Billie Eilish says she started watching porn at age 11, and it 'devastated' her

Musician Billie Eilish has revealed that she started watching porn at age 11. But she's talking about it now not as a point of pride but as a cautionary tale because, she says, it messed with her understanding of sex and "destroyed" her brain.

“As a woman, I think porn is a disgrace," the 19-year-old "Bad Guy" singer said Monday on Sirius XM's "The Howard Stern Show," "and I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was, like, 11."

The Grammy-winning singer even references the sexual content in her song "Male Fantasy," one of many tracks of disillusionment from her newly Grammy-nominated album "Happier Than Ever."

"I didn't understand why it was a bad thing. I thought that's how you learn how to have sex," she told Stern, adding that she would also watch it because it helped her feel like "one of the guys."

But exposure to the graphic material came with long-term side effects, including what she described as sleep paralysis and night terrors after watching abusive, BDSM content and believing that's what people found attractive.

"I think it really destroyed my brain, and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn," she added. "The first few times I, you know, had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. It's because I thought that’s what I was supposed to be attracted to. I'm so angry that porn is so loved, and I'm so angry at myself for thinking that it was OK."

She also criticized the unattainable ideals that porn often perpetuates.

"The way that vaginas look in porn is f— crazy. No vaginas look like that. Women’s bodies don’t look like that ...," she added. "We don't enjoy things that it looks like people are enjoying."

Elsewhere in the sprawling interview, Eilish discussed her bad case of COVID-19 from August and said she still has side effects, but credited being vaccinated for keeping the infection at bay.

She also said that she "cried every single day of the week" and threw up ahead of her "Saturday Night Live" hosting stint last weekend.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.