Billie Eilish should own being ‘outed’ for the sake of her fans (girls like me)
Growing up, Melanie Rickey didn’t have many gay role models – all the more reason why she believes the singer should celebrate her sexuality, instead of attacking the publication who quoted her
“Everyone is going to be gay for the next 24 hours! See you on Grindr!”
Ahhh. Bob The Drag Queen opened the show for Madonna at the O2 in his fabulous Marie Antoinette costume – and we all roared the house down. Middle-aged mums, their crimped hair bunched into lace bows; paunchy grandads in button-downs; starry-eyed tweens; hand-holding married couples – and let’s not forget us gays – we all screamed together. “Yeah! Let’s be gay for 24 hours, and all the 24 hours after that!”
That’s Britain for you. And we’re lucky to be here...
Compare that outpouring of love and glitter to this week in Russia, where their Supreme Court moved to classify the “international LGBT social movement” as an extremist organisation. Or to America – where drag queens can’t read to children and kids’ books with gay themes are burned. Amid that global backdrop, 21-year-old Billie Eilish let it be known that she likes girls in a cover interview with Variety magazine. (Yes: this, a few years after telling fans she is “straight as a ruler”.)
A publication outing a celebrity? How dare they! But it’s far from the full truth...
On 13 November, Eilish first let it be known that she is attracted to girls in a cover interview with the magazine like this: “I’ve never really felt like I could relate to girls very well,” she revealed to Variety journalist Katcy Stephan. “I love them so much. I love them as people. I’m attracted to them as people. I’m attracted to them for real.”
Fast forward a few weeks to last weekend, when she attended Variety’s Hitmakers Brunch event and meet-cuted the gay journalist Tiana DeNicola on the red carpet. “Billie! Did you mean to come out in this story?” asked DeNicola. “Girl! No I didn’t. But I kinda thought... wasn’t it obvious? I just didn’t realise people didn’t know,” replied Eilish.
“You get to a point where you don’t even have to come out,” notes DeNicola, to which Eilish responds, “Oh! I guess I came out today. Cool.”
A day later, on Instagram, the capricious superstar, or maybe her marketing team, noting the swift loss of 100,000 homophobic followers and (with a forthcoming album to promote) had a moan. “Thanks variety for my award and for also outing me on a red carpet at 11am instead of talking about anything else that matters i like boys and girls leave me alone about it please literally who cares stream “what was i made for”.”
OK, so this is where it gets problematic: for there is a very clear distinction between “coming out” and “being outed”. The former is voluntary, the latter is not – and can have dire consequences to those involved. Whether she likes it or not, Eilish outed herself. Even if she did try to shoehorn, “I like boys” into her post, the cat is out of the bag. And all power to her (as the almost five million likes of her post testifies).
My first thought is: give the girl a break. She has grown up in the public eye; oversharing with millions of people has become second nature. I can testify to this strange blurring of public and private information: I was married to a well-known figure who accidentally gave very personal titbits of our life away without realising it to an over-friendly journalist. It’s a tricky line to walk at times.
Besides, understanding your own sexuality can be a very slow reveal. You can’t be annoyed with a kid working out her life as she goes along. The road to gayness is rarely straight.
Growing up, the only lesbians I knew were Joan Armatrading, the dykes on Prisoner: Cell Block H and (in my dreams) Sinead and Madonna. Today’s young queers have so many role models they can pick and choose from: from Lil Nas X to Arlo Parks and Bella Ramsey – and gay lifestyle influencers on Instagram and TikTok. If you look for it, gay is normal and gay is everywhere. Gays can binge-watch Queer Ultimatum on Netflix (and believe me, Prisoner: Cell Block H has nothing on Queer Ultimatum).
When I came out in the mid-1990s, being gay meant getting cabs to lesbian clubs and having them stop around the corner to avoid being harassed. It meant not being able to hold hands with your girlfriend in the street. It meant being introduced like a novelty at parties: “You wouldn’t believe it, but she’s gay.”
Guys tried to “turn me” at every opportunity. It wouldn’t happen now.
It’s all progress. “Literally who cares” that Billie Eilish is gay? Well, I do – and a lot of the gays I know do, too. Finding identification with others is golden – the twists and turns simply make it more relatable.
Even all these years after coming out myself, I got some major feels from her comment: “I’ve never really felt like I could relate to girls very well.” Me too! At 15 I really tried to fancy a couple of guys in my social group, but was totally obsessed with Anna in the sixth form. Naively, I thought I just liked the way she dressed, but the way I became tongue-tied around her told me that deep down it was something more carnal. Like Eilish, it simply took me a few years to work out that my awkwardness was a massive crush.
Today, for me being gay is – well, not a big deal. It’s lower than 10 on the list of the 10 best things about me. Gays like me can get married and have kids without anyone batting an eyelid. We have travelled far. So, when Eilish writes “literally who cares”, what she really means is this: it shouldn’t be any of our business. And Amen to that.
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