But in Hit Me, Eilish rips off the psychic bodice and noticeably cranks up the volume in her vocals, as well as her own desires. After inadvertently coming out as bisexual in a 2023 interview with Variety—“Wasn’t it obvious?” she later stated—she gets giddily explicit about her attraction to women on the slinky pop track, “Lunch.” In the music video, she reverts back to her skater boy steez, cocking her baseball cap to the side and cheekily wedging a cherry between her lips. “I could eat that girl for lunch / Yeah she dances on my tongue / Tastes like she might be the one,” she sings.
It’s no coincidence that Eilish is learning what it is to love women as she comes around to loving her own body. In the classic feminist text Our Bodies, Ourselves, the authors urged women of yesteryear to do body-affirming mirror exercises, and to relish their physical forms like unique works of art. In a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, Billie extolled the virtues of her own lustier version of the exercise: making love to herself in front of a mirror. This way, her body is no longer an adversary, nor a receptacle of shame; her body is more like a friend she’s getting to know better.
“I can’t stress it enough, as somebody with extreme body issues and dysmorphia that I’ve had my entire life,” Eilish told Rolling Stone. “I have learned that looking at myself and watching myself feel pleasure has been an extreme help in loving myself and accepting myself, and feeling empowered and comfortable.”
Hit Me arrives the same year that Tracy Chapman and Boygenius made headlines at the Grammys, and Reneé Rapp and Chappell Roan stole hearts with their bubblegum-flavored lesbian anthems at Coachella. Eilish’s contribution to the queer-pop-girlie canon is a delicious prelude to a lusty, unapologetic sapphic pop summer.
This effervescent new wave of queer pop, which implores fans to connect with their bodies through dance, dress, and sex, has become more politically urgent than ever. Eilish lambasted the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade onstage at the Glastonbury Festival in 2022: “Today is a really, really dark day for women in the U.S.,” she told the crowd in the U.K. And with the prevalence of image-based social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, young Americans report feeling lonelier and more unsettled in their bodies than ever before. In a study cited by Dr. Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General, 46% of adolescents aged 13-17 report that social media makes them feel worse about themselves. Public health experts at Harvard have also correlated chronic social media use with symptoms of body dysmorphia, eating disorders and suicidal ideation in youth.
But what Eilish imparts in her new songs is a lesson that not only women, nor LGBTQ people, can appreciate; in learning how to be a loving partner to your body, your true empowerment can begin.
