The viral video featuring Charli XCX and Billie Eilish is fun and all, but the two of them cavorting around in thousands of knickers and bras makes me feel uneasy. Visually, it feels indicative of our collective attitude to clothing as something disposable, and its eventual end-cycle dumped in rivers and beaches around the global south.
In the video, the lingerie is shown piled up and heaved around by Eilish’s pick-up truck, with pieces blasted around in the air as if a helicopter had just landed in a branch of Victoria’s Secret, spewing lingerie into the sky. There is a disclaimer at the end of the video: “Unworn undergarments to be donated to survivors of domestic violence through I Support The Girls” — an American period poverty charity. Which is fine, I guess. But is it? Couldn’t they have donated to the cause without flinging the garments around the studio-lot pavement and driving over them with giant tyres? It feels like a cynical easy win to stave off any negative reactions to the wastage created by the video.
