The Billie Eilish Effect
I reflected upon our society, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be authentic. The constant advertisements wear me down. Sewer rats driving Mercedes teach people how to grow their followers, as if that's what is most important in life. These pests will show you how to turn your hobby into money. Basically, they'll train you to unsee the quality in your creative life, and help you deface it by measuring its worth in dollars. And if you're not already pulled into shallow waters, they'll show you how to get paid for an old auto-accident.
And here I thought YouTube was invented so we could escape commercials, not drown in them.
Our society has been hypnotized into perpetuating the rat race- the false matrix. We have lost track of the point of life. We're too mesmerized by giving our attention away or chasing external validation.
The most recurrent Youtube ad's are blatantly ageist. These marketers verbally attack a protected class and face no repercussions.
"3 mistakes old people make...."
They say, as if youth were a skill.
In other words, our society has gone mad. We are the Leonardio DeCaprio in Shutter Island. We think we're killing it in life, yet don't realize we're the butt end of a very long joke. Yes, cool, our affiliate marketing payouts are mediocre at best. But what's truly tragic is how quickly we sold out and gave up our dignity for pocket change. We surrendered our authenticity, our full range of emotions- the very thing that makes us human.
For years, women were taught that there was no such thing as admiring another woman. There was only envy. We rationalized the irrational, the ugly, the cruel. As if it weren't already hard enough to be a woman in a society that patronizes and placates the feminine.
And just when it seemed like all hope was lost, a young woman released a dreamy song called Ocean Eyes on Soundcloud. Her Soundcloud picture was gorgeous, her voice was surreal and dystopian, and her melodies ethereal. Her name: Billie Eilish.
It was as if rain finally fell on the desert of our entertainment industry.
Many people in their twenties feared they weren’t hot enough, skinny enough, or bitchy enough to protect the woman Hollywood monsters would destroy. They feared they wouldn't be taken seriously, or they'd be over-sexualized, objectified...you name it.
This is what I call The Billie Eilish Effect:
Our culture has been a dry lake for so long that we’re starving for realness. Billie Eilish came out with wild, unapologetic art and dressed like Flavor Flav. She didn’t care what her body looked like. She focused on what mattered most — her creative expression. Young and old women alike recognized the wild woman in her, and it was like the wild woman within them was looking into a mirror. It cracked the decades-old patriarchal nonsense we had tolerated for far too long.
"Is my art too much?"
"Is this song too hood?"
"Do I look just enough sexy, but not quite trashy in this picture?"
Enough! Share your art, your creativity, now. Not at the right insta-post time. Now.
No one thought, "Oof that Billie Eilish girl had a music video with demons...."
They were just like, "Hell yeah go Billie."
Our culture is so starved of authenticity, of uninhibited self-expression, that any authentic art you create will be devoured gratefully by the masses.
People are so starved for something real that they will embrace your creative genius- no matter how strange.
You're laying the foundation for future women to express their creativity freely too. And don't you dare apologize for your work "not being serious/good/tasteful enough."
Your art is exactly what society has been waiting for. Don't edit the realness out.