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Billie Eilish on wanting kids, battling low self-esteem: 'I feel different now, like I'm desirable'

Billie Eilish said she would "rather die" than not have kids. But she still "dreads" the experience.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, the Grammy-award-winning musician spoke about the possibility of motherhood, how as she gets older she worries about her future kids and the difficulties that may come with the experience. "The older I get, the more I experience things, I just think … what am I going to do when my kid thinks that this is the right thing to do and I’m, like, no, it’s not! And they won’t listen to me,” Eilish said.

The 20-year-old added that being young in America is "scary" in light of a slew of recent gun violence tragedies including the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas in May that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

“Why is it OK to be scared to go to school?” she said. “You go to school and be prepared for a life-changing traumatic experience or dying. What? Who? Where is the logic there?”

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Billie Eilish attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" exhibition on Monday, May 2, 2022, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) ORG XMIT: NYDA369
Billie Eilish attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" exhibition on Monday, May 2, 2022, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) ORG XMIT: NYDA369

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The "Happier Than Ever" singer also opened up about regaining her confidence after a long battle with low self-esteem. When Eilish first began to grapple with the extent of her newfound fame, she says she allowed the need for validation to dictate how she dressed.

At the time, Eilish's style could be best defined by her baggy clothes and neon green hair. She said she was "pretending to be a celebrity" as she felt undeserving of her success and her style made it easier for her to grasp it.

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Despite her negative emotions, Eilish has reached many milestones in her career.

Eilish is the youngest person to win a Grammy for record of the year,  the youngest to headline Coachella and the youngest to reach a billion streams on Spotify. In March, Eilish and her brother Finneas won an Oscar for their James Bond theme "No Time To Die." 

But after feeling stuck in her public identity, she rebelled against it on the cover of British Vogue in June 2021, which featured a bombshell blonde Eilish in a pink silk corset.

“No matter what you do, it’s wrong and right,” Eilish told the Sunday Times. “Wearing baggy clothes, nobody is attracted to me, I feel incredibly unlovable and unsexy and not beautiful, and people shame you for not being feminine enough. Then you wear something more revealing and they’re, like, you’re such a fat cow whore. I’m a slut and I’m a sell-out and I’m just like every other celebrity selling their bodies."

Eilish said women in the public eye will face backlash regardless of what they do and it has taught her to no longer try to appeal to everyone.

“In the past couple of months I feel far more solid in who I am,” she said. “I feel different now, like I’m desirable. I feel like I’m capable of being as feminine as I want to be and as masculine as I want.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Billie Eilish shares fears about future motherhood, talks self-esteem