At this point, it’s fairly patent that every generation that succeeds the millennial one (at the current moment, Gen Z) has learned, or will learn, the “performance of sexuality” from mass media a.k.a. the internet. That pervasive tentacled thing that both simultaneously causes advanced maturity and arrested development. For how can a child/preadolescent (as Eilish was when she first released her yearning debut single “Ocean Eyes” in 2016 at the Lolita-ish age of thirteen) truly grasp the full weight of sex–and all of its associated displays of “sexiness”–with only visuals to go on (as opposed to the more 1950s practice of instinct or hogwild hormones [being unleashed in the backseat of a car] stemming largely from trying to repress them with Eisenhower in office)?
Of course, it is the visuals that eventually invoke the overwhelming desire for one to try it out for themselves (even if this generation seems to be the least sexually active and drug-addicted [barring opioids for the white trash of America]). Though, to be frank, one wouldn’t be entirely surprised to learn that Eilish herself was still a virgin (perhaps saving herself for her brother on some Freudian level). Yet what appears to most commonly be the case when they do engage in sex in a manner that they “learned” to from the barrage of moving images they’ve been infiltrated with is a certain disconnect. Between that which they saw onscreen versus what they’re actually experiencing. The gap between expectation and reality growing more disparate with each increasingly technologically-reliant year. And, while one would think that the crack pipe-like dependency upon screens might cause dendritic stunting, it has only tended to, for Eilish, open up the creative floodgates more toward the imaginiative, basing her lyrics on an amalgam of what her Gen Z mind has absorbed online (or from “homeschooling,” as she likes to say), paired with the narrative influence of her brother, Finneas–her constant cohort in songwriting.
In this regard, Eilish and the generation she ostensibly represents serve to negate everything we were once taught about authenticity of experience bringing a richer, more layered tapestry to one’s writing. But in the ersatz-happy century called the twenty-first, Eilish’s songs are a prime example of this rule of thumb no longer being applicable or relevant. As Eilish put it in reference to the process of jointly coming up with the lyrics (co-written by Finneas, naturally) for “Bellyache,” “We like to completely make up things and become characters. We like to have songs that are really fictional… We have a bunch of songs that are like that. You don’t always have to feel the way you are while singing. You can write songs about being sad and not be sad. You can write songs about being in love with someone and not be in love with anybody. It’s fun to become somebody else or become nobody–just your imagination.”
Or, in short, everything Eilish’s generation knows about anything heralds from an emulation of what a screen has shown them. Guided them toward performing “scenes” (that equate to “personalities”) themselves. But alas, it will always come across as just that: performance. Somehow lacking in the genuine sentiment that was once the norm in twentieth century artistry (often too genuine, i.e. Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love [But I Won’t Do That]”). It is also notable that Eilish uses the phrase “become nobody” in describing her approach to songwriting. It is a phrase that characterizes (an ironic word choice, to be sure) so many Gen Zers who fill their void of a personality with what they’ve apprehended from image-overloading apps like Instagram and TikTok. At least for millennials, still so often maligned for being do-nothings as they are, there remains a time–however faintly remembered–in their head when “content overload” wasn’t the norm. There was a finiteness to the amount of imagery one was presented with on the likes of Viacom juggernauts MTV and Nickelodeon.
But now that the oversaturation of “culture” has reached such an unmanageable crescendo, it looks as though the analog practice of sex itself has become too far-removed from the body at this juncture to even be worth parading as a “modern” pop star (save, of course, for Ariana Grande–the last of a dying breed on this front). No, in the twenty-first century–underpinned by an undeniable rise in puritanicalism and an accordingly easily scandalized population–it makes far more sense for a female pop star to be sexless, shapeless (literally, as evidenced by Eilish’s signature sartorial non-silhouette). And even if some umpteenth-wave feminists would argue this is a good thing, a long overdue evolution of a singer at last being regarded for her vocals as opposed to how much skin she’s showing in an “evocative yet innocent” way (à la Britney Spears, who recently touted her own love for Eilish by dancing to “bad guy“), Eilish doesn’t seem to be adopting this aesthetic as a “statement.” So much as a reaction to the century that spawned her.
In “idontwannabeyouanymore,” Eilish fittingly sings, “If teardrops could be bottled/There’d be swimming pools filled by models told ‘a tight dress makes you a whore.'” To this end, there is no reason to believe that there is a “nascent” sexuality in Eilish just waiting to burst forth as it so clearly did with millennial pop stars like (aformentioned) Spears and Christina Aguilera. For this is the post-#MeToo era of pop stardom. As such, the pop star is no longer manufactured by corporate suits seeking to pander to the male gaze as they wield their product as a prototype for fans deemed an army of “sluts” in training to mimic. The pop star is now entirely self-made thanks to the democratizing and desensitizing tools of the internet. And though this is something Madonna already pioneered in the 80s, there is, in contrast, no self-revelry in the body, but instead, an overt desire to detach from it entirely. Possibly paving the way for when we’re all disembodied floating heads with our minds uploaded to a drive anyway.
