Justin Bieber gave out souvenirs at his 29th birthday party that read, “I’m so thankful that I didn’t end up with what I thought I wanted.” The average person may not read into this. But anyone who’s obsessed with the latest tea on TikTok knows what he might be referring to considering the fact he still hasn’t removed his Selena Gomez tattoo on his arm and has pictures of them up on his Instagram to this day after they split in 2018.
Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez broke the internet when they posed together in a photo for the first time in November 2022. Fans assumed that this was a signal the two had called a truce over their complicated past. Selena didn’t quite cosign that idea when asked about the story behind the picture in an interview with Vulture. Instead of spilling the warm details about their fresh start, she simply said “It’s not a big deal. It’s not even a thing.”
Fans thought that response was strange due to the seemingly genuine smiles in the photo. Just a few months later, we now see the two aren’t as friendly as they may have seemed. Hailey and her crew, including Kylie Jenner and Justine Sky, mocked Selena’s weight and makeup in various recent TikToks, high school mean girl style.
Selena stayed silent, only responding to a fan’s outraged comment with, “It’s ok! I don’t let these things get me down! Be nice to everyone!” As the drama between the two became a national discourse, Hailey lost over a million followers and Kylie lost half a million followers in the crosshairs. Selena has gained 10 million new followers rallying to support her.
This isn’t the first time Hailey has fired shots as her husband’s ex-girlfriend. Since 2015 (yes, this has been going on for nearly a decade) Hailey has posted subliminals about Selena and not so subliminally retweeted fan page comments such as “Can Hailey and Kendall fight Selena please?”
Even celebrities who know Hailey personally have started taking sides. Kylie Jenner’s former best friend Jordyn Woods and former close friend Pia Mia both put out videos promoting Selena’s makeup brand, Rare Beauty, as a suspected flag of support for Selena and diss at Hailey and her skincare line brand, Rhode Skin.
While all the attention is on the women in this love triangle, Justin is left out of focus when he is ironically the only reason the beef exists to begin with. Justin married Hailey two months after being photographed cozying up to Selena when they were “on again” in 2018.
In her 2019 song, “Lose You to Love Me,” Selena directs her feelings about the situation at Justin with the lyrics “In two months, you replaced us / Like it was easy / Made me think I deserved it / In the thick of healing.” Hailey is choosing to displace her hate on an ex when the behavior of who she chose to marry is likely the real culprit.
The Selena vs. Hailey drama is so captivating because we rarely get to see celebrities of their status this raw. Unfortunately, it’s enforcing negative stereotypes and promoting petty behavior between women, grown adults at that. As girls, it can be so much easier to tear each other down rather than the man who pitted us against each other. The fire around the story continues to be fueled as more examples of Hailey’s mean girl behavior resurface and comparisons to Joe from Netflix’s “You” for her stalkerish behavior emerge.
The big question I feel is missing from this conversation is Justin’s lack of responsibility and accountability. Fans have called him out for not defending his wife in the midst of all the hate she is receiving online. When Justin was off with one girl, he would run back to the other, birthing this beef to begin with. But now, he just gets to sit silently on the sidelines and watch it all play out.
At the same birthday party mentioned above, Justin posed with his sleeve rolled up showing his Selena tattoo and shared the photo to his personal Instagram. While Hailey gave him a heartfelt paragraph and photo dump birthday post as we all would for our partner, the one picture he chose to include with her on his account was with her back facing the camera and him seemingly dodging a hug.
This situation is not fair to Hailey or Selena but it’s a lesson for all of us to stay united and not waste our energy fighting each other when we are not even the ones to blame.