Billie Eilish Fires Back at Meat-Eating Critics: ‘Stay F**king Mad’

Billie Eilish has never been one to back down from a fight — and this week, she made that very clear. After declaring in a video interview with Elle that “eating meat is inherently wrong,” the 24-year-old pop star faced a wave of online criticism. Her response? Graphic slaughterhouse footage and a message that left absolutely no room for misinterpretation: “So stay f**king mad at ME. I really don’t give a goddamn f**k.”

The whole thing started on April 28, when Eilish sat down with Elle and was asked the simple question: what’s one hill you’d die on? She knew exactly what she was walking into. “Y’all not gonna like me for this one,” she warned, before delivering her take: “Eating meat is inherently wrong.” She didn’t stop there. “Two things cannot coincide: ‘I love all animals so much and I eat meat.’ You just can’t do both. Sorry! You could eat meat, go for it. You could love animals. But you can’t do both.”

The internet reacted exactly as she predicted. Critics called her take “very privileged” and pointed to issues of food access and health. “This is a very privileged position to have,” one user wrote on X. “The body functions better when we eat meat. If we cut it out, we’d need to take many supplements and that’s not feasible for most.” Others simply called her a hypocrite.

Eilish let it sit for about a week. Then, on May 7, she answered.

The Instagram Response That Got Everyone Talking

Rather than issue a measured statement or quietly move on, Eilish went to her Instagram Stories and posted a series of graphic videos documenting violence against animals inside slaughterhouses and the dairy industry — most of which Instagram flagged for sensitive content. The clips were raw and deliberately uncomfortable, and they were followed by a message directed squarely at her critics.

“Go watch a documentary or two and some footage of what is done to the animals u claim to love and what it does to the planet u pretend to love as well,” she wrote. “If that footage was hard for u to watch I encourage u to pls take a look at urself. Like I am so tired of standing up for/having empathy for living beings being controversial. Pls continue to live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance and denial and try to convince urself that ur not living a lie. mwah.”

That final “mwah” might be the most Billie Eilish thing she’s ever written.

A Belief She’s Held Since Childhood

This isn’t a new position for Eilish — it’s one she’s built her life around. Raised as a vegetarian, she went fully vegan around age 12 after learning about conditions in the meat and dairy industries. She’s spoken about it openly for years.

“I learned about the dairy industry and the meat industry, which I already knew about,” she said in a 2021 Vogue video. “Once you know about that kind of thing and you see it, it’s really hard to go back. And, even now, while I have many friends that eat dairy and meat and I don’t want to tell anybody what to do, I just can’t go on in my life knowing what’s going on in the animal world and not doing anything about it.”

Her activism has shown up in her career in concrete ways too. In 2021, she wore an Oscar de la Renta gown to the Met Gala after the fashion house agreed to stop selling fur — a condition she negotiated before agreeing to wear the dress. “It’s shocking that wearing fur isn’t completely outlawed at this point in 2021,” she said at the time. That same year, she and her brother Finneas joined Farm Sanctuary’s 35th anniversary livestream, celebrating the country’s first farm animal sanctuary. And while promoting her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft, she famously did meatless versions of both Hot Ones and Chicken Shop Date.

This isn’t a phase. It’s who she is.

Still, the debate her Elle comments ignited touched on real tensions — around food access, economic privilege, and whether a multimillionaire pop star is the right messenger for a plant-based gospel. Those are fair conversations. Eilish, for her part, isn’t interested in having them. She’s made her position clear: watch the footage, then talk.

All of this is unfolding as Eilish is in full press mode for Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft – The Tour Live in 3D, her new concert film currently in theaters. The film’s premiere in Los Angeles also marked the public debut of her boyfriend, actor Nat Wolff, on the red carpet — a rare personal moment for a star who’s been anything but quiet this week.