Billie Eilish has hypermobility - here's what it is

Billie Eilish has hypermobility - here's what it is

Billie Eilish opens up about her evolving relationship with her body.

"I went through my teenage years hating myself and all that stupid shit," the singer explained in her recent Vogue cover story. "A lot of it came from my anger at my body and how angry I was about how much pain it caused me and how much I lost because of the things that happened to it."

Dealing with past injuries and misdiagnoses has affected her body and her feelings about it. For example, the 21-year-old suffered a growth plate injury in her hip at age 13, forcing her to focus her creative energy solely on music rather than dance, Vogue reported. She also talked about this in her documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry.

“I used to dance about 12 hours a week,” she said in the documentary, which Shape previously reported on. "And then I got hurt. I tore my growth plate in my hip, the bone was separated from the muscle. It was the most depressing year of my life. I just laid in bed, I couldn't move."

Since then, Eilish has discovered – with the help of her exercise coach – that she has an illness Hypermobility, according to Vogue. Joint hypermobility syndrome is a genetic disorder involving extremely flexible joints, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

“I felt like my body was gaslighting me for years,” the “Happier Than Ever” singer told Vogue. "I had to go through a process of being like, my body is actually me. And it's not out to get me."

Joint hypermobility is common and means your joints can move beyond their normal range of motion. However, joint hypermobility syndrome is a connective tissue disorder that can cause joint pain, joint and ligament injuries, fatigue and intestinal problems, notes the Cleveland Clinic. It can also be a sign of an underlying medical condition such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. The details of Eilish's diagnosis are unclear.

As background, mobility is "the body's ability to effortlessly access all ranges of motion (or full range of motion) without pain or compensation," physical therapist Ryan Ardoin, DPT, CSCS, co-founder of SculptU, a medical fitness training facility in Houston, previously told Shape. Too little or too much flexibility can cause imbalances that increase the risk of injury.

What is more important: flexibility or mobility?

Eilish has also spoken about her body image and the body shaming she experiences as a woman in the spotlight. “Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it,” she said during a March 2020 performance in Miami, Form previously reported. “Some people use it to shame others, some people use it to shame me.” After removing some of her loose-fitting clothes on stage, she continued. "If what I wear is comfortable, I'm not a woman... If I take off the layers, I'm a slut."

In 2021, she became real to unrealistic beauty standards perpetuated by social media. “I see people online who look like I’ve never looked before,” she said in an interview with The Guardian. "And immediately I'm like, oh my God, what do they look like? I know the ins and outs of this industry and what people actually use in photos, and I actually know what looks real may be fake. Look at it and go, oh God, that makes me really bad, and I mean, I'm very confident in who I am and I'm very happy with my life... I'm obviously not happy with my body."

Lately, Eilish has been prioritizing her fitness. "I've been working on my bones and my body for the last while - since [getting injured] really," she told Zane Lowe during an episode of his Apple Music podcast in September 2021. "And more seriously, in the last, like four months, I've completely changed the way my life includes fitness. Like I'm a gym rat now," she continued. “It started with, ‘I can’t hurt myself anymore, I can’t, I’m not going to let myself live like this.’ Because I lived like that for years.”

It seems like Eilish has come a long way to feeling confident and strong in her body. (Next: How Jameela Jamil Works with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome)