Billie Eilish Is Right But...

I think she’s making the same mistake I made

In my early days of activism, I made a post that went sort of viral. But not the good kind of viral, the kind that upsets people so much a past work colleague threatens to beat you up.

In the post, I was holding a sign. It read:

“You can’t wear the title ‘environmentalist’ and not be vegan.

You can’t wear the title ‘feminist’ and not be vegan.

You can’t wear the title ‘animal lover’ and not be vegan.

Well, you can. But you also have to wear the title ‘hypocrite’.”

And oh was there backlash. “I better not run into you in Manchester" was the comment left by my ex-colleague, one of many angry visitors to this post. It got a bit hairy. What was my response? I doubled down. I argued with everyone. I thought the backlash proved I’d hit a nerve, and I’d hit the nail on the head. I felt vindicated.

I was wrong.

One friend did go vegan off the back of that post, which is great. But looking back in hindsight, she is a dog photographer and already connected to animals, she was probably some way there before she saw my sign. For everyone else? I’d held up a mirror, called them a hypocrite, and watched them do what most people do when you attack their identity: defend themselves aggressively and leave.

Billie Eilish just did something very similar, and I find myself in a funny position of agreeing with what she said, but wishing she hadn’t said it in that way.

What Billie Eilish said

An interviewer asked Billie for a hill she would die on, she said:

“Y’all not gonna like me for this one. Eating meat is inherently wrong.

Sorry. You can eat meat, go for it, you can love animals, but you can’t do both.”

I’m vegan. Obviously, I’m biased when a celebrity speaks up for animals. I love that she’s not afraid to use her platform to speak up for them, and I am so appreciative of her for doing it when so many don’t for fear of it harming their career. I want more people with huge platforms to say something. But I also understand why people are pissed. As much as I’d love to just raise the flag and get behind Billie with all my vegan vigour, these things aren’t as simple as she made it sound, and I think glossing over the nuance is at least a small part of why some reacted badly.

Is eating meat inherently wrong?

For the hundreds of millions of people who eat meat and animal products for habit, tradition, and pleasure, Billie is 100% correct. Breeding animals, using and killing them for those things is inherently wrong, no matter how “high welfare” the farm is. Saying that though, the vast majority of animal products come from factory farms anyway. Factory farms are, in plain terms, massive torture centres. If someone is consuming animal products simply because they’ve always done it and they like it, they’re supporting that extreme violence to animals for pleasure. This is a reality that’s difficult to face, but it’s reality nonetheless.

But what Billie said felt very absolute and had none of that nuance or context. For some small number of people in the world, removing animal products would come with serious consequences. I’m a vegan, and I don’t want a single person dying by switching to a plant-based diet or going vegan. That’s not the goal. The goal is to build a world where animal-free eating is accessible, affordable, and the norm. But the world isn’t there yet, and I think pretending the situation is any other way isn’t useful. We need to be aware of the difference between the “ought” and the “is”. I speak more on that point here.

On the second statement, that you can’t love animals and eat them, she’s mostly right. People who consume animal products while claiming to be animal lovers will say, when pressed, that it’s for nutrition, for health, for survival. But that’s not really true for most. Most people eat animal products because they’ve always eaten them, because everyone around them eats like this, and because they like it. That’s it. There’s no deeper reason, it’s just what they do.

And if that’s the case, if someone is doing this to animals simply for habit and pleasure, not because they have to, then I don’t understand how they could really call themselves an animal lover. People love dogs and cats, sure. They’d never dream of doing to a dog what happens to a pig or a chicken every single day. But how most people actually behave towards farmed animals like cows, pigs and chickens is closer to violent indifference, and nowhere near love. I’m not sure how someone can both be an animal lover and support acts of violence to the most defenceless, gentle animals for their own pleasure or habit. So Billie is right, despite there being some nuance when it comes to people who simply have no choice.

But I don’t think the missing context or nuance is what got most people so angry with Billie’s statement. I think it’s something entirely unrelated to what she said, and more related to who she is, and how she said it.

The privilege problem

Billie Eilish is a multi-millionaire. She will never, for a single day of her life, have to think twice about food. She can literally click her fingers and have anything she wants in front of her within minutes. Whatever she wants, prepared however she wants, by professional chefs and nutritionists.

The single mother of three working two jobs and trying to get food on the table by 6pm is not in that position. She is not choosing between ethical options. She’s choosing between what’s available, what’s affordable, and what her kids will actually eat. This is not for a second to infantilise anyone. My own mother is a single mother of three, and she raised us vegetarian from birth then later vegan. But we can’t ignore that someone with more resources and a more comfortable living situation has more time and capacity to look into all of this and make changes.

