I think there are a few things to consider re: her ‘curated image,’ especially considering *she* says it’s all in her creative control.
-she’s incredibly insecure, which means she’s highly susceptible to aesthetic suggestion w/o ‘realizing’ it. People have told me she “used to be insecure & depressed, but now she’s totally confident!”...but that’s not reflected in her behavior. Billie posted herself ‘hysterically laughing’ at a lady that was saying she’s satanic (the lady was def super aggressive, showed zero grace, and should’ve had a framed argument for her statements), but Billie made a point of showing the title of the video so the fandom would ascend on this lady- that had hardly any followers- and bomb her with rude comments. She just did the same thing with another ‘no-followers’ random YouTuber that posted a video saying she’s ‘definitely a man.’ She and her friend showed a clip of the guy’s video and then showed themselves ‘hysterically laughing’- but she immediately followed it with a video clip showing the title of the exact vid so he’d be swarmed by her fans, too. Laughing and saying something is ridiculous is definitely her prerogative (and the man thing is so out there), but making it a point to show the video title/creator shows that she might laugh on the surface, but in reality it bothers her so much that she took the time to show her fans how to find it and do what she knew they would: swarm, ridicule, and punish them for the videos. It also serves as a warning: “I’ll pretend it doesn’t matter, but I’ll set my 38 million followers your way to destroy you by showing your video/channel info.” Her fandom (I think her fandom being called Billie goats is ironically spot on) are a ‘weapon’ she happily makes use of.
-The jump into heavy darkness was clearly run past the ‘powers that be’ and approved, bc they’re fronting the cost of those videos and the massive marketing push. She was being called “THE ARTIST OF 2019” by magazines, tv, radio, other artists...etc. before she’d done ++anything++ noteworthy. They were crafting a message and repeating it frequently so that teens would start to think believe it, even though she hadn’t even done anything.
-She’s basically every high end fashion label’s walking billboard. That’s organized by her label, bc there’s no reason for some random teen to get thousands worth of free merchandise. It means her label said ‘send it, we’ll steer her into wearing it.’ They wouldn’t have sent it unless the label was guaranteeing them they’d curate her image so she’d always wear it, AND that they’d already laid out a massive marketing game plan that was funded at an insane level so their labels would be featured all over.
I think she got her first taste of people looking behind the Interscope built & approved persona of ‘Billie Eilish’ from the reaction her ‘All the Good Girls go to Hell’ video received. For the first time praise couldn’t be universally bought and critics were in numbers that couldn’t be silenced and ignored. Saying a fallen angel and mocking Christians in the lyrics is “ok bc it was about climate change” is absurd. She could use anything to represent ‘climate change’ if that was her actual message- but she chose glorifying Satan and mocking Christians. There are estimates of 160-200 million Protestants in the US alone, 800 million globally, and you’re going to mock us acting like you’re a ‘bad b-‘ and tell us we’re ridiculous to view blatant satanic imagery as satanic imagery? Hahahahahahaha...child, no.
it's just that i mean it confuses me