Even though, like everything else, an Italian already did it better with regard to the whole cigarette being stubbed out on one’s skin concept (see: Maurizio Cattelan), Billie Eilish’s latest video for the oh so Gen Z-centric “Xanny” (Gen Z-centric in that it espouses the idea of being “safe” with drugs as opposed to reckless–could this generation be any more banal?) has its own signature Eilish bizarreness to it. The idea behind it stemmed from being at a party (much like Alessia Cara’s “Here”) where, as Billie tells it, “this girl…had two cigarettes in her hands and she put both of them in her mouth and went like this: ‘Hey Billie’ and she looked at me, and she blew the smoke into my face.” From there, all of her friends got drunk to the point of throwing up, inspiring Billie to craft a song wherein “the verses are like what smoke looks like and the choruses are like what it feels like.”
As her first time directing one of her now expected to be “offbeat” music videos, Eilish takes the cigarette smoke concept to the next level by appearing on a white park bench that looks like it’s been placed in a sterilized room that seems as though it could be straight out of a medical testing facility (or a mental institution). It has the same feel and simplicity of “When The Party’s Over,” which also featured a stark backdrop to highlight the ghoulishness of blue liquid eventually pouring out of Eilish’s eyes.
Sitting on the bench calmly and complacently, she sings her cautionary tale of woe as a number of different colored hands start stubbing cigarettes out on her face and she simply endures (granted, her countenance does suggest some prime martyrdom in its strained perseverance against the pain–like Joan of Arc being burned at the stake). While perhaps not necessarily her intent, the vibe that comes across is twofold. For one, Eilish takes on the ills of the average white girl and her “problems” (e.g. having to ride the subway as opposed to getting an Uber) while also absorbing the stigma that white girls have in the first place with regard to how “easily rattled” they are by something that wouldn’t make a minority bat an eyelash. The fact that the majority of the arms that attack her face with cigarettes are not white also feels like a subconsciously pointed choice on Eilish’s part. For who has had to bear the brunt of proving she’s not just a frivolous little twit in the world of pop culture more than the white girl?
Eilish, of course, has signaled a different breed of alabaster pop star (and, to a certain extent, so has Ariana Grande as a result of how tinted her skin has become over time, as though to make people forget about her Caucasian persuasion for appropriation purposes). She isn’t a “tartlet” to be ogled the way Britney Spears was, nor has she ever been concerned about projecting anything resembling a glamorous persona the way her immediate forerunner, Lana Del Rey was (though that has seemed to go permanently the way of the dodo as LDR settles into a more J. Crew aesthetic for her California lifestyle). She has proven that white girl power can be wielded to remind people that they have creativity and innovation in spades when “allowed” to take the reins. Now that it’s the twenty-first century, such a “benediction” is at last common. And as she sits there looking decidedly taupe (wanting perhaps to mirror the decay and “yellowness” caused by long-term smoking)–complete with acrylic nails to match her color scheme–she appears aloof with her cigarette butt scars, no longer being the gringa bitch that is the butt of every joke. At the same time, the white girl will always be an easy target, with one of the lyrics Eilish sings about drug abuse applying more to people’s opinion on white girls and their privilege: “What is it about them? I must be missing something/They just keep doin’ nothing.”