So for Billie to announce, from wherever she’s announcing it, that the way most people live their lives is immoral… I understand why so many people lost it. The backlash is overblown, and a lot of the critiques about nutrition, tradition and “our ancestors” are silly. But the driving force behind it? Completely understandable. People are sick of being judged by celebrities who absolutely do not understand their life, who never will, and who no longer have to think about any of the problems they face every day.

The animals are the ones paying the highest price in all this. But if the messenger makes ordinary people feel sneered at before they’ve even thought about the animals, the animals lose again. And the celebrity part is only half of it, because underneath all of this is a deeper problem, and it’s one I learned the hard way in my own work.

The psychology behind it

There’s a lot of research in human behaviour and psychology dedicated to one very specific problem: how do you change someone’s mind without triggering their identity defences?

The moment you attack what someone eats, what they wear, what they believe, they stop thinking and they start defending. The logical argument you’ve made becomes completely irrelevant. You’ve triggered something primal, and now you’re not having a debate about ethics or animal rights, you’re having a fight about who they are as a person.

The controversial sign I held in my post didn’t really make people think about veganism. It made them think about defending themselves against me. That’s exactly what Billie’s statement did, but on a global scale. Millions of people who have dogs, who rescue cats, who genuinely believe they’re kind, heard that as a personal accusation. And their response was rage, when what Billie probably wanted was reflection.

What could actually help

What if Billie had done something to accompany the message? Billie is no stranger to philanthropy. She supports various programs that focus on food inequality, animals and progressing plant-based food systems. But that feels a little disconnected to how she appeared in the viral clip we’re talking about. Imagine if she’d dropped a program. Something like a partnership with a meal delivery service or a resource to get people going on the plant-based train. Something that says: “I believe this deeply, and I know my position is privileged, and I’m using that privilege to come down off the stage and actually help you get there.”

I think that would’ve changed things. It says: I see the gap between my life and yours and I’m not standing here judging you for not being where I am. I’m putting real money into helping you close that gap, because I genuinely care, about the animals and about you.

Even something like: “Yes, I believe this and I know it’s easy for me. I have every possible resource at my disposal. So here’s what I’m doing with those resources. Here’s where you can sign up. Here’s your first month free. Because I want to show you it’s possible, not just tell you it’s necessary.”

I think that might have landed differently. At the very least, it softens the blow. Instead, what many people got from her statement was judgment without support, and they responded accordingly. This is not to excuse the many terrible and overblown reactions at all, by the way. But in explaining and understanding them we can learn better ways to have an impact for animals, and isn’t that what we care about at the end of the day?

A little irony here

I criticised Billie once before. Years ago, when she jokingly told vegans to “shut the fuck up.” She was young and it was clearly a throwaway comment. I made a bigger deal of it than I should have. I was defensive, protecting my identity as a vegan and standing up for my community. Looking back, it was a silly video to make really. Now here I am criticising her again, this time for being a bit too flippant in the other direction. The difference is that this time, I think it actually matters.

I’m not annoyed by Billie’s comments, I agree with her. I’m glad she’s speaking out, I’m always glad when someone with massive influence uses their platform in defence of animals. I just think the approach, judged purely on whether it’s likely to actually move people closer to a more animal friendly, ideally vegan position, might have done more harm than good.

Just like my sign.

The goal isn’t only to be right, or to say the right thing as loud as possible. The goal is to move people. And moving people means communicating in ways that are most likely to have a positive impact, not just announcing that they’re immoral.

The frustrating thing is that most people already agree with the basic moral point. They don’t think violence to animals is good. They don’t think hurting gentle, defenceless animals for no real need is something to celebrate. The gap is not usually that people lack all compassion. The gap is that food, culture, family, comfort, habit, and identity are wrapped around the issue so tightly that the second you pull at one thread, people feel like you’re pulling at them.

I think we need to be firm, but humble. Strong in our beliefs, but accessible. None of this means watering down the truth, but how we carry that truth into the world matters. Show people you’re not above them. That’s the version of this I’d love to see from a big celebrity, and I think it’d have a much more productive outcome. What do you think?

P.S. As always, I wrote this article as a reminder to myself as much as anything. We’re all imperfect advocates doing our best, and I’m no exception. I have deep appreciation for Billie, and for anyone willing to stick their neck out for animals.