Billie Eilish is PETA’s youngest ever winner of the Person of the Year award after using her platform to advocate for animal rights.
ADVERTISEMENT
Singer-songwriter Billie Eilish has been named PETA’s 2021 Person of the Year for her work in animal advocacy.
At 19 years old, she is the youngest ever winner of the award. However, whatever she lacks in age she more than makes up for in action.
Eilish has been a voice for the animals for years and just in the past year she has featured in headlines on multiple occasions for her work in animal advocacy and promotion of a vegan lifestyle.
“Billie Eilish is making sure that the ‘party’s over’ for meaty, milky meals as well as for leather, fur, and silk,” says PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk.
“PETA is ‘happier than ever’ to celebrate her for seizing every opportunity to point out that vegan fashion and foods are kinder to the animals and the planet we share with them.”
The award has previously been won by Joaquin Phoenix, Carrie Johnson, Lewis Hamilton, Pamela Anderson, and the late Sir Roger Moore, among others.
Billie Eilish’s animal activism
Eilish has been vegan since the age of 12 when she made the change after learning about the processes and ethics in the meat industry.
Speaking to Vogue earlier this year, she said “Once you know that kind of thing and you see it, it’s really hard to go back,”
“And now, even though I have lots of friends that eat dairy and meat and I don’t ever 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 like, not doing anything about it.”
This year, the teen pop star launched a collection of 100% vegan leather Air Jordan shoes with Nike – which contained over 20% recycled materials.
She also released her first perfume, which is cruelty-free and contains no animal-derived ingredients.
In September, Eilish caught attention at the Met Gala by agreeing to partner with designer brand Oscar De la Renta on a custom silk-free gown, but only if the brand agreed to ban fur for good, which it did.
More recently, Billie Eilish took to social media to encourage her followers to skip the turkey on Thanksgiving.
She raised awareness of the plight of turkeys, saying, “Turkeys are some of the most gentle creatures in the world and 46 million of them are killed every Thanksgiving.”
Eilish has more than 96 million followers on Instagram and she regularly uses her massive social media platform for animal rights activism, including posting video exposés of the mink-fur and wool industries.
If you’ve been inspired by Billie Eilish, here are 8 ways you can be a voice for the animals.
