For far too long, Billie Eilish viewed her body as the bad guy.
Before picking up seven Grammy awards and selling out concert venues around the world, the 21-year-old singer says she struggled with loving everything about herself.
"Going through my teenage years of hating myself and all that stupid s--t, a lot of it came from my anger toward my body," Billie shared with Vogue, "and how mad I was at how much pain it's caused me and how much I've lost because of things that happened to it."
At just 13 years old, Billie had a growth plate injury in her hip, which stopped any and all of her dance ambitions. As a result, the "lovely" singer turned her focus onto music.
"I got injured right after we made ‘Ocean Eyes,'" she said when recalling her 2015 song. "Music kind of replaced dancing."
In the years to come, Billie would face lower body injuries. And through her movement coach, Billie discovered she had a condition called hypermobility, which is described by the Mayo Clinic as greater than average range of mobility in the joints.
"I felt like my body was gaslighting me for years," Billie said. "I had to go through a process of being like, my body is actually me. And it's not out to get me."
During her career, Billie has been candid about her relationship with her body, with the singer rejecting the notion that she has to wear skintight clothing as a pop star.
In fact, Billie previously told The Guardian she has to "separate" thinking about what her body looks like and simply just live in the moment because of her "terrible relationship" with her body.
"I just have to disassociate," she said. "We only need bodies to eat and walk around and poop. We only need them to survive. It's ridiculous that anybody even cares about bodies at all. Like, why? Why do we care? You know, when you really think about it?"
If Billie had her wish, she would have people focused on other issues. When covering the January issue of Vogue, Billie explained her climate activism and the ways she's raising awareness about the planet.
"I've spent all of my effort trying not to be in people's faces about it, because people don't respond well to that," she said. "It makes the causes that you believe in look bad, because you're, like, annoying the s--t out of everybody."
Billie added that she's not going to tell you what to do. Instead, "I'm just going to tell you why I do this."