Not My Responsibility.” “Would you like me to be smaller?” she asked those hungry eyes menacingly. “Weaker? Softer?”
Eilish grew up in an era of joyful body positivity (and, of course, vehement, reactionary body stigma), and that defiant confidence might make her seem like the perfect representative of that movement. But in interviews, Eilish has admitted that she has struggled a lot with her relationship with her body. In 2021, she opened up about taking diet pills and developing an eating disorder when she was just 12 years old. She says she’s come a long way since then, but like everyone else, she still has her moments of depression. In a recent Rolling Stone cover story, she identified herself as “someone with extreme body issues and dysmorphia that I’ve had my whole life.”
Eilish’s lyrics hint at this darker undercurrent. “Home alone, trying not to eat,” she sang on “Male Fantasy,” the mournful ballad that closed her 2021 album, “Happier Than Ever.” The language of dietary restriction returns on her current single, “Lunch,” though this time she uses it as a metaphor for clandestine desire. “I tried not to eat too much,” she winks at the girl she wants to devour, as she says in the chorus. “But you look so cute.”
The danger of “thinspo” (or “thinness,” meaning online content that encourages unhealthy goals) is ever-present, and as with any controversial topic, the lines between representation and endorsement can be blurred, leading to polarized conversations and high emotions. Consider the furore that followed in October 2022, when Swift released the music video for her hit “Anti-Hero.” Directed by the singer herself, the clip included a much-discussed scene in which she steps on a scale that displays the brief judgment of her inner demons rather than a number: “Fat.”
