The naked truth behind Hailey Bieber vs. Selena Gomez
The drama never ceases with Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez. The two celebrities have spent the last decade linked due to their romantic overlap; Hailey is married to Justin Bieber and Selena famously dated the pop star for years. Things have always been cordial between them, but TikTok videos, coupled with some cryptic remarks on both sides, have led fans to theorize that there’s more bitterness than is being let on.
Selena has announced that she will be taking an indefinite hiatus from social media, and she cited “drama” as the main cause. Is the drama a direct result of her interactions with Hailey? What about the resurfaced video of Hailey mocking Selena’s good friend, Taylor Swift? There’s a lot to unpack in this ongoing saga, so let’s get started.
Complicated origins
Hailey & Selena have had a somewhat complicated dynamic from the start. The latter started dating Justin Bieber in 2011 and would have an on/off relationship with the singer for the rest of the decade. Hailey, meanwhile, entered the picture in 2016 and was seen kissing Bieber during one of his “breaks” from Selena. Selena and Bieber split for the last time in March 2018, and Hailey & Bieber got engaged four months later. They wed the following year.
Selena released a song around the time of the wedding, “Lose You to Love Me”, and the lyrics seem to reference Bieber’s quick romantic turnaround: “In two months you replaced us like it was easy.” Still, things seemed positive between Hailey & Selena. The former liked Selena’s Elle magazine cover on Instagram in 2021, and the two posed for photos at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures annual gala in 2022.
If anything, fan insistence that there was something invariably led to trouble. Hailey begged fans to stop leaving comments about Selena on her TikTok in April 2021, and she went on the Call Her Daddy podcast to address the rumors that she stole Justin Bieber from Selena in September 2022.
Social media cold war
The speed at which the Hailey & Selena drama has accelerated has been mind-boggling. In just a few months, the pair have gone from offering one another support to subtweeting each other (and their respective friends).
In January, Hailey posted a TikTok video with her celebrity pals Kendall Jenner & Justine Skye. They can be seen mouthing the words “I’m not saying she deserved it, but God’s timing is always right”, which many fans took as a diss towards Selena after she was hit with body-shaming comments on Instagram. Hailey deleted the video to avoid further debate, and claimed that it wasn’t “directed at anyone”, but the simple fact that she deleted it led several fans to conclude that it was indeed about Selena.
The following month, a video resurfaced of Hailey on an episode of Drop the Mic. The host of the show, Method Man, mentions the name Taylor Swift, and Hailey can be seen putting her finger in her mouth and making a gagging motion. The clip led to immediate pushback, and Selena, a longtime friend of Taylor’s, spoke up in the comments. “So sorry, my best friend is and continues to be one of the best in the game”, she wrote.
Too old for the “drama”
Selena decided to call it quits at the tail end of February and delete her TikTok account. Her last post on the app was an explanation as to why, and it seemed to address the recent exchanges she had with Hailey. “I’m gonna be taking a second from social media, because it’s—this is a little silly. And I’m 30”, she reasoned. “I’m too old for this.”Selena has been transparent about her struggles with social media over the years, and the ways in which fans have responded to both her career output and her physical appearance.
Conversely, the drama seems to be just getting started for Hailey. The model has become the target of Selena’s fanbase, with many of them looking for examples of Hailey modeling her career after Selena’s. Several TikTok videos have been made of Hailey parroting an opinion Selena had or copying an entire business idea, like the cooking show What’s In My Kitchen? (which aired after the latter’s Selena + Chef and used the same “okey dokey” catchphrase).
While the social media exchanges between Hailey and Selena appear to be over for a while, the debate as to how these two celebrities feel about each other will continue, with fans stoking the flames and making the case for which one of them is in the wrong.
